Having recently finished a design for Kieran from guywithaguitar.com (which you can see here, if you’re interested), I’ve just gone through all the trials and tribulations that designing for print entails – and believe me, there’s quite a few of them.

So, let’s say you’ve decided to design something for print. But whats the major pitfalls you need to avoid? Well, for starters:

RGB/CMYK

When you open a document to start designing in, you should always check that it’s in CMYK and not RGB. If you’re using Illustrator, by chosing the ‘open new print document’ option, you’ll automatically be set to CMYK. However, if you’re using Photoshop, make sure you’re new document is specifically set to CMYK like so:

What’s the difference?

RBG stands for ‘Red, Blue, Green’ and is basically a colour gamut which bases it’s production of colours on light levels. To put it simply, in RGB, colours are made by mixing different amounts of these (red, blue and green) to theoretically reproduce any colour of light, where a 100% mixture of all 3 results in white.

CMYK stands for Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, Key (Key being an older term for black) and works similarly to RBG, apart from the fact that it uses those 4 colours as opposed to red, blue and green.

CMYK is the gamut used for printing and by most modern printers. The reason why artists will design in CMYK is because there are some colours that can be produced in the RBG gamut that cannot be accurately reproduced in CMYK. Designing in RGB means that when it comes to print, the colours you originally planned on may come out a lot different than expected, and if you design in CMYK, this can be avoided.

 Resolution

Working in the wrong resolution can be disastrous in terms of your final outcome, as well. What your design will be printed on plays a key role in helping you decide upon the right resolution. Most printers print at 300 dpi (which stands for dots per inch in terms of the translation from pixels to dots on a page). When in doubt, just make sure you work big – you can always scale down later if need be.

Rich black

Maybe your design involces a lot of black? Well in CMYK, you would assume that to produce a true black, it would be K=100, right? Wrong. Using this value will result in a dark grey, but not a rich black, which is what you’d be aiming for in order to get the best results. You’re better off using:

C=90 M=60 Y=30 K=100

This will mean that all colours in the gamut are used to some extent, and mixed to create a more… ‘black’ black. However, be warned, using rich black on smaller text or features will render them indistinguishable, so don’t fall into that trap!

Now you shouldn’t be making any of the basic mistakes during you’re creative process. Hope this helps!