help
Q. How do I order?/ How do I make a payment?
A. Just click “Order” at the top right and fill in the order form, make sure you include your contact phone number as someone will be in touch to get card details for payment.
Q. What is Print Assist?
A. Print assist costs £10 and ensures a designer checks your artwork is print ready. Where necessary, the designer will make small amendments to comply with our print ready specs. Should our designers not be able to amend the artwork sufficiently you will be notified via email and requested to re-submit print ready artwork.
Q. How can I submit my artwork?
A. You must firstly fill out an online order form and then you can submit artwork through:
Email orders@c23festival.com
FTP site
Server: ftp.century-23.com
Username: ftp.guest
Password: design17
Q. Is the print full colour, single or double sided?
A. – All our flyers are full colour double sided
- Package posters are full colour single sided
- Individual posters can be 1 to full colour single sided depending on what you require and order
Q. What is the paper weight of flyers?
A. 300gsm gloss
Q. What is the paper weight of posters?
A. 130gsm gloss
Q. Do your prices include VAT?
A. All our list prices include VAT.
Q. Do your prices include delivery?
A. All our list prices include Delivery.
Q. What is the turnaround time?
A. The turnaround time is 4 working days plus 1 day delivery*. Providing your artwork is submitted before 10am on the day of ordering, that day will count as the first day of turnaround. Orders submitted after 10am will start the turnround the following working day.
Q. How do I make a complaint
A. Any complaints about services provided or work supplied deemed by the buyer to be the fault of Century 23 should be submitted in writing within 7 days of delivery or receipt of invoice, whichever occurs sooner. After this date all goods and/or services will be deemed to be acceptable for use. Any usage of the goods supplied will be deemed as acceptance of the goods. Century 23 shall only consider financial recompense upon return of the goods in full, or that part of the supply deemed unacceptable.
print file guide
Resolution
All artwork should be supplied at 300dpi (‘dots per inch’ or ‘pixels per inch’). We advise that you start at this resolution when designing artwork as scaling up from smaller dimensions will tend to result in poor image quality. Vector artwork is unaffected by resolution but bear in mind that any non-vector artwork you use in programs such as Illustrator should originate from a file that was 300dpi.
Do not confuse ‘dots (or pixels) per inch’ with ‘dots (or pixels) per centimetre’. Creating an image at 300 dots per centimetre will result in a very large file size!
Colour Mode
All full colour artwork should be supplied in CMYK colour mode. You may design your artwork originally in RGB colour mode but should always convert it to CMYK prior to submission for print. Note that RGB is for on-screen images and it is capable of creating a wider range of colours than CMYK. As such, when converted to CMYK some artwork may appear duller. This is unavoidable as the inks used in full colour printing are simply incapable of creating the same range of colours as computer monitors can.
For posters or stationary using one or two colours, see the section below called Spot Colour Artwork.
Dimensions and Bleed
Files for print must be submitted with a bleed. Bleed is extra artwork that extends beyond the size of the finished print dimensions and is designed to allow for the variances that occur between artwork being printed and when it is cut. Because artwork is bulk printed and guillotined, individual sheets may shift and as such it is impossible to accurately predict a consistent cut. Making your artwork slightly larger than the desired finished size prevents white edges showing up on coloured backgrounds. Additionally, creating an allowance in the form of a margin prevents critical elements of your artwork being cut off. The industry standard tolerance for this shifting is a maximum of 3mm.
As such, when designing your artwork, you should add 3mm onto each edge and, if you want the background or border image to run right to the edge of the finished print, you should extend your background or border into this extra space. Additionally, you should keep important content that you do not want cut off the design at least 6-9mm from this edge.
Below is a chart showing paper sizes with and without bleed as well as links to templates for Photoshop and Illustrator.
| Size without bleed | Size with bleed | Photoshop Template | Illustrator template | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business card | 85mm x 55mm | 91mm x 61mm | * | * |
| A7 | 105mm x 74mm | 111mm x 80mm | * | * |
| A6 | 148.5mm x 105mm | 154.5mm x 111mm | * | * |
| 1/4 A4 | 74mm x 210mm | 80mm x 216mm | * | * |
| 1/3 A4 | 99mm x 210mm | 105mm x 216mm | * | * |
| A5 | 148.5mm x 210mm | 154.5mm x 216mm | * | * |
| A4 | 210mm x 297mm | 216mm x 303mm | * | * |
| A3 | 297mm x 420mm | 303mm x 426mm | * | * |
| A2 | 420mm x 594mm | 426mm x 600mm | * | * |
File Types
If you have designed your artwork in Photoshop, you should flatten any layers and then save the file as a Jpeg at maximum image quality (remember to check that the colour mode is CMYK and the resolution is 300dpi as well).
If you have designed your artwork in Illustrator, you should outline all the text (Select All and then choose Create Outlines from the Type menu) then save the file as an Illustrator EPS compatible with Illustrator CS (not CS2 or CS3).
If you have designed your files in another program such as Quark, In Design, Freehand, Pagemaker etc. you must export them to one of the above file types and then perform the above described treatments depending on whether you are using EPS or Jpeg file formats. We do not accept PDFs as due to the variety of PDF types available, we can not be certain that they will be suitable for print.
Please do not include any printers marks such as trim, registration or colour bars with supplied files.
Spot Colour Artwork
For one or two colour print, you should supply spot colour artwork. This differs significantly from full colour artwork and you really need to design from scratch using spot colours. Printing using spot colours is generally cheaper because each colour used only uses one plate at the press while CMYK colours are made up of four plates. It is important to understand this because even if you use a single colour consistently throughout a design, if the artwork has been designed in RGB or CMYK then that colour is probably actually a composite of four different colours and as such must use four plates to reproduce it on the press
Designing with spot colours is much easier in programs such as Illustrator, where you can pick and apply colours to your graphics easily. Always select your colours from the Pantone Solid Coated swatch library. Do not use the Process library as these colours are made up of CMYK mixes and can not be printed as a single spot colour. Take a note of the Pantone references you have used and supply them with your order.
In Photoshop, you should either switch to Monotone or Duotone colour mode or delete all but one or two of the colour channels in the Channel palette. You can now apply Pantones to the remaining channels and create your design within these limitations. Again, take a note of the Pantone references used and supply them with your order.
It’s worth noting that you can use CMYK process colours as spot colours. Essentially, CMYK printing uses four spot colours – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. As such, you can use one or two of these colours for one or two colour artwork in the same manner as Pantones. If you do, you should be sure that you only use the two colours you have chosen and if you are in Photoshop, delete the channels you do not want as described above. If you do use one or two of the CMYK process colours, you can also retroactively apply different Pantone colours instead either by selecting one from the Palette in Illustrator and applying it to all the elements that use one of your spot colours or by applying a Pantone directly to one of the colour channels in Photoshop.