What Etsy Designers Get Wrong

I like Etsy. It’s a great place for unique gifts or to buy personalized items like cards and invitations. So many mothers or Bride to Be‘s turn to Etsy for invitations and stationary that won’t break their budget that they can then take to their local printer to have made up. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, there are so many things Etsy designers get wrong FOR PRINT. Etsy designs are the bane of my existence- more often than not they’re more of a headache than anything else. And what initially saved those purchasers some money from buying off Etsy often times turns into setup or design fees when it goes to the printer. So here‘s a list of common things Etsy designers do, why they’re wrong for printing, and how to correct them to save your customers money and the printers (and their designers) some headaches:

• Designs go to the edge of the art board but don’t include bleed space. This creates complications with printing whereas the finished product will be sized down and have a white border, or printed as is and the possibility exists that something gets cut off or there could be white edges left, or the print designer has to create a bleed on the design In order to avoid all of those possibilities. To correct this, add .125 of bleed space and make sure all graphics that bleed extend to the bleed line.
  

• Designs‘ page boxes are set incorrectly or don‘t exist. Having incorrectly nested boxes or not having them at all can present problems with imposition and questions can arise about the size of the finished product. If your design software doesnt include page boxes or sets them incorrectly, they can be fixed using preflight in Acrobat.
  

• Designs don’t include crops. This may or may not be a problem for imposition. Sometimes a designer can put their own crops on the item, but if there’s page box issues this can also impact adding crops, compounding the issue.

• Designs like invitations or table numbers are 2 on an 8.5 x 11 page. This presents multiple Problems with imposition: a 4x6 invitation could be imposed 9Up on a 13x19 sheet, but since it’s on an 8.5x11, the printer needs to either print the whole thing 2Up on an 11x17 sheet or try to crop it down to one piece and impose it. This presents more issues, as many times when cropping a design like that in acrobat it will keep the full design and make it impossible to impose. keep it simple and save your design true to size, with bleed and crops, one up.

• Double sided table numbers are single sided, two up on 8.5x11 with consecutive numbers on the same page. This is a nightmare to impose and create double sided table numbers for clients. Do everyone a favor and make the file true to size, one up, with crops and bleed (if any) and DOUBLE the pages- page 1:table 1, page 2: table 1; page 3: table 2, page 4 table 2 and son on.
  

• Envelopes have crops. These can also present problems if the image needs to be shifted for printing and then crops are visible on the printed envelope. Many times when cropping these out or removing in acrobat, imposition software still sees them and prints them. Do your printer a favor and if there is no bleed on an envelope, leave off the crops and create your document true to size.
  

Hopefully if you’re a designer who sells on Etsy, you’ll find this lost of common printing problems useful and can help save your customers and their printers a lot of time and headaches. If you’re a printer who has experienced additional issues, leave a comment below!