The following guide takes a look at some of the more popular graphics packages and gives you step by step information on how to use our PDF templates when designing your artwork.

All of our packaging and paper parts have their own design templates. All of these templates can be downloaded from the short-run templates section of our site. The easiest way is to follow the link from your quote email which will take you to a page that lists only the relevant templates to your specific order.

Disc Factory provides PDF Templates that can be directly opened or imported into your preferred graphics design program. Each software program has a slightly different method of opening / importing a PDF file. Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Quark Xpress and CorelDRAW are the most commonly used graphic design programs. For more information please see our Working with PDF Templates page.

Our PDF template files are saved in CMYK colour mode. You need to insure all images and graphics are CMYK as we will convert any RGB images to CMYK for printing. This will result in colour shifts so it is advised that you make this change on your own computer so you can see the desired effect.

All your images and graphics should be 300 dpi (Print Resolution). Using photos and logos from the web that are 72 dpi (Screen/Web Resolution) and scaling them up to fit in your 300 dpi artwork will produce poor results when printed.

It’s very important that your artwork includes 3mm Bleed. (All of our PDF templates include a pink dotted line as a guide when designing your artwork).

The term bleed is used for all graphics overlapping the border of your document. After your packaging and paper parts have been printed they will be trimmed to size and the bleed gives the trimming some room for error so you don’t get white gaps at the edge of your finished product.

You should also be aware of the printing safe area. When designing your artwork you should avoid placing any text or logos closer than 3mm to the edge. (Our templates include a light pink 3mm ‘Safe Margin’ as a guide when designing your artwork).

Please ensure all text layers are converted to outlines before saving you artwork. Please don’t embed fonts or supply font files separately.

All text used in your design should be no smaller than 6pt size and graphics and text should be no closer than 3mm to the edge of the disc/packaging. (Our templates include a light pink 3mm ‘Safe Margin’ as a guide when designing your artwork)

Please be aware that processing your artwork and providing proofs takes time and that our approval process exists as a technical formality to ensure we have processed your artwork correctly. The approval process should not be seen as a last chance to check spelling or grammar and any artwork changes at this stage in production will certainly add to the turnaround time and may incur additional costs. Please ensure the artwork you supply is correct and has already been signed-off by the relevant members of you and/or your client’s team.

After we have received your artwork files and they have been processed we will send you back screen resolution JPEG proofs which will be layout accurate (meaning you can check everything looks correct and is in the right place) the jpeg proofs cannot be used for colour matching purposes.

It is impossible to guarantee that your printouts, or the colours represented on your monitor screen, will be accurately reproduced when we print your order. Variations within brightness and contrast settings on a monitor and differences in printer calibration are all significant factors affecting colour representation.

If you have a hard copy sample that you wish to send us as a reference we will attempt to adjust our colour profiles and printer settings to match this as accurately as possible and provide you with a hard copy proof, however this will incur a charge.

You should also be aware that using the same colours or images for the disc as the packaging or paper parts will probably not match due to the variance in printing to card, paper and plastic as well as the different digital, thermal and inkjet printing methods used in such applications.

If an exact colour match is important across different media types it would be better to change either your disc or packaging design to use different images or perhaps contrasting or complimentary colours to prevent such colour match issues.

The easiest way to send us your artwork is to follow the link from your quote email which will take you to our upload page. From there you can select your files and they will be uploaded and automatically allocated a folder on our server which will be referenced with you Quote ID Number.