We're happy to assist you with printing a funeral order of service you've designed yourself.
Some people feel its a way of participating in the funeral service of a loved one. Designing the order of service booklet can be a great way to get a design that feels personal rather than just opting for a template.
We've been working with our customers for years helping them with printing funeral orders of service unlike, most printers we check and advise our customers, if we think details need to be tweaked to ensure the perfect print. Sadly we have worked with many who have had a printer 'just print' a document and when they have received it they have been disappointed and feel they can't use it and have to pay again for the document to be re-printed .
Usually, customers are disappointed with the final print due to small error made by them that could have been taken care of if someone had checked it before printing, we always do a test print and if we're not happy will give you feedback before we proceed with printing.
If you are looking to design a funeral order of service for a loved one here's a few pointers on what to look out for to get the best possible print.
A5 is the size of a funeral order of service, think of an A4 piece of paper and fold in half across the long edge. This will create 4 sides or pages. This is a typical order of service booklet, the outer pages are called the front and back covers and the inside pages are for the running order of the funeral service. When setting up your document make sure it is no smaller than this as it will not print well, making it A4 is ok, most printers will shrink it down to fit on A5 and can help to ensure the print quality is better if you not trained in making things suitable for print.
When considering text, think about the size carefully as things can appear larger on screen than printed. Check your zoom to make sure it's 100% and that it's still easily readable. Remember, not everyone has 20/20 vision. Make use of bold for headings to make them stand out.
Pictures. This is where most people make mistakes, The most important thing to remember is if it doesn't look great on screen when you zoom in to 200% or 300% size it defiantly will not print well! Pictures look great on a backlit screen but for printing we need to consider what it will look like on a piece of white card. Take a close look at the picture you have chosen if the light source is coming from the back or side and is particularly strong sun light this will have a drastic effect on the print making one side of the subjects face print much darker than it may appear on screen.
Your finished document needs to provided in a high quality PDF format for print, if it asks you about DPI this should be set to around 300 to 400. Once saved check how large your document is, a tell tale sign that its not suitable for print is a document that is only a few Megabytes. A truly high quality document ready for print will be larger and documents in the 10-15 Megabyte range are not uncommon.
Finally let's think about what we need to ask of the printer who's going to print your order of service for you. The main points here are what type of card are you going to use glossy, silk, matt. what weight is the card as a minimum around the 250gsm mark will make for a nice booklet some offer 350gsm personally, this is closer to a premium card and you'll be pay more for it and it not really necessary. How will it be creased? just folded like you would fold a piece of paper or professionally creased with a machine. It doesn't sound like much but it can make a big difference to how the finished booklet looks.
I hope you have found these hints and tips helpful and hopefully they will help you avoid disappointment when you receive your funeral order of service you've have worked so hard to produce.
If you'ur still not sure you can always contact us and we'll be more than happy to assist you with getting them printed and looking there best.
