Brrrrrr printhorror
With Halloween just around the corner, we at Print&Bind are ready to share the spookiest tales from the print room! Think cobwebs and shadows under the bed are scary? Wait until you hear about the greatest print nightmares from our production process. We get chills from blurry images, RGB colors that look just a bit off in CMYK, and text terrifyingly close to the trim line.
RGB: The Color Spectrum of the Underworld
A classic nightmare for every printer: you receive a stunning design, everything seems flawless... until you notice the file has been submitted in RGB. RGB colors pop brilliantly on screen, but cannot be reproduced on paper in quite the same way. The result? Those bright, vibrant hues you envisioned turn into muted, sometimes shockingly altered shades once converted to CMYK.
Picture this: your bold, electric red background now looks more like a muddy maroon, or a fresh, vibrant green has faded into a strange, lifeless shade. Just thinking about it sends chills down our spine! This eerie transformation is exactly why RGB is best suited for screens, while CMYK, with its tailored color range, reigns supreme in the printing world. We advise checking your files closely before submission — we don’t want any design dreams turning into color nightmares!
Low Resolution = High Heart Rate
Nothing gives us the creeps quite like receiving a design with low resolution. A file that looks passable on-screen can transform into a blurry, pixelated disaster when printed. The culprit? Low resolution means there isn’t enough image data to render details crisp and clear. Images become hazy, text appears fuzzy, and your design loses that polished, professional look you’ve worked so hard to achieve.
For flawless print quality, a file needs a minimum resolution of 300 dpi (dots per inch) to ensure sharp details and vibrant colors that truly stand out. However, we sometimes receive files at 72 dpi—or lower—often intended for online use, where they look fine on screens. The outcome? Grainy logos and murky images that haunt our printers with ghostly, blurred finishes. It’s a reminder that while pixels can hide imperfections on screen, in print, every detail is laid bare for better or for worse.
Text Too Close to the Edge: Scarily Close!
Sometimes, we feel like hiding under our desks when we see text and images placed dangerously close to the edge of the page. Cutting can involve slight variations, and any text that’s too close risks getting chopped off—sending the message, quite literally, over the edge. Our golden rule is a 5 mm margin, but not everyone follows it, leaving us hoping that the all-important details don’t vanish into thin air.
Keeping clear space around your design may feel like wasted real estate, but it’s essential to preserving your vision. After all, there’s nothing scarier than losing your key message to the trimming blade!
