File Setup

To get your business card, full color flyer, rack card, or other printing order on the printer, we must receive files that are "print-ready." Print-ready means that your files meet our digital setup specifications, which are industry standard and used by nearly every other commercial business card printer. If you don’t fully understand what’s required to make a file print-ready, we highly recommend you work with a professional graphic designer. You can use one of your own designers to help with flyer, brochure, rack card, or magnet designs, or we can help - just ask! If you place an order and send us files that aren’t print-ready, the printing job will be delayed until we have the proper file(s). If you want your business cards, flyers, brochures, rack cards, or booklets to process right away, here is what we need:

1. Files must be EXACTLY the right size. Please note that your flyer prints at this size, but once it goes through the cutting process it will be slightly smaller than the size you submitted, so it’s a good idea to put text inside the margins of your flyers, business cards, and other designs.
   
   Choose the flyer size from the price list or the template and design at EXACTLY the proper size.
   For example, business cards should be designed to be EXACTLY 3.625"x2.125"; and a 4”x6” postcard/flyer design should be EXACTLY 4"x6".
2. DO NOT set up your business card or flyer design on a larger canvas size.
   
   For example, some people start off with a sheet or canvas of 8.5”x 11” and then center their design in the middle. This is not correct.
3. DO NOT set the front and back designs of your business card, flyer, or rack card on the same sheet or canvas. They should be set up as two different files.
4. DO NOT name your flyer as just "front" or "back."
   
   We receive hundreds of business card, flyer, and brochure files, and if they are all labeled generically, it could cause confusion. Choose a file name that describes your flyer. For example, if your flyer is for a happy hour promotion, you could name your flyer like this: "happy_hour_front" and "happy_hour_back."
5. The resolution or quality of your image must be a minimum of 300 d.p.i. If the resolution is lower we will NOT process the order because the print quality will be affected.
6. Do not put crop marks (the lines where you are telling us where to cut) on your file. We have our own templates and we will cut as close as 1/16" as possible.
7. Leave your text and other important graphics such as logos a absolute minimum of 1/8" from the edge of your flyer. It is highly recommended that you leave more than this for a nice clean look after your job is cut. The machine will cut off usually anywhere from 1/16" to 1/8" off of each side.
8. We do not print with a white border around your flyer UNLESS you design it this way. You should extend the background of your design all the way to edge of your design so that no white shows. However, as stated in #7 above, leave the text and other important graphics a minimum of 1/8" for the edge of your design.
9. Do not put a thin frame around your design. Because of the way the jobs are cut it is very difficult to cut thin frames very precisely and the finished product can come out looking unevenly cut. If you do choose to add a frame, the thicker you make it, the better. It should be at least a1/2" thick.
10. Files should be converted to CMYK color mode. All files we receive in RGB will automatically be changed to CMYK
    
    When you convert RGB files to CMYK sometimes you notice that colors change a shade and or get a little bit darker. In particular blues change the most. Blues have a tendency to turn purplish.
11. If you are designing in Adobe Illustrator you should flattened to one layer.
    
    All fonts should be converted to outlines. We do not accept .ai or eps files. We do accept PDF.  We will not be responsible for fonts not converted to outlines or images that are not properly embedded.
12. Acceptable file formats are jpeg, tiff, and pdf.