Canva is a great cost effective alternative to the Adobe suite of programs BUT it has its own problems. Here's how to send your art to us in a way that will work best for print
Are images going right to the edge of your design? You will need to add bleed to your job - this is where the image extends past the trim, usually by 0.125", to allow for cutting to be slightly off - so the image will still go right to the edge of your page (this is an industry-wide standard).
Leave space around the outside Don't have any text or anything important closer than 0.1875" to the trim.
Use the highest quality images and logos that you can. Remember that even if it looks good on screen (which is around 72 dots per inch resolution), it may not look good when printed (which is 300dpi).
Canva does strange things when it saves files - if I open up a Canva file in illustrator, the whole job is too high on the page, and it often uses fonts unavailable elsewhere, so we can't always edit a job saved as a PDF. Sometimes SVG files save with unusable parts. It's all very odd and quite frustrating!
The best thing to do when you're saving a file to send is send us ALL of the following...
This should allow us to re-build the job in a usable way.
Save as PDF Print, check the "crop marks and bleed" box and download your file with CMYK colour profile.
This gives us a PDF where we can edit the text if need be - if the job uses fonts we can access.
Save as PDF Print, check the "crop marks and bleed" AND the "flatten PDF" buttons, select CMYK colour profile. This is in case the first PDF contains fonts we can't access (flattening the PDF converts text to outlines so we don't need the fonts, but can't edit the text)
Save as PNG BUT drag the size bar right up to the highest it will go - this will give us a better quality file. Check the transparent background box but don't check the compress file box.
If all this creates files that are too large, you can share the design with our Canva account and we can download the files as needed directly. Our Canva account is riversideprintandsigns@gmail.com
Always ask for a proof - just to be sure the transition from Canva to Illustrator didn't cause problems that we missed.
