Designing your artwork - layout considerations
- You must always consider a 2mm bleed area around the edges that will be removed while printing.
- In the picture below you can also see the white ‘post-area’. This space must be left blank as required by the postal service. Keep in mind that this is just an example, and the dimensions required for the ‘post-area’ vary depending on the format of the mail product you are designing for.
Sample guidelines for a Maxi-Postcard format:
Below, an example of a Maxi-Postcard with the guidelines applied. See how the image spans across the bleed and the text doesn’t go beyond the safe area.
The address box
- The address box includes only the sender and recipient address
- It can’t be bordered or underlined and it should always be left-aligned
- The sender address should be smaller than the recipient’s address
- For the recipient's address we recommend a font size of 11pt
Working with images and text
- Color mode must be CMYK (other color modes may increase printing costs and do not guarantee color fastness). Please contact us for special colors
- Images and graphics must have a resolution of at least 250 dpi
- Line drawings must have a minimum of 1.200 dpi
- As standard font we use Roboto 11pt. If you would like a font other than the standard font, please let us know by email to data@optilyz.com so that we can add it to your account. If the desired font is not part of the Microsoft Office standard fonts, please attach the corresponding font as a file
Exporting your document
- Export your document to PDF/X3 or PDF/X1a
- If your mail product has front and back or several pages, save it as a multi-page PDF
- Fonts must be embedded in the document, otherwise the quality may be affected during print.
Download all our design resources here.