Artwork Guidelines

Getting your files print-ready before you send them means your job goes straight to press — no delays, no surprises, and a finished result that looks exactly as you intended. Here’s everything you need to know.

PDF

Send us a print-ready PDF

A PDF is the one format that locks your design in place — fonts, images, layout and colour all travel together in a single file. Whatever program you design in, exporting to PDF is the safest way to send it to us. The sections below explain how to make that PDF press-ready.

The essentials, at a glance

Get these four things right and your artwork is ready for press. Each is explained in full below.

Format

Print-ready PDF

Fonts & images embedded

Bleed

3 mm

On every edge

Colour

CMYK

Not RGB

Resolution

300 dpi

At final print size

Bleed & safe margins

Bleed is extra background that extends beyond the finished edge of your design. When we print and trim your job, the cut is never accurate to the exact millimetre — bleed gives us a margin of error so you never end up with thin white slivers along the edges where the paper should have been coloured.

We ask for 3 mm of bleed on all four sides. So an A5 flyer (148 × 210 mm finished) should be supplied as 154 × 216 mm, with the background filling right to the outer edge.

The safe area is the opposite idea: keep anything important — text, logos, key details — at least 3–5 mm inside the finished edge, so nothing vital gets trimmed off.

  • Bleed line (outer dashed) — your background extends to here, 3 mm beyond the cut.
  • Trim line (solid) — where your job is actually cut.
  • Safe area (inner dashed) — keep text & logos inside this line.

Colour: CMYK, not RGB

Screens display colour using RGB (red, green, blue light). Printing presses lay down ink using CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). The two don’t cover the same range of colours — some bright, vivid RGB shades simply can’t be reproduced in ink and will shift when converted.

To avoid surprises, set your document to CMYK colour mode before you export, so the colours you approve on screen are as close as possible to what comes off the press. The most common culprit is a punchy blue or vivid green that prints noticeably more muted.

Do

  • Work in CMYK from the start where your software allows.
  • Use rich black (e.g. C40 M30 Y30 K100) for large solid black areas, not plain K100.
  • Ask us for a proof if exact colour matching matters to you.

Don’t

  • Expect neon or fluorescent on-screen colours to print identically.
  • Send RGB files and assume the colour won’t shift.
  • Rely on a phone or laptop screen as a colour reference — they’re not calibrated.

Resolution & image quality

For sharp, crisp printing, images need to be 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the final size they’ll be printed. A picture that looks fine on screen can still print blurry or pixelated, because screens only need around 72 dpi — far less detail than paper demands.

The thing to watch is scaling: a small image stretched to fill a large area loses quality fast. If you’re using a photo, start with the largest, highest-quality version you have rather than one pulled from a website or social media, which are usually low-resolution.

Rule of thumb: if an image already looks soft, jagged or blocky when you zoom in on your own screen, it will look worse in print. When in doubt, send it over and we’ll check it for you before anything goes to press.
Designing in Canva?

How to add bleed & export from Canva

Canva is great for getting a design together quickly, but it hides bleed behind a setting most people never switch on, and it exports in RGB by default. Here’s exactly how to get a print-ready file out of it.

  1. Turn on bleed in your design Open your design, then go to File → View settings → Show print bleed. A dashed border appears just inside each edge — that’s the trim line. Make sure your background colour or image extends all the way to the outer edge, past the dashed line.
  2. Keep text inside the safe zone Pull any text, logos and important elements in from the edges so they sit comfortably inside the dashed border. This stops anything getting trimmed off.
  3. Download as PDF Print Click Share → Download, then choose PDF Print as the file type. This is the high-quality option — don’t choose PDF Standard, JPG or PNG for print work.
  4. Tick “Crop marks and bleed” Under the PDF Print options, open Crop marks and bleed and tick the box. This is the step that actually includes the bleed in your exported file — without it, the bleed you set up won’t be saved.
  5. Set colour to CMYK (if available) Still in the PDF Print options, look for Color profile and choose CMYK. This option is part of Canva’s paid plans; if you don’t see it, don’t worry — export anyway and we’ll convert the colour for you, just be aware some shades may shift slightly.
  6. Download and send it to us Save the PDF and send it over. That’s it — your file now has bleed, crop marks and the best colour Canva can give you.
No CMYK option in your Canva? The CMYK colour profile is only on Canva’s paid tiers. If you’re on the free plan, just export the PDF Print with crop marks and bleed ticked and leave the colour as it is — we’ll handle the conversion at our end. Send it over and we’ll let you know if anything needs adjusting.

Not sure if your file is right?

Don’t worry about getting everything perfect. Send us what you have and our team will check it over before it goes to press — we’ll flag anything that needs adjusting and help you put it right.

Email us Call 01267 222212