Accordion folds, bleed, bulk — printing involves a lot of odd terminology, especially for people who’ve never worked with a printer before. Communication is key for any successful printing project, but talking with print experts about a project, it can feel like they’re speaking a foreign language. Our Xerographics team wants to make sure we’re all on the same page, and to help you learn a bit of our lingo, we’ve put together some of the most common print design terms for reference.
Print design terms to know:
Accordion fold
This fold is exactly what you’re picturing in your head. Think of how an accordion folds in and out as someone plays. That’s essentially what happens to a document that uses an accordion fold. The alternating folds create multiple panels of the same or similar size that are then folded or bound together to create brochures or pamphlets.
Bleed
This print design term is less gory than it sounds, promise! Bleed refers to when design elements extend past the edge of a paper. Designers will often include bleed and set up a document with a bleed mark that’s 0.125 inches beyond the trim area of a printed piece.
Bulk or Caliper
The bulk of a paper is the thickness of a paper to its weight in cubic centimeters per gram. (Don’t worry about the math; we can help you with that.) High bulk papers are thicker than normal papers of the same weight, and it’s often used in printing specialty books. (Think about children’s picture books with very thick pages.) Caliper has a slightly different definition. It’s the measurement of a paper’s thickness — irrespective of weight.
Crop Marks
To save on resources, most printers put multiple prints onto a very large sheet of paper. Crop marks show a printer where they need to make cuts to a final printed piece. They’ll also cut and separate the extra paper from the printed final pieces. Rest assured, the crop marks won’t show up on your finished product.
CMYK
Before you ask, CMYK and Y2K are different things entirely, although they sound eerily similar. The print design term CMYK stands for the four main colors in the process of digital printing. C is cyan (blue), M is for magenta, Y is yellow, and K is black. Printed documents are always printed in CMYK. If you have another color format, we’ll typically convert to CMYK before printing.
Pantone Colors
You’re probably familiar with Pantone’s color of the year. Pantone colors are a set of universal colors that any printer can replicate. The Pantone colors come with CMYK, RGB, hexadecimal and Pantone color codes. All of these codes ensure consistency across your printed and digital materials. By ensuring that your company has a brand guide, you can take some of the guesswork out about the colors of your printed collateral.
Finish
Glossy, matte, textured — the finish of your printed materials can vary greatly depending on what you’re creating. A finish refers to the surface quality of the paper used for your collateral. The look of a finish can also be affected by additional coatings.
RGB
No, not Justice Ginsberg — although we’re sure we’ve made the same mistakes in saying “RBG” instead. RGB is an acronym for “red, green, blue.” These colors make up the color combos you see on your computer screen. You view documents and images on your digital screens in RGB. RGB materials get converted to CMYK before printing.
PPI and DPI
Both of these print design terms represent the resolution of an image. PPI means “pixels per inch,” while DPI is “dots per inch.” PPI tends to be more common, although both acronyms can be used interchangeably. 72ppi is the standard resolution for a computer screen. 300ppi is the best resolution for printed images. If you’ve ever printed an image out and had it look blurry, there’s a very strong chance that it’s too small. However, simply expanding your image won’t fix your pixelation problem.
Digital Printing
Digital printing is our favorite word on this list (but we’re biased). It also used to be called 4-color process printing. It differs from more traditional printing forms because it doesn’t use plates. Clients who come to us for digital printing get a lot of perks like unbeatable print quality, print-on-demand, faster turnarounds and generally lower costs.
At Xerographics, one of Central Florida’s best printing companies, we make sure our team communicates clearly with your business. If you don’t know what something means, ask us and we’ll be happy to help! Having everyone on the same page means your messaging gets to your audience exactly how you want. Give us a call at 407-490-0690 to learn more about how our print specialists can help your business.
