FOR MORE THAN 22 YEARS, I worked as a newspaper or magazine editor. During that time, I submitted countless stories, photographs and artworks to art directors who designed our publication pages. In other words, I did what you're doing now when you prepare your work to submit to me for a postcard or other graphic design task.

Here's a short course in what I learned...

1. Don't jeopardize your deadline by making it mine

When I first started working as an editor, I told my freelancers our true production deadline. And predictably, there were instances where the freelancers didn't get their work done on time, and that forced my staff into the difficult position of trying to compensate (read: working all-nighters) so we'd still meet our deadline for shipping the product to the printer. In the magazine business, press time on huge, high-speed printing presses is reserved in advance, and if the job arrives late, we have to pay a hundreds of dollars per hour while the press awaits our arrival. Needless to say, financially successful publishers don't miss deadlines.

Eventually, I realized how unnecessary that was, and instead of sharing my deadlines with the freelancers, I developed a new set of freelancer due-dates that arrived well in advance of our shipping date. Having those stories and images in-house allowed us to check them, edit them to our specifications and style, and ultimately get the completed article done with a minimum of stress and with optimized quality!

In my case, I work with a subcontractor printer, and that allows another opportunity for things to go wrong. Even after you and I have reviewed and tweaked your design to perfection well before your deadline, if my printer makes a mistake, it can be a simple delay of a day or two...or it can destroy part of your marketing effort. Intelligent scheduling can avoid such disasters.

So, I'll repeat: Don't jeopardize your deadline by making it mine. Get your work in "early" (actually "on time" by this new standard) and rest easy while we make beautiful postcards for you.

2. Organize the materials into a single folder

An ideal situation from a graphic designer's standpoint is to have ALL material for a job arrive at the same time.

Having all the materials to work with allows the designer to consider all options to create an optimal design. Making dramatic changes later will mean compromising the designer's best work or even forcing a complete redesign.

In the old days of non-digital work, nestled in a simple file folder would be the following:
- A final, approved manuscript
- Any "art" (photographs, illustrations, charts, graphs)
- Any captions or other detail text other than the manuscript

In our current digital age, the material would be attached to a single email message or on a CD, DVD, floppy disk or USB memory module. (Large files may require multiple email messages, but they ideally should all arrive at the same time, and with as much explanation as necessary.)

3. Each item is completely finished (and approved by the final decision-maker).

a. The manuscript is typed, spell-checked, copy-edited and proof-read. In other words, it's as close to perfect as you can make it. It's not unusual for typos to be corrected on the final artwork, but that's usually done under such policies as "only if they're going to sue us", "the date/time for an event is wrong" or "we'll look like complete idiots and lose our credibility if we print this".

b. Images are provided in digital format at 300 pixels per inch (ppi, or dpi...dots-per-inch) in a size that's approximately the same as required on the finished printed product.

For example, a 4" x 6" postcard's final size in pixels is 300 x 4 or 1200 pixels by 300 x 6 or 1800 pixels. To determine the size of your image, multiply the dimensions in inches by 300.

We can up-size or down-size your images by 10-20%, but to retain optimum quality, we need for you to supply an image that's close to finish size.

Almost any bitmap (pixels) format is fine; here are a few examples: JPG, TIFF, PSD (Photoshop's native format) or BMP. Note: JPG is a "lossy" format, which means you can compress it to make the file-size smaller at the expense of image quality. Save your JPGs for us using a compression of almost nothing. In Photoshop, that means level 10 or 11 where 12 is the highest quality. Either of those levels will provide a large savings in file size (good for emailing) while retaining visual quality equal to optimum.

Website images are generally too small, typically saved at only 72 pixels-per-inch and somewhere between 300 and 600 pixels on their longest dimension (which is only 1" to 2" at the 300 pixels-per-inch resolution we need for printed work). So it's probably not going to work to ask us to grab images from your website. We need something larger.

Please realize that when images completely fill the postcard (called "bleed", where there is no border between the edge of the picture and the edge of the card), images need to be size 1/4" larger than the card, which is then trimmed off after being printed (that is, you'll lose that 1/4" from the image).

c. Include ALL information that's going to be printed.

Here are some examples of detail that we often see left out inadvertently:
- Title, medium and size (height x width in inches) of artwork pictured on gallery or artist postcards
- Return address, phone number, email address and website URL
- Gallery hours
- Credit lines for artists or photographers
- Copyright messages

It's the "loose ends" that often undermine an otherwise well-planned project. Don't let that happen to yours!

Summary
- Provide us with well-polished material well in advance of your true deadline (typically the date you plan to mail your postcards). Doing the job a month early is not an unreasonable policy. It allows you to retain control of your marketing schedule.
- Make sure that ALL material is (1) approved by the final decision-maker, (2) optimized as described above, and (3) included in a single package.

Thanks very much for your business! I'm looking forward to the next job we do together.
Charlie Morey