1st Catalogue Design for Print

sonydude

sonydude

New Member
Hi!

I just started working for an agency and they want me to produce a catalogue for a client. There are some specification that I'm a little confused with since this is my first time designing something like this!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but all images need to be in CYMK and the page needs to be a little bigger than it should be for print and cut. Am I missing anything else important?

Specs that was sent:

PRODUCTION REQUIREMENTS FOR CATALOGUE

PLEASE SEND ALL FILES AS HIGH RESOLUTION PDFS – 300 DPI

PLEASE SEND PROOFS WITH ALL FILES

SINGLE SIDED ADVERTISEMENT
167MM X 224MM

DOUBLE SIDED ADVERTISEMENT
334MM X 224MM


About the single and double sided advertisement bit, I'm guessing that would be the required size so when I design it, I'll make the page bigger slightly? And by double sided they mean 2 page spread right?

Some of these question are probably verry obvious but I just want to make sure and get it right just incase!

Many thanks!
 
Confuses a lot of people it seems but all you really need to do is use the default 'press' optimization settings in Acrobat (I'm using v9 Pro, I think). When you're laying out your page, work with the target paper dimensions and extend any elements you want printing to the edge of the paper into the workspace by a minimum of 3mm and Acrobat will take care of the rest.

You should be working with CMYK but, depending on the level of colour accuracy required, you can convert any spots using Ink Manager in Acrobat.

Don't know what other people do but this how I go about things and I've never had any problems when submitting for print.
 
If you don't have the experience / knowledge to set bleed, margins and colour profiles etc, in InDesign or Quark, are you sure you're up to the job of producing a commercial catalog unassisted? I'm not trying to slag you off or anything but your client is likely to hold you solely responsible for any design or print errors and messing up catalogs could well be financially crippling.

Who have you lined up to print the catalogs? The best thing you can do is to speak to your printer and explain that you'll need some hand holding with this project and can they (or their design dept) spend a couple of hours going through setting the colour profiles, image resolutions etc... Depending on the printer they may also want the pages of the book laying up differently (eg printers pages).
 
Thanks guys, I know what you mean about producing a commercial catalog unassisted, to be honest I'm pretty sure my manager is aware of that. It's a new start up company so they are still looking to partner with a printing company, but I'll try contact someone about it.
 
Normally I'd send you a PM offering to quote on the print for you but I think you really need someone local to go through things rather than just send you email after email of instructions as that wont help you one bit.
 
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