Designing Direct Mail for Print
Today, I want to talk about an important aspect of designing direct marketing pieces. It may sound ridiculous to say this, but you always need to remember that you are designing something that is going to be printed. As such, there are certain things that you need to keep in mind while creating your design.
Obviously, as a professional designer, I would probably first recommend taking your concept to a professional designer who is knowledgeable in this area. By the same token, however, I am also somewhat of a realist and I understand that for a lot of people, a professional designer is simply a luxury that they cannot afford. In that case, or for those people who just love to do it themselves, here is a list of tips that should help you out.
DPI
Here’s a simple truth: screen resolution and print resolution are two very different things. Most graphics for your computer or the web are designed at 72 dpi. Essentially, that translates into 72 pixels per theoretical inch on your screen, though we cannot look at these measurements as absolute. Your monitor will be set to a specific resolution, which does not necessarily directly correspond to the actual physical dimensions of your screen.
In other words, when it comes to measuring, trust the rulers that are built in to most design applications. Don’t put your own ruler up against the screen. Aside from the possibility of scratching, you probably won’t get an accurate measurement.
I digress.
When it comes to print, though, you are generally going to want a document of at least 300 dpi. This will allow for nice, crisp images right off the press. Also, if you’re worried about cost – don’t be. I have yet to meet a printer who charges more for higher resolution images.
So be sure to design your pieces at at least 300 dpi. They will look better because of it.
Pantone Vs. Process
In my experience, there are two very different ways of handling colour in the print industry. First, there is simple flat colour printing, using any one of a wide variety of Pantone or spot colours. The inks used in this process come in very specific, pre-formulated colours. This makes Pantone-based printing ideal for projects that require a very specific colour, such as the green in a logo or something to that effect.
Process, on the other hand uses a combination of four colours – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (ie CMYK) in order to create the illusion of a full spectrum of colour. This method is used for pieces that have a broader range of colour requirements, such as photographs.
That difference can be simple enough.
A problem creeps up, however, when these two types of colour start to get mixed. Layout applications like Adobe’s InDesign can accommodate for colours in CMYK and from the Pantone library. They can also do this simultaneously, meaning that you can have both CMYK and Pantone colours defined in the same document.
This can cause some serious issues to arise when the file goes print with Pantone colours and CMYK colour, than the printer may have to approximate the Pantone colours. I’ve seen this happen before, and also seen the CMYK mixes come back looking quite different than the Pantone colour they were intended to imitate.
In my experience, this often happens when importing or placing a logo that was designed with Pantone colours into a document. With InDesign (the layout application that I use), this will automatically import the particular Pantone colours into my swatches collection. This is a really quick and simple way to test to see if you’ve unwittingly placed some Pantone colours into your document.
Of course, having Pantone colours is not necessarily a bad thing. Some presses will actually accommodate for more than your standard four colours, allowing you to add spot pantone colours (usually up to 2) throughout the design. They key is simply to make sure you know what colours are included in your document, so as to avoid any unpleasant surprises.
Colour Space
I’m not going to get into a lengthy discussion about the differences between RGB and CMYK colour spaces. You can read about that in the article Getting to Know RGB and CMYK over in the Highland Marketing Knowledge Base. As mentioned in the previous point, however, when you’re working with full colour print, your images should be in CMYK mode. This will just help to ensure more accurate and predictable colours.
In many cases, RGB colours can actually be rendered into CMYK at the printer’s shop, but this is not always the case. I clearly remember learning this lesson on one of my first full colour designs. I had done a great deal of web work previous to that project, and was very comfortable working with RGB. So I did all my layout work in RGB and left all my stock images in that mode, too.
When the proofs came back, probably about 90% of the colours looked fine. There were, however, a few areas where colours looked flat or muted or just plain wrong. I quickly learned that I had a colour space problem, and went back and changed all my colours to CMYK.
On the next proof, all of the colours looked perfect. So, when designing, be sure to keep your full colour designs in CMYK mode!
Bleeds & Crop Marks
If you are designing your piece with the intention of having your artwork run right to the edge of the page, then don’t forget that you are going to need to provide bleeds (where artwork actually extends outside of the dimensions of the finished piece) and crop marks, so that your printer can cut the piece down to its proper size after it comes off the press.
This is a pretty simple and fundamental concept when it comes to designing for print, but it’s amazing how many times issues arise in this area. There have been numerous times when I have seen “print ready” artwork come in without bleeds or crop marks. Usually, it’s just a matter of an option having not been checked or turned on during the creation of the PDF, and can be remedied easily enough.
However, in those painful instances where it is more than just a simple export mix-up (such as having not created bleeds at all), fixing the problem can become quite costly, both in terms of time and money. In my experience, the best option here is to try to always keep the concept of bleeds and crop marks in the back of your mind as you are designing. This should help to keep you focused and help prevent any troublesome mistakes!
Font Issues
Fonts are strange things, and don’t always behave the way we think they should when moving from the computer to the press, especially when there is also a movement from a PC to a Mac environment (or vice versa). Fonts can suddenly be lost or characters can go all wonky. I’ve seen all sorts of incredibly strange and seemingly inexplicable things (though I’m sure that, at a technical level, there is actually a reason).
It helps to be aware that these issues exist, and to be able to look for any strange inconsistencies when reviewing proofs. If you only have a small amount of text in a document, you can also protect yourself by actually converting the text to curves. This will take the letters of your fonts and convert them into vector shapes. When you do this, the text is no longer editable, but it also becomes completely independent of fonts, meaning that your document will no longer be subject to any weird font issues.
It’s a handy little fix, but just remember to save a copy of your file before you make the conversions, since the text will become uneditable. It’s always good to have a saved version to go back to in case changes are needed.
Well that’s it. I hope that some of these tips will be useful to you when it comes time to design your next direct marketing piece!
