Printing Services | Graphic Design | Toye Graphics
Archive for October, 2009
New Products: Greeting Cards!
Oct 18th
Yep. We have now added Greeting Cards to the wide selection of products there are available to buy on our website. They are printed onto 300gsm card, scored in the middle, and delivered flat. Quantities start from 50 and go all the way upto the thousands! Full colour print to the outside with mono printing on the inside is standard however if you need something different let us know and we will be more than happy to quote you.
The greeting cards are available in both A5 and A6 sizes and turnaround times are only 48 hours. This is because they will be digitally printed. We look forward to seeing all your designs and working with you.
Print Ready Artwork
Oct 13th
Yes, This again. How many times a week do you think people come to me and say they have ‘Print Ready Artwork’ and then email me or a Microsoft office document. the answer, too many!
If you are using any Microsoft office software to produce your ‘print ready artwork, then please STOP! When creating print ready file, you need to be using professional design and layout software. Some of these include, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Coral Draw… I emphasise, Microsoft word, Microsoft publisher or such like is not capable of producing PRINT READY ARTWORK.
If your only wish is to print your ‘leaflets’ on your ink-jet printer at home then that’s fine Microsoft is your man, however if you are intending to have your leaflets commercially printed then you must use one of the professional packages mentioned above. Not to mention the inferior final design you will get from a Microsoft package from the use of clip art and such like, the Microsoft packages are incapable of the following required for commercial printing presses:
- 300 DPI Artwork Files
- CMYK Colour Mode
- 3mm Bleed on Artwork
- Embedded Fonts
- The list goes on…!
The only time that you should be using a Microsoft package when thinking about artwork would be when you need to send your designer some text to input into the flyer design they are doing OR if you would like to send your designer a quick rough guide as to what you would like done. However, don’t be spending large amounts of time on it as they will use it as exactly what you have said it as, a rough guide!
So to conclude, if you are making files for printing commercially, please use the right software, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Coral Draw. However, if you do not have access to these or find the process daunting, let us know and we will be more than happy to do your design work for you.
10 Font’s All Print Designers Should Own & Use
Oct 11th
This is a blog post about the top ten fonts that ALL print designers should own and use. In no particular order:
Walbaum MT
Walbaum is good for magazines, journals and corporate communication.
Excelsior
Excelsior is good for magazines, newspapers, posters and signage.
Stempel Schneidler
Stempel Schneidler is good for display work, high-class publications and posters.
Perpetua
Perpetua is good for displays with fine lettering and heavy text pages.
Trajan
Trajan is good for books and magazines, aged and classical looks.
Avenir
Avenir is good for book sleeves, headlines, logos and posters.
Akzidenz Grotesk
Despite its name, Akzidenz-Grotesk is good for large signage and all printed material.
Meta
Meta is good for text, numbering and corporate communication.
Leitura
Leitura is good for signage, posters and displays.
Akkurat
Akkurat is good for text, editorial and posters.
Miss a favourite font of yours? What would your top 10 commerical print fonts be? Please let us know in the comments below.
Web Designer Depot
Oct 11th
Webdesigner Depot is an exciting blog designed to explore different web and graphic design techniques, great examples and best practices.
They are passionate about it in all its shapes and forms. Their vision is to make WDD a great showcase for this passion and feed a worldwide audience of savvy designers eager to learn more and share their knowledge with the design community.
The blog is a joint effort and collaboration between leading designers around the world which contribute a wealth of expertise on all fields of design, such as coding, typography, Photoshop tutorials and more.
So check it out, its an excellent resource, continually posting great tips and tutorials. If you are the sort of person who likes great comment threads, then this is defiantly a website for you. New posts are generally added once a day.
‘Favorite Tweet of the week’ is a new addition to the blog that showcases the best Tweets that week from all things about design and art.
We at Toye Graphics continually read to keep up on the industry and read the latest Photoshop tutorials too!
So next chance you get, check it out. Let us know what you think of it in the comments below!
Presentation Folders
Oct 10th
Okay, so you have information packs or such like to give to clients but have nothing to put in them? Okay, good. Now what you need is Presentation Folders to put them in!
So what sort of things should you be thinking about when you you need some folders printed?
- Well first off you need to decide how big you need them, A4 or A5.
- Then you should think about the image you are trying to portray, if your target market is more the younger generation go with gloss as this will attract them. One the other hand, Matt will give a luxury, professional look to your folders.
- Double or single sided printing? Well, obviously single sided will cost less but think about those extra key messages you can get across with printing on the inside too!
- Artwork. This is almost one of them most factors to think about. You must get all the relevant onto it, however you need to keep your design attractive and one that also is in keeping with your current brand look.
- 5mm Gusset or not? If you have more than approx. 10-15 sheets to put in your folder then you should thinking about upgrading to the folder with a 5mm gusset to allow a lot more information to be held within.
If you need help creating your artwork, or would like us to do the hard work for you, give us a ring or drop us an email and we will be more than happy 
Visit our presentation folder printing page and see what would suit your budget.
Digital Printing
Oct 7th
Digital Printing has come a long way from what it used to be. In years gone past you would expect bad quality, low resolution, uneven gradients and so forth from digital. However, latest advancements means that Digital printing is well on the up! The most recent digital machines are capable of results nearing traditional Litho print.
So whats the main advantaged to digital printing?
- In a world that phone numbers and email addresses change almost on a yearly basis, for small customers who cannot afford to put print products in the bin, Digital Printing enables them to only order what they need and no more. The extremely low set-up costs of digital printing means its as cost effective to order 1 copy as it is to order 500.
- This one is still evolving but is getting there slowly but surely. Variable data Printing. This means that you can send out Leaflets or Flyers out to customers addresses and have there personal name on it without having to manually change it You could also go as far as to change an image on each leaflet relating to the specific industry of the client.
- Faster Turnaround times. In an on-demand era, Digital Printing is a must for any print company. As previously mentioned, due to the low setup costs digital printing is on demand. Its as easy as pressing print on your printer at home. Most orders placed before 12noon for digital products can be dispatched the same day.
- Digital is environmentally friendly. No more needs to be said here…
I think you will agree that if you are needing booklet printing, flyer printing, or cheap leaflet printing, then digital printing is definatly something you should consider.
Free Reseller Scheme
Oct 4th
As you may know, we used to ask for £189 to sign up to our reseller scheme. This enables resellers to:
* 10% OFF All Our Products, Everytime, Anytime, Forever!
* White Label Dispatched Products
* Have Print Delivered Straight To Your Client
* Full Colour Lithographic & Digital Print
* Free File checking Service
* Attractive Reseller Margins
* Dedicated Account Manger
* Help & support from 9am to 9pm everyday on both email and phone
* FREE DELIVERY (only for resellers)
However, after some thinking we have decided to make this FREE! Yes thats right, its now free! This will enable our loyal resellers to get healthy margins on there print without a large outlay at the start. This gives you as a reseller an attractive ‘Blot-On’ to your exisiting graphic design, advertising agency or marketing consultant business. To get a free reseller account today: register for an account and then drop us an email asking for your account to be enables for reseller pricing.
We’ve Moved!
Oct 4th
That’s right! Toye Graphics Limited has moved. We have now aquired a much bigger space only a few miles down the roads from where we previously worked from. The new space will provide with the nessessary things to enable us to make our operations much more swift from order to dispatch.
We may have moved offline, but our online presence will be staying the same, no changed there. All our products are exactly the same and at exactly the same price. With the move however we are now aiming to have faster turnaround times, more effecient call answering and handeling to name but a few.
Our new address is:
2 Dalhousie Bank
Eskbank
Midlothian
Edinburgh
EH22 3DU
Keep checking our blog for great printing and design articals, updates on our products and any changes within Toye Graphics.
Booklet Printing
Oct 4th
Booklets are a great way to give your customers or clients more information about your business and can also act as another source of income if you sell advertising space in them too! Most booklets come in A4 or A5 size. A4 is generally for company booklets where you want to provide more info to clients whereas a5 is more generally or pocket info or advertising. For example if you have an event coming up then you would be more likely to use a5 booklet for it than a4.
When designing your booklets keep the user in mind and make it as easy for them as possible. First off make sure there is a good informative front cover, a table of contents, page numbers on all or most pages and put your contact details in a footer on each page (either just a website address or a phone number.. don’t clutter it). If you combine all these elements with a good design and some good content you should be off to a flying start. The other important thing to consider when designing your booklet is your choice of font for the body of the booklet. You need to choose a font that is serif. By this we mean that the font has flicks on the end of the letters that make it easier to read. An example of a serif font is Times New Roman.
When you go to print your booklet think about the how you want it to look. Some of the things to consider are: Size, full colour or B&W, paper weight, cover weight, number of pages and any finishing eg gloss or matt. If you go for a heavier cover than the inner pages your booklet will have a longer ‘shelf life’ and should in turn hopefully be kept longer by a customer. Our general rule is that if you want to go for a ‘cheap’ look then use gloss lamination and if you are portraying a up-market high end business use matt.
I hope this article offers you a few tips on what to think about when designing and printing your next booklet.
5 Tips for print ready Artwork
Oct 4th
Tip 1: CYMK Mode
This is the most common mistake that we get. Your designs MUST be in CTMK mode. This is simply because this is how printing machine work, Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and key(black). If you use RBG, red blue green, when your design is printed, the colours will chage a little as this includes a bigger spectrum than the CYMK does.
Tip 2: 3mm Bleed
You must ensure that you include a 3mm Bleed around your artwork. This is so that when its cut down to size, its not your content that’s being cut, its just background colours and any images you extent over the bleed. You 3mm Bleed should include everything that is in your background, that you want to go right to the edge of the document once its printed. For example, if your having an A6 flyer printed, (105mm by 148mm), extent your document with a 3mm bleed, which makes it 111mm by 154mm.
Tip 3: Embed ALL Fonts
If you are sending us a Photoshop file, rasterize your text so we are able to print them. To do this, right-click on the layer and select raserize. This turns your text from Text to Graphics.
If you have vector artwork and your file is missing fonts, you can open your file in Illustrator, select “Create Outlines”, save your fonts, re-save your artwork file, and then upload it.
Tip 4: Check for Overprint Problems
To preview how your print will be appear when it is printed, we would recommend selecting Overprint Preview. This should identify any vector objects that have Overprint applied to the them – the object would appear transparent and this is how your artwork will be printed.
In Acrobat Reader you can select Overprint Preview which can be located in the Advanced drop down menu
In both InDesign and Illustrator you can view as Overprint Preview by going to the View dropdown menu and selecting Overprint Preview
Tip 5: Resolution
Check to make sure your artwork is at least 300dpi at full size. This means that all images and artwork must be at least 300 dots per inch at the full size when its printed.
This concludes our 5 Tips for print ready artwork. Read this and decided it would be easier to have us design your artwork? Check out our Design services.