The Business Card Blog

Some common terms used in design and printing, and what they mean:

Artwork 

All original copy, including type, photos and illustrations, intended for printing. Also called art.

PP / pp

Number of pages, eg. an 8pp booklet has 8 pages, or two sheets of paper printed both sides, folded and stapled to form eight sides. A DL 6pp is a single sheet of A4 folded into three panels, totalling 6 sides.

Saddle stitched

Stapled along the fold, as in a booklet.

cmyk

Refers to the full colour printing process, where artwork is separated into four plates, ready for four ink colours. CMYK is an abbreviation of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, which when combined on the paper form the full colour result. Also called four colour process printing, or full colour printing.

Coated Paper

Paper with a coating of clay and other substances that improves reflectivity and ink holdout. Coating may be gloss or matte. Uncoated paper, such as bond and photocopy paper, do not have this coating.

Commercial Printer

Printer producing a wide range of products such as business cards, brochures, posters, booklets, stationery, business forms, booklets and magazines. Also called job printer because each job is different.

Die Cut / Cutting Die

To cut irregular shapes in paper or paperboard using a die.  A cutting die is the custom item used to trim specific and unusual sized printing projects.

dpi / Dots-per-inch

Measure of resolution of input devices such as scanners, display devices such as monitors, and output devices such as laser printers, imagesetters and monitors. Abbreviated DPI. Also called dot pitch.

Drill / Drilled

In the printing arena, to drill a whole in a printed matter, eg. swing tags with a pre-drilled hole.

Finish / Finishing

(1) Surface characteristics of paper. (2) General term for trimming, folding, binding and all other post press operations.

Finished Size

Size of product after production is completed, as compared to flat size. Also called trimmed size.

Graphic Design

Arrangement of type and visual elements along with specifications for paper, ink colors and printing processes that, when combined, convey a visual message.

gsm

Grams per square inch, when referring to the weight of paper stock. A lower number, eg. 80gsm means a thinner/lighter stock, while larger numbers apply to heavier stocks, like 420gsm card.

Laser Bond / Laser paper

Bond paper made especially smooth and dry to run well through laser printers.

Offset Printing

Printing technique that transfers ink from a plate to a blanket to paper instead of directly from plate to paper.

Overprint

To print one image over a previously printed image, such as printing type over a screen tint. Also called surprint.

Over Run / Overs

Additional printed matter beyond order. For example, in aa run of 5,000 flyers you may receive around 250 extras.

Perforation

Taking place on a press or a binder machine, creating a line of small dotted holes for the purpose of tearing-off a part of a printed matter (usually straight lines, vertical or horizontal).

Plate

Piece of metal, plastic or rubber carrying an image to be reproduced using a printing press.

PMS

Obsolete reference to Pantone Matching System. The correct trade name of the colors in the Pantone Matching System is Pantone colors, not PMS Colors. Eg. formerly PMS032 is referred to as Pantone 032.

Resolution

Sharpness of an image on film, paper, computer screen, tape or other medium.

Score

To compress paper along a straight line so it folds more easily and accurately. Also called crease.

Self Mailer

A printed item independent of an envelope, eg. a promotional postcards or DL card.

Spot Color or Spot UV Varnish

One ink colour or UV varnish applied to portions of a sheet.

Trim Size

The size of the printed material in it’s finished stage, after folding, trimming, etc.

Uncoated Paper

Paper that has not been coated with clay. Also called offset paper.

Bleed

Printing that extends to the edge of a sheet or page after trimming.

Carbonless Paper

Paper coated with chemicals that enable transfer of images from one sheet to another with pressure from writing or typing.

Press-quality pdf

Final artwork ready for printing, with information for print production, like trim and bleed marks, supplied in a pdf file created with high quality settings.

Vector artwork

Logos and other design elements created in an illustration program, which can be fully edited and/or resized to suit requirements for print and signage, without losing quality.

Rastor artwork

Images which are made up of pixels of colour, as in a digital photo file, and cannot be enlarged without losing quality.