Helpful Tips

Black solids
Can be enhanced by adding a 40% tint of cyan.
Total area coverage (TAC) – Combined colour values should not exceed 300%. This may be required to be lower depending on the paper being printed on. This TAC applied to pictures printed in colour – 300% in the darkest areas with a maximum black of 80%.

Cracking
Can appear on a saddle stitched publication when heavy inking appears on the spine or fold particularly on heavier stocks. The effect can be minimised by using only light ink coverage along the fold.

Perfect Binding Line Ups
Elements running across a spread can suffer from loss of image into the spine. This can be alleviated by moving the element that runs across the spine 2mm to the left, for the left hand page, and 2mm to the right, for the right hand.

Rub
Silk and matt stocks tend to be less absorbent, so they are prone to rub and mark when being bound or stitched. This can be alleviated by running a non-enhancing sealer varnish.

Ink Rubbing
Ink can be transferred through abrasive contact on press and bindery handling systems during the manufacturing process. Matt and silk/satin papers are particularly susceptible to ink rubbing. Consideration can be given to this at the design stage Where possible avoid facing pages of heavy ink coverage against white, unprinted pages. Where possible avoid designs where the outside front cover is heavily inked and the outside back cover has large areas of white space or vice versa. If this is unavoidable, consider a seal, which can sometimes prevent marking.

Trapping
Light colours printed on dark backgrounds should be set as “knock outs”.

Fine Lettering
Thin lines, rules, medium and small type sizes should be reproduced in a single colour only wherever possible. Do Not Use rules defined as ‘hairline’ in your DTP application. Desktop printers and similar devices will not give an accurate representation of a hairline rule on your proofs. Keep to a minimum weight of 0.25pt for a solid single colour.

Reversed Out Lettering
Reversed out lettering, or “knocked-out” type, should be out of a minimum of colours. Type or objects smaller than 10pt in size should ideally be reversed out of one colour only. Small letters reversed out of multiple colours – particularly fonts with fine serifs – will show colour in white type areas even with the slightest mis-registration on press. Check to ensure that reversed out lettering does not become illegible due to the text’s background.

Shingling
Saddle stitched publication pages decrease in width page by page from the front cover to the centre spread. The scale of which is dependent on the weight of the text stock. The heavier the stock the greater the increment. This can be compensated for by reducing the page width gradually.

Web Growth
This occurs when web text is put together with a sheet fed cover. During the printing process the web (text) sections are dried through gas ovens, therefore reducing the amount of moisture in the sheet. After saddle stitching or perfect binding, the text sections will re-absorb moisture from the atmosphere and grow very slightly thus protruding from the sheet fed cover.

Cockling
A wavy appearance to the text sections near the spine, may occur particularly on perfect bound A5 work due to the direction of grain in the sheet. We recommend extra time being allowed between printing and binding to allow the heat set web sections to absorb moisture back in to the paper.