During my initial days as a graphic designer, I used to find myself questioning why my designs didn’t look the same on the screen and the print. I would often see what looked good on my computer screen, looked dull and lifeless on print. And I never understood the reason for such a disparity until the senior art director sat with me one day and pointed out some common mistakes that I was making.
I used the colour mode RGB instead of CMYK
As a designer, I theoretically know the difference between the two colour modes. The digital screen produces images in RGB mode whereas on the print we need the CMYK mode to print the true colours. This is because RGB deals with backlight whereas CMYK deals with pigments. Unfortunately in practice, I would always forget to convert the design from RGB to CMYK.
I didn’t check the resolution of the images I used
One big mistake that I was prone to making in my earlier days was that I didn’t consider the size of the final printed material. I just made sure that the design I was creating on the Mac looked good, assuming that it would look equally good in print. Checking image resolution was something I would overlook totally. As a result, some of my best designs looked pixelated or low quality in print.
What I later realised is that images with higher PPI offer a clearer and more refined look to the design. Images that are used for standard printing like in brochures or business card designs should therefore always be sized to 300 PPI as they are viewed at a closer distance. But in case it is a wide format printer that will be seen from a distance, using an image that is greater than 150 PPI will uselessly create a large file without improving reproduction quality.
I never thought of converting my artwork to a vector
As I was a fresher in my profession, I didn’t know that converting my artwork to a vector was significant. I would just design it and share a PNG, JPG or PDF. This made the designs look poor in print. It was only when a printer pointed this mistake out that I understood the importance of converting an image into a vector when designing for a large format. This allows the artwork to scale to any size without losing out reproduction quality.
I forgot to include bleeds
Bleeds are an absolute necessity that I invariably forgot to include. Some of my designs had images that would touch the edge of the page. Because I would not include bleeds, the printed material would look like it has a white margin on the edge making it look extremely weird. Had I
included the bleeds, then the image would’ve extended beyond the trim and that would ensure no white margin. It would’ve been printed on a larger sheet and then trimmed down, ensuring that the print looks exactly like the design I had made.
I still remember that day when my creative director explained all these in detail. I immediately understood where I lacked and what I had to do to excel in designing. I understood that only making the design look good on the desktop doesn’t mean it will look good in print also. Since that day, I have always kept his words in mind and I keep working accordingly. After almost 1 year in my company, I can now say that I have learnt quite a lot and my designs now look much better on print than it did in my initial days.