Design & files

This category brings together two things that in practice happen side by side: deciding how a design should look, and getting the file into a state that prints without surprises. There are more articles here than in any other section, so the simplest way in is to pick the stage you are at.

How it should look

The first group is about appearance. How much text a leaflet can carry before a reader puts it down. Whether one strong photograph works better than several small ones. Why empty space helps, and why a calm layout often beats a heavily decorated one. Colour takes up a lot of room here: how to pick a few shades that sit well together, and why a printed sheet never looks quite the same as a lit screen.

Before you send the file

The second group is a plain checklist. The same points keep coming back, because these are the ones that usually lead to corrections:

• Room at the edges - carry the background a little further out and keep important words away from the border, so nothing is lost when the sheet is trimmed.
• Colour - paper shows shades a little differently than a screen does, and it helps to know that in advance.
• Lettering - how to prepare text so it looks the same at the printers as it does on your own computer.
• Photographs - good quality images from a camera or a photographer rather than something saved from a website.
• How you save it - why a PDF is safer than an ordinary image file.

Software, templates and AI

The third thread covers specific tools. Canva and GIMP have their own step-by-step guides here: a double-sided leaflet, removing a background from a photograph, reworking a ready-made template so it stops looking like every other one. AI imagery gets its own coverage - where it helps with ideas and colour variants, and where it disappoints once printed. It is worth finishing with the checklist article on reviewing a design before it goes to print.