Design for print- production

Channels/Separation

Colour bars

Colour bars are printed outside the trim area and are used for quality control purposes by the printer. Squares of colour are printed on the area of the page to be trimmed off, which the printing press operator uses to check colour density and consistency is maintained. This checking process is automated by some printers, with digital scanners tracking the colour bars to ensure quality and consistency is maintained.

Printers marks
Printers marks are situated around a document in order to give the printer a variety of useful information about the job. Printers marks generally include colour swatches used, crop marks, registration marks, bleed marks, dimensions, tints and colour bars. Printers marks are designed to be on every plate.

Register marks
These are target like symbols placed in exactly the same place for each colour plate so that proper alignment of colours will occur on the press. During the screen print process it allows the printer to correctly align each colour to ensure there is as little offset in each print layer.

Crop marks
Marks placed on the edges of a mechanical to indicate where a printed piece should be trimmed, also referred to as trim marks. (A mechanical is a document with type, graphic elements and imagery in position)

Fold marks
Similar to crop marks these are lines that indicate where printed documents should be folded, they're most commonly used in publications such as newspapers. Fold marks are cut off once the mechanical has been cropped therefore the sequence of trimming and cropping is vital.

Bleed

Bleed is a printing term that is used to describe a document which has images or elements that touch the edge of the page, extending beyond the trim edge. This means that once the document has been trimmed down there is a guarantee that no unintentional white margin is left. Even if an image is perfectly align with the edge of the sheet there will still be a white margin due to paper movement in the printer even if it's just 0.5mm. When a document has bleed, it must be printed on a larger sheet of paper and then trimmed down.

Pre press checklists