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Frequently Asked Questions
What is your phone number and operating hours?
You can call us at 1-800-892-7861 or 815-434-0186 from 8:30am to 5pm CST Monday through Friday. You can request information or request a quote at any time.
What about privacy and security?
No information we collect from inquiries is shared with any other company or website. Your information is only used to contact and respond to your request.
What kind of shipping services do you use?
We ship UPS, FEDX or in town delivery.
Will I always receive exactly the quantity I order?
Most of the time, we ship you slightly more than you ordered. On occasion, we ship slightly fewer pieces than you ordered. Printing industry trade standards allow for underruns of up to 10%. If you plan to send your print order using a mailing list or need a guaranteed quantity, we recommend that you order 10% over the minimum quantity you need.
What if I want to change something on my order after I've placed it or approved the proof?
Please note that some changes cannot be made after certain stages in the production process -- for instance, the quantity cannot be changed once your job has been printed. It is best to call us immediately if you need a change.
What file formats can you take?
We can take any Mac or PC version of Quark, Pagemaker, CorelDRAW!, Illustrator, Photoshop, Publisher, Word, PowerPoint, any file output as a PDF. See our job submission guidlines for more details.
What types of storage media do you accept?
We can take your files on a CD, DVD, Zip disk or floppy disk.
What types of images will work ok?
If you are scanning the images yourself from photographs it is better to save them in either tif, or eps format. These image formats will preserve the color and sharpness of your pictures the best.
File formats like gif or jpg compress the pictures color and pixel resolution and this can cause color shifts and blurriness. Since jpg and gif are the most predominant image formats on the web, it follows that it's not a good idea to simply lift an image from someone's website and use it in your layout.
You should scan your images using a resolution of 300dpi at the final dimensions you intend to use them so that your colors will look smooth, and hard objects will look sharp. In other words don't scan at 300dpi and then enlarge the picture by 200% in your layout program! This is another reason why you should not use images that are lifted from websites; they are probably only 72dpi in resolution and will look very blurry if printed on a printing press.
If you are using pictures from your digital camera they will work just fine if they are jpgs; the quality of jpg images from digital cameras seems to be much better than jpgs that are used on the web. You must do the math to make sure that it is high enough in pixel resolution though. For instance, if your camera puts out a typical image of 1280 x 960 pixels at 72dpi you get about 17" x 13" of photograph (at 72dpi); this is the same amount of detail as an image which is 4" x 3" at 300dpi so it's safe to reduce or enlarge that image to about 4" x 3" in dimension.
What are bleeds, and do I need them?
Bleed is the term for printing that goes right to the edge of the paper. A way to do this is to make your document .25" too big in both dimensions. For instance, if the final size is 8.5" x 11" then make your document 8.75" x11.25". Draw guides on the layout that are .125" from the edge all the way around. Now create your design with the idea that the layout will be cut off where those guides are....because that is precisely what is going to happen. Make sure that any photographs or backgrounds that you want to bleed go clear out to the perimeter of the document, past the guidelines. Then after we have printed your piece we will trim off that extra .125" all the way around and you have color all the way to the edges of your piece.
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