You’ve poured your heart and soul into a new leaflet or poster that will take your business to the next level. Now all you need to do is have your final design printed, but even the best graphics, punchiest CTA, and most exclusive offers won’t deliver the results you want if the printing is not up to scratch. So, don’t let these common printing mistakes ruin this for you at the last minute!

1. Not Proofreading Your Final Design

Printers will print exactly what you send, and whilst they will check the quality of the design and its dimensions they will not check any wording, so make sure that you proofread everything before signing it off.

This includes checking for any spelling mistakes, missing punctuation and incorrect grammar. If you are unsure of any errors (we all go word-blind when rereading our own work!) then ask someone on your team to read what you have written. Encourage them to be as critical as possible and ask them to double check everything from the headlines to the small print. There is always room for last-minute improvements, and it is much better to slightly delay the printing process than to be stuck with 300 posters that have glaringly obvious errors.

2. Choosing Poor Quality Images

Blurred, pixelated images are every designer’s worst nightmare, and just because an image looks good on your website does not mean it will automatically look the same when enlarged, enhanced, and printed.

Low-resolution images may look fine on a screen but they will become pixelated when printed, and a good rule to remember is that the higher the resolution, the better the quality. So, make sure that all the images you pick are high-resolution photos, whether they’re stock images or ones that you have taken yourself.

You can resize a photo in no time using Canva or Adobe Illustrator, but you’ll need to stick to the printer’s size and resolution guidelines. The recommended resolution to aim for is 300 PPI, so bear this in mind when choosing images and double check that all the images and graphics used in the design meet these requirements before sending it to be printed.

3. Adding The Wrong Details

It is embarrassing to hand out printed materials that contain spelling errors, low-quality images, or printing mistakes, but it is actively damaging to your brand to hand out the wrong information.

If you’re having an important document, report, or account sheet printed en-masse then it is absolutely essential to get all the information right. If there are any errors then you want to be the one to find and address them, rather than your team or your clients, as this shows a lack of attention to detail and is a clumsy, easily-avoidable mistake that should have been picked up on.

This also extends to the little details that are easy to overlook. For example, even just a missing ‘.’ in an email address, or one wrong number in a phone number can cost your business untold networking opportunities. So, double and triple check all the information on your business cards, letterheads, and end-of-year reports before you invest in 500 of each!

4. Using A Small Text Size

It can be tempting to sacrifice font size in order to squeeze as much information as possible into your designs, but this will only result in materials that are hard to read.

We are unfortunately becoming a society of shorter attention spans, which means people are more likely to walk past a lengthy paragraph on your materials than to engage with it. So remember to keep it short and to the point when writing the copy for your design

This will then allow you to expand the text to fill the space, rather than cluttering up your design with lots of small paragraphs. Your font choice is also important, as it should be simple, easy to read and well-spaced. Small text is hard to read from a distance on a poster or banner and if you go for a font that is too small then the letters will become compressed and blurred once printed, so you must be sure to leave plenty of room between each letter to prevent any expensive printing mistakes.

5. Submitting a Cluttered Design

When trying to draw someone’s eye to your design, you want to deliver all the key information in just one glance. In these few seconds, you should deliver your message, your business name, and your core offering, and embed your branding clearly in their mind so that they can easily recall it later on.

Achieving this is no mean feat, but you should start by stripping your messaging back to the basics and prioritising a balance between the visual design elements and the core branding messages. They won’t be able to remember much if they are overwhelmed by a cluttered, overlapping design that looks unprofessional, so use punchy taglines, minimal text and simple graphics and be sure to include plenty of whitespace across the design.

To make sure none of your design is lost during the printing and trimming process, it is highly recommended that you have a bleed area of between 3mm to 5mm around your design. This space should be left empty and there should be no overlapping elements in the margins or you risk losing the edges of the design, so bear this in mind when submitting your final design.

Avoid These Printing Mistakes With Birmingham-Based Printers

Russell Printers specialises in fast, high-quality printing that businesses in Birmingham and across the UK can rely on so contact them today to request a printed sample or to take advantage of their same day printing offer!