All documents, regardless of the application you are using, should be set up at the finished, trimmed size of your piece.
A bleed occurs when an image or element on a page extends beyond the trim edge, leaving no margin. To accommodate a bleed your design must extend at least 1/8" beyond all edges of your document. Doing so eliminates the risk of white space occurring between the design and the edge of the paper when being trimmed.
Other than items intended to bleed, it is a good idea
to make sure any items are at least 3/16" from the trim edge. This will ensure that critical copy/images not be cut off during the trimming process.
When designing for high resolution output it is important to apply colour correctly. A common mistake is the use of Registration Colour or Rich Black instead of 100% black (k). Objects using either the Registration Colour or Rich Black, have all four process colours in them. Therefore, a slight mis-registration on press may be noticeable on the final printed piece. Utilizing the black swatch (100% black) eliminates the risk of registration error since it uses only the black plate on press instead of all four process colours.
Because page layout documents only house low-resolution previews of placed art/image files it is necessary to link and submit all files used in your design along with your document when sending for print.
Vector art uses mathematical equations to describe the shapes that make up an image. Because of this, vector art can be sized (larger or smaller) without any resolution loss. Drawing programs like Illustrator and Corel Draw are used to create vector art.
Bitmapped or Rasterized images are defined by a grid of pixels. Each pixel is assigned its own colour or tonal value and when combined with other pixels they form an image. Because of this raster images have a fixed resolution and resizing will result in the loss or gain of resolution. If the resolution is reduced too much the image will appear pixelated or jagged.
We recommends a final image resolution of 300 dpi for commercial printing.
Reducing the size of a placed image in your page layout file causes the image's pixels to be smaller and bunch closer together. For example, a 6"x6" 300 dpi photo reduced 50% to 3"x3" will have an effective resolution of 600 dpi.
Increasing the size of a placed image is of greater concern because it decreases the image's effective resolution resulting in a pixelated, less sharp appearance. For example, a 2"x2" 300 dpi photo enlarged 300% to 6"x6" will have an effective resolution of 100 dpi.
CMYK process colours use a combination of four ink colours (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) to create thousands of colours. Printers use process colour for pieces that contain full-colour photographs or when more than a few specified ink colours are used in a design.
Spot colour inks are premixed to ensure an exact match on colour. Spot colours should be used when colour accuracy is critical or when only a few ink colours are needed to print a piece. Logos are commonly printed using spot colour.