Printing Basics

Online printing for the first time? New to printing and not sure where to begin? As a world-class online printer, Smartpress has all the tools to help you design the perfect booklet, calendar or business card and learn all the printing lingo along the way. We’ve compiled some essential articles to guide you from idea […]

The diversity and scope of the printing industry can be pretty overwhelming if you’re just getting started as a designer or find yourself suddenly responsible for your company’s print procurement. Even a little knowledge of both historic and developing printing methods is important in order to understand the capabilities and unique aspects of each. Learning […]

Smartpress’ online printing services makes it easy to add bleeds and borders. Begin designing your artwork with a minimum safety bleed margin of 0.125″. If you add a border to your artwork…

Cutting tolerance is the slight variation that occurs when online printing projects are cut down to size. Smartpress recommends a tolerance of 0.125″ for our online printing services, meaning the trim line can vary by up to 0.125″. Anything that comes within 0.125″ of the edge of the cut line could potentially be cut off. […]

In online printing, page creep refers to the fanning out of pages that can occur when they’re folded and gathered together. As you fold more pages together, the thickness of the paper pushes the inner pages out. The amount of creep depends on the number of pages and the thickness of the paper. Once the pages are folded and […]

A printing crossover means a page spread has text and/or an image that crosses over the spine from the left page to the right page, like in a booklet. When online printing, it’s important to properly align these pages so that the objects that cross the spine do not appear to be misaligned or partially […]

Collated printing makes it easy to print welcome packets, employee training materials, information packets for prospective students, flashcards and more in the right order. You get to design unique content and imagery for each page in your set and they’ll all be printed with the same size, shape, paper stock and finish (like UV coating […]

In the printing industry, there’s often confusion around how to count pages and sheets and what the difference is between the two. They may sound the same but they’re very different and can’t be used interchangeably. Understanding the difference between sheets and pages can make setting up your file and ordering your online printing project […]

In online printing, a spread is a pair of facing pages, typically the left and right pages in a publication like a book, magazine or newspaper. There are two types of spreads: a reader’s spread and a printer’s spread. If you have questions about the difference between a reader’s spread and a printer’s spread, how […]

If you have questions about image resolution, whether your project needs vector or raster graphics or any other printing services, please contact our experts in customer service.

When setting up your print-ready files, you may wonder what type of images or graphics you should include for your artwork. Do you go with vector graphics or include raster images? From door hangers for marketing or custom brochures for upcoming trade shows, the right artwork files can make or break your design. Take a […]

Knowing which print fonts to choose for your project can be challenging. Check out our font facts below to determine which font type is right for your product catalogs, marketing sell sheets, menus and more.

In the online printing world, “dot” refers to the pattern of dots that simulate a continuous tone image with solid ink. However, most modern printing technologies simply can’t produce these tones to create dot patterns. Instead, an online printer can produce printed images that contain a series of dots in specific patterns and these patterns […]