Letterheads that bleed

From a design perspective, letterhead artwork that bleeds can be visually appealing - and requested frequently by our clients. We'll tell you the same thing we tell everybody - letterhead artwork that bleeds can look great, but it can add dramatically to the cost of printing. When any artwork is placed on a printed piece, and the artwork is located on the absolute edge of the paper, it is said to ‘bleed’, referring to the artwork ‘bleeding’ off the edges of the page. In order to get images, colour fields or artwork to ‘bleed’ off the edges, we have to print the artwork on paper that is larger than the desired size and cut it back. This adds several factors to the printing process - your printer has to use over-sized stock (which is not paper that can be ordered from any old office supply store), and when they're finished printing your letterhead, they have to trim to size. The extra paper and additional step can add significant cost to a printing job. Keep that in mind before you ask your designer to go 'hog wild' in the design process.

Overland Property Group letterhead, business card & envelope. From a technical point of view, the letterhead and business card 'bleed'. Letterhead and envelope both feature a 'watermark'.

When working with letterheads that 'bleed', you should also keep this in mind. At some point - perhaps right from the get-go - you'll want to print your letterheads on your personal desktop printer. Not a problem - most printers can interpret colour quite accurately, and the resolution has improved greatly over the past few years. However, if your letterhead artwork 'bleeds' you might have some issues. Most desktop printers cannot print ‘bleeds’ but rather need to place a healthy margin (sometimes as large as 1/2″ around the artwork) inside the edges of the sheet so that the rollers can move the paper through the print head. If you’re only planning to print your letterhead personally using your PC and desktop printer as opposed to using commercial print service, it’s advisable that your artwork be set up accordingly and avoid bleeds. If you wish to print both commercially and personally, then you might want to have two sets of artwork files setup. One that bleeds and one that doesn't. This may cost a little more during the design phase, but well worth it for the flexibility. It's something we do on a regular basis at the studio.

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Screens and watermarks

Placing a screened logo (also known as a watermark) on your letterhead can be a nice little graphic flourish, but disastrous if done incorrectly. Many designers design on monitors and they set up their letterhead watermarks to look light enough on their monitors. Trouble is, most monitors tend to run high-key, and a watermark that looks acceptable on the monitor will be far too dark when printed. A letterhead that features a watermark that's too dark runs the risk of rendering any letters that are printed on it illegible - the polar opposite of a letterhead's function. At the studio, we generally 'ghost' logos back to between 3% and 5% of their originals to be safe. Bottom line, an watermark that's set up correctly will hardly be noticeable on a monitor. In order to show clients the effect online, we sometimes have to 'boost' the watermark for appearance, but re-set it before shipping final files. We also tend to avoid using extremely complex illustrative logos as watermarks - the visual clutter detracts from what should be a 'nice touch'.

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Letterhead printing

If your business card, letterhead and envelope have been designed as spot colour material, it is critical that BEFORE having them commercially printed that you ALWAYS check your colours with a Pantone colour Swatch Book. This is the only way to insure that the colours contained in your letterhead will print as you planned. The Pantone Matching System (PMS) is the ‘industry standard’ for matching colours so if your printer tells you that they don’t have one, you should probably think about selecting another printer. If you plan to print your letterheads on your personal printer, and depending on the software you’re using, it may not be able to reproduce spot colours accurately. The printer and software can only ‘guess’ what colours are contained in your artwork and may fudge things up as they try to create a ‘next best’ combination. If your long-range plans involve ONLY printing your stationery in your home office, it’s best to set up the artwork using CMYK colours - standard printing inks that personal printers use.

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Different paper stocks

If you’re printing your letterhead, business card and envelope package on a combination of coated (glossy) and uncoated (matte) papers - typical with ‘glossy’ business cards and letterheads - keep in mind that the Coated and Uncoated surfaces may shift the colours and they may not match exactly across your stationery. Your printer can adjust for this by using different colour inks for each part of your print job, but this may increase the price of the print run. It all depends on your focus - quality or economy. Using dual uncoated and coated colours can be very expensive but your colours will match (almost) exactly.

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Matching colours

colours may not match exactly if you attempt to print spot colours as a CMYK (four colour process) job. Many printers will simply change the colours to CMYK in your original files - this is haphazard at best. There’s a Pantone Spot to Process Formula book that allows you to choose CMKY equivalents to your spot colours. Use that beforehand, or ask an experienced designer to do it for you. Keep in mind that certain spot colours do not convert exactly. Also, if your printer is using a ‘gang run’ - grouping your letterheads and/or business cards with other pieces on a large sheet (that’s how these services are so cheap) - expect varying colours from run to run. This type of printing is designed to be cheap, not precise, and you’re not paying for exacting colour standards. Be realistic in your expectations if using any printer with the phrase ‘discount’ repeated often in their advertising.

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