Text and Fonts

• Font types: By preference, you should use PostScript type 1 fonts. TrueTypes fonts may be cheap or look great but they tend to cause slightly more problems in output. Avoid Multiple Master fonts or older PostScript type 3 fonts. They can be troublesome in a lot of workflows.
• Corel Draw Truetypes: Avoid the TrueType fonts that came with early versions of Corel Draw (e.g. 3.0). Some of them are broken, most of them look awful at larger pointsizes.
• City fonts: Macintoshes come with a series of fonts that are named after cities (e.g. Geneva, Chicago or New York). Avoid using these fonts as older versions of the Mac operating system only supply them as screen fonts which are not suitable for output. This rule does not apply to 'Memphis'.
• Style menu: Don't use stylized fonts, select the fonts by their long names name. So select 'Helvetica bold' as a font instead of selecting 'Helvetica' and then clicking on the "bold" style button. Some applications do not show all font faces for TrueType fonts. It that case, you can use the different styles if you are sure the corresponding font exists.
• Outline fonts: Try to avoid the underscore or outline fonts from QuarkXPress or other applications. These are gimmicks that can look great on screen but are sometimes impossible to output correctly.
• Spelling: Always use the spell checker that is included in most applications to check your document. Add words that appear frequently in your documents to the custom dictionary.
• Cross platform issues: Avoid moving from one platform (e.g. Mac) to another (e.g. PC) because this can cause text to shift slightly. Some fonts that are available on both Mac and PC differ slightly, even if they use the same name.
• colorized text: Don't colorize small text (e.g. < 8 points) in 2 or more process colors. The slightest registration problem on the press makes such text illegible.

Lines and Fills

• Hairlines: Some applications have a line thickness that is called "hairline". Never use this, always stick to a specific width, e.g. 0.25 points. The problem with hairlines is that they are imaged as the finest possible line on any given device. This may be fine on a 300 dpi laserprinter but a 1 pixel wide line on a 2400 dpi imagesetter is hardly visible. Don't count on this workaround and avoid hairlines entirely. The smallest linewidth you can use depends on the press, paper, speed,... As a general rule, never make a line smaller than 0.2 points.
• Total ink coverage: Depending on the paper stock, the type of printing process and the press itself, your printer can specify a certain 'total ink coverage' (TIC). This is the maximum amount of ink that any object on a page should contain. For example: if the TOC is 280, you can have objects on the page that contain 70 percent of cyan, magenta, yellow or black but a mixture of 100 percent cyan, 100 percent magenta, 50 percent yellow and 50 percent black has a TOC of 300 which is too much and will lead to smudging on the press.
• Solid colors: Avoid large areas of solid black ink which can be very difficult to print. Digital presses tend to have a problem with any large area that contains a solid color.
• Colorize thin lines: Don't colorize thin lines (e.g. < 1/2 point) in 2 or more process colors.
• Blends: Some people create blends in PhotoShop instead of using Illustrator or QuarkXPress. While PhotoShop blends with a little noise added to them can give better output on PostScript level 2 devices, this is no longer the case with PostScript 3 rips.

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