There are so many things to remember when you are a graphic designer; bleed, page dimensions, color spaces… important things can easily slip through the cracks! When you are a new designer, it can be even more overwhelming.
Through my experience–both by committing these mistakes and by receiving files where others have made them–I have compiled the top three that I think are the most important to avoid and they are also the ones I see happen most often. I hope you can learn from these and avoid making them yourself!
Mistake: Submitting Incorrectly Setup Files
How It Can Happen: Often you may receive requests from clients to design an ad to be included in a publication for a tradeshow, newspaper or magazine. They may send you the files they used last time and ask you to update them, in which case, perhaps you don’t pay attention to the file properties and setup. Alternatively, if it is a new file, you may assume you know the specs of the ad, not noticing that it is a half-letter sized booklet, that no bleed is allowed and that it needs to be in black and white.
What Will Happen: Publishers send out very specific instructions for how they want to receive artwork. Not following instructions can end up costing you or your client money, a lousy-looking result or even exclusion from the publication, which will reflect very poorly on you, and could easily lose you future work from your client.
How to Fix It: Pay extremely close attention to final dimensions, bleed, resolution (almost always 300 ppi, but good to double check), color mode and file types the publisher will accept and do not deviate from these specs! If a certain requirement seems to be missing, contact your client or the publisher immediately and ask—this is one of those times where it is not easier to ask forgiveness than permission!
Always print out a list and check off each of the requirements as you verify that you have set up everything properly before sending the final file. This is the mistake I see made most often. Double and triple check the requirements if you need to because not doing so can have very bad consequences!
Mistake: Sending RGB Images to Your Printer
How It Can Happen: Many inexperienced designers will send RGB images to a printer, forgetting to convert them to CMYK color profiles.
What Will Happen: The printer will probably contact you and tell you that you have some images in RGB and ask you to resubmit your files in CMYK. Not too bad, just a little embarrassing. Hopefully you are in direct contact with the printer so that your client doesn’t see that email or relay that request!
Fix It By: Check to see if all your images have the correct color profile in InDesign by going to File>Preflight. This will give you a summary of images that use RGB.
To fix the RGB images, open them in Photoshop and select Image>Mode>CMYK. There are some complicated things you can manually adjust, if you’d like, by going to Edit>Color Settings and then selecting Custom CMYK from the drop down menu next to CMYK in the Working Spaces section (dialog box pictured). Generally, though, the defaults should be ok.
Mistake: Submitting Low-res Images
How It Can Happen: There are many ways that low resolution images can sneak their way into your production; clients or sponsors can send low-res PDFs, you could accidentally export a low-res PDF from another InDesign or Quark file, someone could send you a logo or picture meant for Web and tell you to use it in their 52-foot banner or you could resize a photo in InDesign or Illustrator to be larger than the original (be careful when first scaling the photo smaller and then deciding to scale it larger that you do not scale it up past its original size!).
What Will Happen: The image will be varying degrees of pixilated, blurry or grainy, depending on how big it was originally and how big you need the end result to be.
How to Fix It: Ideally you should be using images that are 300 ppi. Check your resolution by taking the image into Photoshop and going to Image>Image Size (alt/opt+shift+I); 300 should be the value under Resolution in the Image Size dialog box.
Warning: Do NOT scale up your images to make them 300 if they are smaller! Always make sure to uncheck the box that says Resample Image so that you do not risk falsely increasing the resolution.
If you didn’t understand any of the terminology in this article (jargon like process, resolution, CMYK and RGB), then check out the Graphic Design Glossary! If you find any words missing or entries that should be expanded on, let me know and I’ll add them!
This is an entry for the $5000+ PRIZE GIVEAWAY – Graphic Design Group Writing Project on Just Creative Design. It’s not too late for you to write a post for it, too! The deadline is March 4th, and you could win one of a great many awesome prizes, sponsored by the likes of Estetica Design Forums, InspirationBit, Logo Design Love (and David Airey), Graphic Identity, Daily Blog Tips and Freelance Folder just to name a few, and the BIG prize, a pristine electric guitar with accessories donated by mohdrafie.co.uk!
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Have to add: Forgetting to embed images and just linking them, when sharing them to others.
I don’t have much experience in ID, so I don’t know if it gives off a warning, but in Quark it was a classic mistake.
Esben,
Images are only linked in ID, but you can package things–fonts, links–before sending them out, which places everything you’ve used for the document into one folder along with a copy of the INDD and text document with instructions and the report of the package.
I have made it a habit to never link to items outside of the project folder I set up, though. I always copy things into the folder before linking to them so I know I’m not using objects that won’t be transfered to the next user or printer.
As far as I know you cannot embed objects into ID and I don’t think it gives off a warning if you don’t have all your images in the same folder (it lets you know if something is missing or modified, though).
Try search for “embed” in “ID help”
Your method isn’t foolish, but it requires discipline and makes your workflow larger.
It does have disadvantages to embed and it depends highly on how you work and share your indd files.
This is something that using free software doesn’t help with! Of course, if I was getting paid by clients to do that sort of thing I don’t think I would use free software. GIMP doesn’t do CMYK and I still haven’t found any free desktop publishing/layout programs that I want to use, so I don’t know if they can convert to CMYK (well, they don’t exist so I guess they can’t!).
Very good post, definitely something to remember – especially for people more accustomed to web stuff and try to venture into print.
Another mistake is not taking postal requirements into consideration. One ill-placed bar of color and you have a batch of invites that cannot be run through the in-office meter machine – not good! I find that a local contact at the post office is helpful in times of doubt.
Yes…. RGB and CMYK both are not get along very well in printing stage LOL. Long time ago I remembered having this sort of trouble in this area, until I managed to save the settings for kinds of design publishing into my hard disk.
I found your site through the design group writing project at Just Creative Design (good luck in that, by the way!). I’m not a graphic designer but I am interested in design. Great tips for the future!
Esben,
I did and there is a way to embed the images, but it is essentially making a copy, including it in the file size… so it becomes ridiculously huge.
Yeah… cute
SuzyQ,
Yes! Very good point about postal requirement. I recently created a mailer that I wanted to be perfectly square, but in the U.S., that would’ve required extra postage. The client wasn’t happy with that and I had to redesign the proportions after researching what was acceptable.
LearningNerd,
Pleased you found my blog useful and I hope you’ll come back for more!
Have to admit, submitting print work to a printer in RGB by mistake has happened to me once or twice, followed by a shocking print-out..
Graphic Design,
Hey there! Your printer never contacted you about the profile mix-up? That’s bad on the part of your printer, too! I’ve had printers contact me when the ppi of my images is under 300, not to mention variations in the profiles… perhaps a new printer is in order!
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