Most printing delays don't come from the printing itself — they come from a file that isn't quite ready. The good news is that the same handful of issues cause almost every hold-up, and none of them take long to check before you send your file through.
PDF is the safest bet for almost everything — business cards, flyers, brochures, posters. It preserves your layout exactly as designed, regardless of what software you or we are using. AI and PSD files work too if you're sending native design files, and PNG or JPG are fine for simple, single-image jobs like a poster or a sticker design.
What causes problems: Word documents and PowerPoint files. They're built for on-screen viewing, not print, and fonts, spacing, and colours often shift when they're converted. If that's what you've got, we can usually still work with it — just flag it so we can check it properly before it goes to print.
If any colour, image, or graphic runs to the very edge of your card, flyer, or sign, it needs "bleed" — extra artwork extending a few millimetres past the trim line. Without it, even a tiny misalignment in cutting can leave a thin white sliver along the edge. Most design software has a bleed setting when you create a new document — 3mm is the standard we work to.
Anything under 300dpi at the final print size will look soft or pixelated once it's printed — and it's much more noticeable on paper than it is on a screen. This is especially common with logos pulled from a website (usually saved small and low-res for fast page loading) or images grabbed from Google. If you're not sure, send us the file and we'll tell you honestly whether it'll hold up at size.
If we don't have the exact font you've used installed on our end, your text can default to a substitute font — and your layout can shift as a result. Converting text to outlines (sometimes called "creating outlines" or "expanding text") locks the exact letterforms into the file as shapes, so there's no font-matching guesswork on our side.
Screens display colour in RGB; printers reproduce colour in CMYK. The two don't always match exactly, and bright screen colours — especially blues, greens, and oranges — can shift when converted to CMYK for print. For anything where exact colour matters, like a brand colour on business cards, set your file up in CMYK from the start rather than converting it at the last minute.
Honestly — just bring the file in or send it through. Checking a file takes us minutes, and we'll tell you straight away if something needs adjusting before it goes into production. That's usually faster than trying to get every setting perfect yourself, and it's exactly why walk-ins are welcome for most print jobs. We'd rather catch an issue before printing than after.
Walk in, email it ahead, or send it through our enquiry form — we'll quote you and check your file on the spot.
