Continuing from our previous blog article (http://manageartworks.com/blog/brand-owners-and-pre-fligh

Continuing from our previous blog article (http://manageartworks.com/blog/brand-owners-and-pre-flight), we will talk about Fonts, Text and Line Widths and how pre-flighting these cuts down on errors and time.

Fonts

It is up to the Brand Owner to decide whether the Artwork file to be shared to the printer will contain live text (open file) or not (curved / closed file).

Fonts are important from three aspects.

a) Technical:

Font related issues are the most common reasons for workflow interruption.

All fonts should be embedded in the Artwork PDF file. This is done to ensure that an incorrect font does not get used, which could lead to text becoming illegible or part of the text disappearing.

There are various fonts available (like True Type, Type 1, Type 3, etc.) and when a certain font is not available during the PDF creation step, it typically gets replaced by the Courier Font.

So the pre-flight system has to check and warn the designer if the artwork contains Courier Font and confirm if it was intentional or it was a replacement for a missing font. Designers who want to use Courier on purpose, can use variants like ‘Courier New’, which are not flagged during preflight.

b) Branding:

Special fonts used in Brand names and logos are typically not available in public domain. These are created specifically by the design team for the brand. So while new print vendors are added to the supply chain, not all of them will have access to this special font. Embedding the font in the PDF is a good practise to make sure all vendors have access to the right font. Pre-flight tools can examine the PDF file and detect which fonts are embedded and which are not.

c) Regulatory:

As per EU regulations, readability is determined by the combination of font size, letter spacing, spacing between lines, stroke width, type colour, typeface, width-height ratio of the letters, the surface of the material and significant contrast between the print and the background. Here are a few examples of how the same text can be written in a legible or illegible way.

Text Size

Similar to the fonts, the text size is a factor in the regulatory guidelines also. Regulations mention the minimum font sizes required (as per Packaging size, packaging type, component type (like Medication Guides). Some regulatory agencies mention the requirement in mm, some in x-height. European Union’s FIC Regulation 1169/2011 requires that the minimum x-height of the font be 1,2 mm with the exception of containers where the largest surface area is less than 80 cm2, in which case the x-height of the font size shall be equal or greater than 0,9 mm.

There are also technical limitations on using smaller font sizes for some substrates and printing methods.

Depending on the component type, printing method & regulations, the pre-flight check should be able to suggest whether there is any text in the artwork below the recommended size.

Line Width

Artwork creation applications offer a line thickness of ‘hair-line’. But how thick is a hairline? A hairline is the width of one row of printer elements. So depending on the resolution of the printer, these lines are not the same thickness.

So instead of using the hairline option, its best practise to set the minimum line weight depending on the intended printing process. For newsprint and commercial offset printing, a minimum line thickness of 0.125 points is required. For screen printing 0.15 points is required.

Letting mistakes and bad files get through to print is obviously expensive and leads to issues of who pays - customer or (sadly often) the printer who doesn’t want to lose further business by kicking up a fuss. Printers know, at least in theory, that powerful preflight checking software will increase production efficiency in the workflow. With a pre-flight check done early in the design cycle, errors at a later stage can be avoided saving both time and money.

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