15 Frequently Asked Printing Questions

Good question, first you need to have your content ready; any text, photos, logos or any special fonts you plan to print. Whether that's Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, PDF or just plain hard copy.

Carefully check page margins and proof read it to find any spelling errors. After you've made all the revisions, you're ready to start the process. 

Next, choose a file format for your artwork. We prefer the format for artwork to be a PDF or JPEG document.

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All artwork must have a bleed area, a trim area and a "quiet zone" (I know this is daunting, but see below for full explanations).

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We require all artwork to have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi.

DPI stands for Dots per Inch, which refers to the number of ink droplets a printer will produce per inch while printing an image. The more dots of ink per inch the picture has, the

more detail you will see when printed.

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With this in mind, you can see why we like to have all images to be 300 dpi. Again, though, as with most things, if in doubt, just give us a call, we are happy to do a free check of your

artwork to make sure it will work at the size provided.

This is the finished size of your document, what you are going to hold in your hand or hang on your wall. For example an A4 is 210 x 297mm and anything outside of this area will

be trimmed off.

Shhh, no, not that sort of quiet zone!

The safe zone or quiet zone is where you need to avoid putting any text. This normally has to be within 3mm of the edge of the document (trim area) as this will be very close to the edge and will be at risk of being trimmed.

We also suggest you avoid putting thin border lines within this area as it can result in inconsistent thickness.

Now this is very important, so please take notes. The bleed area refers to the extra space around the edge of your artwork that is intentionally added to allow for slight variations in the printing and cutting process.

Once your artwork has been printed, it'll be trimmed down to the desired size. It can be difficult to cut precisely to the exact edge of each design every single time and this has

the potential to result in white space or uneven looking borders. To prevent this from happening, we ask that artwork is provided with a 3mm bleed area.

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All images of colour that you'd like printed to the edge of your document must extend into this 3mm bleed area.

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Do not place any content you wish to appear in this area as it will be trimmed off, so all imagery and information will need to be well inside this 3mm area.

We try to make this as easy as possible as we know it can be frustrating when the email just won't send!

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Depending on the size of your artwork, you can email it to us using, jeanette@footfalldirect.co.uk.

If the size of your artwork is too large to send via email, you could use We Transfer, which allows a file of up to 2BG to be sent for free.

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There are also other sharing platforms you can use like Dropbox, or Google Drive.

That's why we are here,

We want to make the process as easy and problem free as we can.

If you are in any doubt or have any questions please contact us and we will be delighted to help you, free of charge. Or, choose to email your artwork when ordering and tell us in the email what you are unsure about and we will check it out for you.

We're experts in digital printing, so you don't have to be!

Of course, you can. However, we recommend that you save your file as a pdf instead. If you create a pdf from an office program it will save your fonts, images, logos etc that you

used to create the file. To do this go to 'File', 'Save As' and change the file format to PDF, then save the file somewhere you will be able to find it again.

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If we do the converting to pdf of your office file, we may not have the exact fonts, there may be elements missing or items could move due to different versions of Microsoft Office.  For these reasons, we will email you a pdf proof for approval. Your job will be placed on hold pending your response to proceed.

Now this one can be quite tricky. We would prefer to receive your artwork as single pages, in the order you would like them in the booklet.

If they can be numbered too, that helps a lot with making sure we are printing in the correct page order. Also, it is worth thinking about how many pages you have in your artwork.

Booklet pages will need to be in groups of 4. So a booklet should contain 8 pages at the very least, which can then be increased by 4, so 12 pages, 16 and so on.

The maximum number of pages will depend on the thickness of the paper, so it would be better to discuss with us beforehand.

We accept payment via bank transfer, or from all major credit and debit cards.

This is something we like to pride ourselves on, our fast turnaround times. We try, whenever possible to provide a next working day. This is subject to when your print

ready artwork is supplied and your choice of print finishing.

We will always supply a date of expected delivery once you have placed your order and don't forget, we can be flexible with this if you are in a hurry.

This question is never simple or easy, however as always, we are here to help, so here are the most common reasons for charging VAT.

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VAT is chargeable if your leaflet is to be used as an admission, or as a discount to a product or service i.e ' Free admission with this leaflet' or '10% off with this card'. If your product has an area to be written on, i.e a form or a notes page, that makes up 25% or more of the final design, this will also be subject to VAT.

You can find out more about VAT print rules & regulations from HM Revenue & Customs.

If your design is an odd size, so doesn't fit into the standard A sizes, then just give us a call to check this will be ok.

In most cases, it certainly will be fine but best to check.

Whenever possible we like to provide you with a delivery window.

However, if you are not in when your delivery has been attempted then do not worry, our couriers will leave a calling card with the details on so you can rearrange delivery.

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All deliveries will be attempted twice and we will try and alert you before the courier returns the parcel back to us.

Short answer is, no.

As a business, we are extremely flexible and can offer a bespoke one-off print if required by the customer.