Art Pre-flight Checklist
Streamlining the file transfer
and production process
Making informed decisions in the planning stages builds a solid foundation for your project. Preflight, a term that prepress professionals adapted from aeronautics, refers to the process of stepping through a systematic list of quality-control checks on your project before the final output stage. This section of our website is designed to help guide you through this process.
Common items to check before you submit electronic files for a job:
SPECIFY FONTS: Font issues are the most frequent interrupters of work flow. Be sure to specify all fonts used in the creation of your documents. Cellotape owns over 2000 postscript fonts so it's likely we have the font needed, but any unusual fonts should be converted to curves and saved as an illustration.
INCLUDE IMAGES: Include all placed/embedded image files needed for the output of your project, as they may need to be modified to accommodate the production of your labels. All four-color process images should be scanned or created at 300 dpi or higher in order to achieve the best quality color separations.
IDENTIFY SOFTWARE: The software used to create your file may not be easily recognized when we receive it. In order to maintain the integrity of your file and aid in troubleshooting any problems that may occur, we prefer to open files in the program they were created in. Please provide your Products Consultant or Customer Service Rep with a file name and identify the program used prior to sending a file.
PROVIDE A PRINTOUT: Providing us with a printout of your file will aid us in determining that what we received is the same as what you see on your screen. All measurements for folds, perforations, die cuts, etc., should be indicated on this printout or on the technical drawing.
AVOID THIN LINES AND SMALL TYPE: Print quality will vary depending on the font style and size, and whether it is printing as a reverse or positive copy. If it is difficult to read on your laser printout it is likely to be difficult to read on your label. Cellotape's "print to cut tolerance" of +/- .015 inches should be kept in mind when creating bleed borders and formatting text to the edge of the label.
DO NOT COLOR-SEPARATE: Cellotape's Art Department works closely with the Production Department to create bleeds and color separations needed for the wide variety of printing options available to you. So there is no need to create separations in your files. Your artwork file should be a 1-up representation of the finished label.