Your screen is lying to you
RGB is the color language of light. It is how your monitor builds every color you see, by mixing red, green and blue at different intensities. Print does not work that way. Printers use CMYK, a completely different system built on ink rather than light and the two systems do not translate perfectly. That electric blue you spent an hour perfecting will come out of the printer looking flat and slightly sad. If you have never set up a file in CMYK before sending it to a print shop, you are essentially designing blind. The fix is simple but easy to skip: change your color mode before you start, not after you finish.
Resolution is not optional
72 DPI looks fine on a screen. At 300 DPI, that same image would be enormous in file size but crystal clear on paper. Print demands 300 DPI minimum and anything lower will show up as visible blur the moment ink hits the page.
Bleed is the rule nobody explains until it is too late
When a printer cuts your design down to its final size, the blade does not land in exactly the same spot every single time. There is a small margin of error and if your background color or image stops right at the edge of your design, that margin of error becomes a thin white sliver around your finished piece. Bleed solves this by extending your background elements beyond the crop marks, usually by 3mm on every side. Setting up bleed feels fussy the first time. After you see a print job come back with white edges on a design that was supposed to run to the edge, you will never forget it again. Most professional print templates include bleed guides, so using one from the start removes the guesswork entirely.
Fonts need to be handled before you send anything
Screen design lets you get away with live text because the font is installed on your machine. Send that same file to a printer without embedding or outlining your fonts and you may get a call asking why everything is in Times New Roman. Convert text to outlines before exporting, or embed fonts in your PDF export settings. Either approach locks your typography so it arrives exactly as intended.
RGB is the color language of light. It is how your monitor builds every color you see, by mixing red, green and blue at different intensities. Print does not work that way. Printers use CMYK, a completely different system built on ink rather than light and the two systems do not translate perfectly. That electric blue you spent an hour perfecting will come out of the printer looking flat and slightly sad. If you have never set up a file in CMYK before sending it to a print shop, you are essentially designing blind. The fix is simple but easy to skip: change your color mode before you start, not after you finish.
Resolution is not optional
72 DPI looks fine on a screen. At 300 DPI, that same image would be enormous in file size but crystal clear on paper. Print demands 300 DPI minimum and anything lower will show up as visible blur the moment ink hits the page.
Your screen is showing you a version of your design that a printer will never be able to reproduce exactly. The sooner you accept that, the better your print work will get.
Bleed is the rule nobody explains until it is too late
When a printer cuts your design down to its final size, the blade does not land in exactly the same spot every single time. There is a small margin of error and if your background color or image stops right at the edge of your design, that margin of error becomes a thin white sliver around your finished piece. Bleed solves this by extending your background elements beyond the crop marks, usually by 3mm on every side. Setting up bleed feels fussy the first time. After you see a print job come back with white edges on a design that was supposed to run to the edge, you will never forget it again. Most professional print templates include bleed guides, so using one from the start removes the guesswork entirely.
Bleed is not a technicality. It is the difference between a finished piece that looks deliberate and one that looks like something went wrong at the end.
Fonts need to be handled before you send anything
Screen design lets you get away with live text because the font is installed on your machine. Send that same file to a printer without embedding or outlining your fonts and you may get a call asking why everything is in Times New Roman. Convert text to outlines before exporting, or embed fonts in your PDF export settings. Either approach locks your typography so it arrives exactly as intended.