ABOUT CREATIVE
At Ideal Printers, we have a highly talented team of designers and pre-press professionals, with decades of experience, to help ensure your project’s design is perfected before it ever hits the presses. Maybe you’re a professional designer who knows precisely what you want? Great! Our team is here to help make sure your vision is executed to your exact standards. Or maybe this is one more item that now falls under your job description? Perfect. Our team will be here to walk you through each step, giving design assistance (or creation), answering questions, providing suggestions, and ensuring your piece has the exact amount of pizzazz (or simplicity) you’re looking for. No matter what skill level you’re at, novice to professional, our team is full of great communicators who can talk and work with you at your level.
DESIGN THAT DELIVERS
In our industry, we realize that design and print needs change quickly. Because of this, we’re devoted to creating lasting relationships with our clients. This means coming up with solutions that don’t just work for your current project, but make it easier for you in the future. We believe in being easy to work with, treating all our clients with respect, and taking your ideas and putting them to print in a way that makes you proud. Our designers are here to deliver your ideas to paper–on time and on budget.
SERVICES AVAILABLE
We’re proud to be able to offer a wide range of creative services for your next project. The list below is comprehensive, though not exhaustive. If you find yourself needing additional design services, let us know. Chances are, we’ve done it before.
PRINT DESIGN
Ads, stationery, newsletters, programs, invitations, collateral pieces, notebooks, calendars, mailings, business cards—well, really anything that can be printed.
LOGOS
Need a logo created? Or have a few ideas sketched out on paper? Or do you already have a logo fully designed? No matter, our team can help create that logo—and fully coordinating stationery and collateral items.
NEWSLETTERS
Creating newsletters can be a pain—but not with us. Our designers can help create a template that you can just drag and drop your content into, making newsletters a no-brainer, instead of a nuisance.
FILE PREP
We'll help make sure all the 'I's are dotted in your design. Then, we'll make sure your design files are formatted properly so no surprises occur once they hit the presses.
INTERIM DESIGN TEAM
In between in-house designers? While you're waiting to hire or catch a new designer up to speed, send your design files or copy to us, and we can help create your newsletters, brochures or mailers in the meantime.
DIRECT MAIL
First, we'll work with you to create create eye-catching direct mail projects. After, we'll sit down with our knowledgeable mailing department to make sure your project mails at the most efficient rates and on the dates you specify.
CONSULTATION
Sometimes when designing you just get stuck. We'll gladly sit down with you to offer suggestions to get your project jump started, or offer ideas, such as finishes, that will really make it shine.
TROUBLESHOOTING
Questions about preparing your files to print? Having issues uploading your files? Not sure you're zipping the file correctly? Let us help! Our design and prepress professionals are here to answer questions and troubleshoot issues you're running into.
QUESTIONS?
We get it. Design, as well as the applications we use to design, and file prep can be tricky. We’ve put together some of the most common questions we get from customers to help. If you have additional questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
Adobe InDesign is the leading desktop publishing software. It allows for sophisticated assembly of text, linked photos and logos. Illustrator may also be used for assembly, but files typically are larger and edits may be more taskful. Both InDesign and Illustrator contain Pantone libraries for spot color projects. Photoshop should be limited to image creation only since text will be rasterized into pixels, rendering it difficult to read, especially when using small point sizes.
Print-ready means that the file provided is complete with high resolution images, appropriate bleeds, crop marks and embedded fonts.
If your PDF is high resolution and complete with bleed, crop marks and embedded fonts, and does not require any edits, added dielines or size changes, then a PDF would suffice. If you anticipate that alterations will be necessary, native working files with links and fonts should be packaged, zipped and provided to Ideal.
Each application uses different packaging techniques. Generally, clicking on FILE>>PACKAGE, then following the subsquent instructions will achieve a properly packaged folder. Check every box indicated in the process, which will then ensure that all necessary items will be collected, along with a PDF for reference.
RGB (the primary colors of light: Red-Green-Blue) color space is used for monitors, TVs, etc. CMYK (ink pigments of: Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black) color space is used for high quality print on a press. Our Prinergy workflow allows for the automatic conversion of RGB images to CMYK, leaving no discernable change in color. Note: Illustrator files built in an RGB color space WILL experience significant color shifts, most notably Pantone colors and Blacks. We recommend ONLY using Illustrator while in a CMYK Document Color Mode.
In general, avoid using office software such as Publisher, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint to create files for print. These applications operate in an RGB color space, and do not easily permit appropriate bleeds, crop marks or resolution. (*Pantone colors can be achieved in Publisher, but there are multiple other disadvantages nevertheless.)
Yes, our shop standard is to remain within a density of 300 when all four ink densities are added together. This is why registration color should not be used to achieve a “rich black.” Saturations of over 300 can often result in set-off while on press, causing marking or excessive dry times. When printing large areas of black-only, we recommend C-30/M-30/Y-30/K-100. Often photos may require under-color correction to omit unnecessary amounts of ink density.
We recommend 300dpi when used at 100%. If you place your image at 200%, mathematically, your resolution should then be 600dpi. If you use your image at 50%, then the necessary resolution drops to 150dpi. It pays to do the math beforehand or an enlarged image could become significantly pixelated when printed. Note that resolution cannot be altered. Simply changing the resolution in Photoshop does not yield a higher resolution photo. When purchasing stock photos from an outside source (such as iStock), you have the option to purchase different sizes, depending on your end use.
We provide a couple of options in the top menu bar of the website (under File Transfer) to upload files, such as the Ideal Printers File Transfer Utility (1GB or less) or WeTransfer (over 1GB). This will allow you to easily upload large files. You may also use an internal FTP, Dropbox or other FTP utility to send files. We recommend that you contact your Ideal sales rep to be sure your upload was received without errors. We also highly recommend packaging or zipping your files into a single file before sending.