10 Artwork Mistakes That Delay Your Print Order (and How to Avoid Them)

Almost every delayed print order traces back to the same short list of file mistakes, not to anything unpredictable. Our artwork preparation guide covers the full spec — CMYK, 300 DPI, 3mm bleed, outlined fonts, print-ready PDF — once, properly. This is the other half: the specific ways a file slips past those requirements without anyone noticing until the proof comes back wrong.

Colour and Resolution Mistakes

• Designing in RGB, not CMYK — screens display RGB; printers use CMYK ink. Bright blues, greens and some oranges shift noticeably when converted at the last minute instead of designed in CMYK from the start.
• Using a logo pulled straight off a website or social media post — those are almost always saved at 72–110 DPI for screens, which looks sharp on a laptop and visibly soft once enlarged onto a label or box panel.
• Sending a low-resolution file and assuming it'll “print fine at a smaller size” — DPI is measured at the artwork's actual final print size, so shrinking a soft image doesn't fix its underlying resolution.

Bleed and Safe-Area Mistakes

• No bleed at all — a background colour that stops exactly at the trim line leaves a thin white sliver along one or more edges once the cut lands anywhere within normal tolerance, which it always does.
• Text or logos placed right at the trim edge — the safe area exists specifically so a slightly off-centre cut doesn't clip something important; anything inside that 4mm margin is at real risk.
• Bleed added to the wrong layer — extending the background but forgetting a full-bleed photo or pattern behind it leaves the same white-sliver problem in a different spot.

Dieline and Layout Mistakes

• Designing a flat rectangle instead of on the actual dieline — for jewellery boxes and die-cut stickers, the dieline is the real cut/fold template; a flat mockup doesn't show you where folds, locking slots or the cut path actually land.
• Branding placed over a locking slot or glue zone — that artwork either gets obscured when the box is assembled or interferes with the fold itself, and it's one of the more common reasons a box job needs a second proof round.
• Moving, recolouring or deleting the dieline layer — it's there to design against, not to edit or remove before sending the file back.

Font and Material-Specific Mistakes

• Live (non-outlined) text — a file with a font referenced by name instead of converted to outlined shapes displays correctly only on a machine with that exact font installed; anywhere else, it gets silently substituted, sometimes with different spacing or line breaks.
• No “WHITE” layer on clear stickers or labels — white ink is what makes colour visible against a clear or dark surface, and it needs to sit on its own clearly named layer so it's applied correctly. Skipping this is a common reason clear-material proofs come back needing a fix; see our sticker material guide for the full material breakdown.
• Assuming transparency on paper stock — paper doesn't behave like vinyl or clear film; any transparency or white-ink expectation needs to be confirmed with us separately rather than assumed.

Submission Mistakes

Sending a Word document, a PowerPoint slide, or a JPEG or PNG pulled from a website loses the colour mode, resolution and bleed information a real print file needs — none of those formats carry it. A print-ready PDF (fonts outlined, images embedded rather than linked) or an AI file handled the same way is what actually travels intact from your inbox to our production floor.

What One of These Mistakes Actually Costs You

None of these mistakes are fatal — every job gets a free digital proof before production, and that's exactly where these get caught. But each one caught at the proof stage means a revision round, and the 7–10 business day production clock only starts after you approve a proof, not after you first submit a file. A file that's clean on the first pass is the single biggest lever you have over how fast your order actually ships.

A Quick Pre-Submission Checklist

• File is CMYK, not RGB
• 300 DPI at the artwork's actual final print size
• 3mm bleed on every edge that needs it
• Important text and logos sit inside the 4mm safe area
• Fonts are outlined, not live
• Designed on the real dieline, if one applies — not a flat mockup
• White-ink layer named and separated, if the material needs one
• Saved as a print-ready PDF or properly outlined AI file