Frequently Asked Questions

Answers to the questions print resellers, agencies and designers ask us most often. If yours is not here, ask the chat assistant at the bottom of the screen or give us a call on 1300 206 001.

CMYK, always. If you supply RGB it has to be converted, and that conversion is done by an algorithm which often produces something other than what you intended.

Good brand guidelines exist for exactly this reason. A designer will specify a hex value for screen use and a separate CMYK build for print, chosen so the two look as close as possible. An automatic conversion throws that work away.

There is craft in it, and it shows in the finished job.

Clean out the stray percentages. A converted file will often carry 2 or 3 per cent of an ink channel that does nothing but muddy the colour. We take those out. A lime green should be yellow and cyan only. Add magenta or black and you lose the crisp, fruity colour you were after and end up with something murky.

Watch your total ink coverage. Keep it to around 240 per cent. All four channels at 100 would put you at 400, which no press will hold, and over-inking causes drying and set-off problems.

Build your blacks deliberately. A single 100 per cent black looks flat across a large area, so use a rich black built from all four channels. Blacks also carry temperature. A cool black of 60 cyan, 40 magenta, 40 yellow and 100 black reads crisp and slightly blue, while a warm black leans on magenta and yellow and reads softer.

Most people would never consciously notice any of this. It is exactly the care that separates a senior designer’s file from an average one.

Three millimetres is a good minimum. Some designers work to five, and that is fine too.

Bleed exists because printing is a physical process. When a stack of printed stock goes under the guillotine, every sheet has to line up, and in the real world there is around a millimetre of movement. Nobody notices a millimetre. What they would notice is a thin white sliver along the edge of a card where the artwork stopped short. Running your artwork past the trim line means it still reaches the edge after cutting.

You should never receive less than you ordered. Standard practice across the industry is to include a few overs in the box, and a short delivery is a sign of a printer who is not counting properly.

GSM is thickness and weight, and the right choice comes down to how the piece will be used.

150 GSM suits flyers, letterheads and anything going into a letterbox or handed out on the street, where cost matters more than substance. Heavier stocks suit postcards and anything that needs to survive handling.

For business cards, invitations and premium pieces you want weight in the hand, because that tactile moment is part of the impression. Our business cards run on a 420 GSM stock for exactly that reason.

Both have their place, and celloglaze does more than look good. It protects the surface and helps the card stay flat.

Gloss lifts colour and adds vividness, which suits work that needs to stand out. Matt does not reflect light the same way, so it reads understated and elegant, and it feels expensive for it. Think of cars: most are gloss and look sharp, but a matt finish stops you in the street. Matt is far more common in print than it is on the road.

If you want a card someone can write on, leave one side uncoated.

Because it lets us price properly.

Printers who sell directly to the public have to build the cost of guiding inexperienced buyers into every job. We deal with print professionals who know how to supply artwork correctly, so that overhead is not there and the saving goes into the price instead.

It also raises the bar on us. Our customers resell our work under their own name and compete with printers in their own suburb. That only works if we are at the top of our game on machinery, capability, price and turnaround. Trade-only is not a restriction, it is what makes the pricing possible.

Ready to get started? Apply for a trade account.