Graphical Artwork Rules & Specifications

Bleeds

Setting the dimensions & resolution of your artwork pages is important enough but one aspect that is often overlooked when we receive artwork from clients is the lack of including 'Bleeds' to the printed paper parts. Not including these may set back your delivery date. So what is a 'Bleed' anyway.

When we guillotine your paper parts we need any background images and colours extended 3mm over the trim edge. This is called the 'Bleed' area. Because the sheets can shift by up to 3mm when placed on the guillotine, adding 3mm to all 4 edges of your printed paper parts will ensure no white space is shown on your printout after it is trimmed.

The paper part artwork files you send us should be 6mm wider and 6mm higher than the final 'trimmed' size.

Quiet Zones

When placing your text, logo's and other important information on your designs, it is best not to place them too close to the trim edge, fold or score. Doing this can look unprofessional and sometimes words can get chopped off. It is wise therefore to give some breathing space for these items. We recommmend at least 5mm inside all edges of printed paper parts.

Colour Mode

There are a number of colour modes which can be chosen when you first start designing your artwork in your favourite graphics package. By default many graphical software packages use RGB (Red, Green & Blue). This should only be used when designing for screen, e.g, web design pages. You should change this to CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) Colour mode. CMYK is the industry standard colour mode for print, e.g, printed booklets, digipacks and litho printed discs. All our photoshop templates are set to CMYK so you don't have to worry about this if you download and use our templates.

If your design is in black & White, you may wish to set the colour mode to 'Greyscale'. Greyscale uses white at one end of the scale and black at the other. All other shades of grey are set between these two colours.

Resolution

The resolution of all your artwork, including the CD on-body design, should not be less than 300 DPI (Dots per inch). Some graphic design packages set this to 72 DPI. This makes your designs look very blocky when printed out so 72 DPI should only be used for displaying on screen only, e.g, a web page.

Dimensions

We offer a large range of packaging options for your disc products. for each item we have put together a number of templates for you download. The photoshop templates are already set to the exact resolution, colour mode and dimensions for you to begin designing as soon as you open the template within photoshop. They also include guide marks for the 'Bleed' and 'Quiet Zones'. We recommend you use these templates if you have photoshop installed. If you do not have photoshop and would like to use alternative graphics package, then you can view the pdf's and jpg images which illustrate clearly the dimensions and all other info you need.

Detailed Drawings & Photoshop Templates

You can download our range of photoshop templates and PDF detailed drawings here.