Although a book printing designer invested a lot of time and energy, finally designed a satisfactory book printing design, but after the book printing process, all of the book printing design is a mess, many book printing mistakes appeared, such as blurred images, color confusion, content displacement, etc. In fact, even professional digital book printing designers may not be so familiar with the process of book printing. In this article, we have summarized the 5 most useful tips of book printing design, you will need them.

1. The difference between RGB and CMYK for full color book printing:
The colors displayed on the computer screen and the colors displayed after book printing actually belong to two completely different color systems.

Computers use the RGB color system, which is composed of red, green, and blue, while the full color book printing uses the CMYK system composed of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Compared with the CMYK system, the RGB color system can show more colors. Therefore, when you are drawing on a computer, if you use RGB mode, some colors may not be restored by CMYK mode. Therefore, please be sure to use CMYK mode when designing a printed image. However, even in CMYK mode, you cannot guarantee the color after printing and the color displayed by the computer vendor. Here you need some knowledge of color calibration in full color book printing process.

2. The importance of resolution in book printing document:

When designing a book printing, resolution is not a serious issue. However, when book printing, you need a document with the highest possible resolution. A low resolution will cause the content to be blurred, muddy, or incoherent. When printing out, please pay attention to a value of the picture: DPI, which is the number of dots per inch. As the name suggests, this means how many dots per inch the printer will print on the page. In most cases, setting the DPI to 300 is the best practice. More than 300 DPI will not bring more benefits, it will only make the file larger in vain. In addition, please note that do not confuse the concepts of DPI and PPI. PPI refers to the number of dots per inch of the screen. It is a digital display concept and has nothing to do with book printing.

3. Actual production size for your printing book

When you look at a work on the screen, it may be perfect. But if it is very large (such as huge posters and billboards) or very small (such as business cards) after actual printing, you need to consider the effect of its scaling. One of the most important aspects is the choice of fonts. For example, try to avoid using too light fonts on business cards, otherwise it may be difficult to read; at the same time, you should not set the font size too small, otherwise you may not be able to read it after printing. Another issue with scaling involves pictures. For pixel images, sufficient resolution is required to ensure that the zoom does not appear blurry. The vector diagram will be better. You need to learn more about pixel maps and vector graphics.

4. Set up bleeding

In book printing process, when printing equipment or printer cut paper, it is impossible to achieve absolute accuracy, so designers need to leave redundant space for them to keep the page intact. This kind of redundant space is called bleeding, and mainstream software on the market has related functions that can guide you to set bleeding lines. Different book printing may require different bleeding. You should ask the book printing company about related matters at the beginning of the design.

5. Proofread

This seems like a nonsense, but there is nothing more worthy of emphasis than proofreading. When book printing, the most stupid mistake is printing the wrong thing, because this is not a web design, you have no way to correct it immediately, and negligence in proofreading will result in loss of time and money. Spelling is one of the key points you need to check. Automatic error correction can only give you 75% guarantee. Many grammatical errors will not be noticed, such as homophones in proper nouns such as company names, or when they should be used. I used “you” in the place of “me”… you may need a dedicated proofreader. Of course, spelling is not the only thing you need to pay attention to, kerning, punctuation, etc. are the key points of inspection. In short, check everything as much as possible and involve as many people as possible. It is meaningless if it is printed wrong.