Templates: what are they for?

Templates are made to help you design your artwork. It’s very important to be aware of bleed, text margins or an envelope window in your artwork. By using the templates to create your design you can prevent delays caused by incorrect artwork. This means we can print your product straight away so you can have your finished product on time!

How do I design a flyer?

The following example is a template for an A4 flyer. The white area is for you to place any text, photos and designs. The pink dotted line shows the text margin, also called the safe zone. Any text should be inside this pink dotted line. This way you’ll prevent text or other important elements getting cut off. The blue dotted line shows the bleed. If you don’t want to have a white border around your flyer, it is vital you let the colour or background run all the way to the edge. Between the dotted lines you will see the orange line. This line shows where your flyer will get cut off. The area within the orange line gives you a clear picture of what your finished product will look like.

Designing your folded leaflets

To make things a little more complex we are going to use a folded leaflet as our next example. A leaflet is pretty much a flyer but folded in half. Because of this, a flyer doesn’t have one or two sides (printed faces), but a minimum of four. That’s why you’ll need another template to design your folded leaflet. The template works the same way as a flyer template, however with folded leaflets you need to be aware of the folding lines. The leaflets will be folded on the lines marked “folding line”. If you place text on the folding line you will risk the text being hard to read or the text being on the wrong side of the fold. By placing your design in this template you will clearly see if your folded leaflet will be printed the way you’d like.

A bit more complex: envelopes with a window

The template of an envelope with a window is yet a bit more complex. You may wonder where the window will go on your envelope and how much space you need to leave around the window. As you can see in the image below there are a few areas on the envelope that can’t be printed on.

By using the template for the envelope with a window you will be able to see where you can and can’t place your image or logo. By sticking to these measurements you will know exactly where the window on the envelopes will be. This template again shows the bleed, text margin and cutting line. The blue dotted line around the window shows where you can place your image or logo without it touching the window.