Content proofing checklist: 10 checks before artwork goes to print

Nearly every expensive reprint we have seen was a wrong number, not a wrong word. Phone numbers, prices, dates, opening hours, the business registration number, the street address. Read each one against the source it came from, not against your memory of it, and tick it off. Then ring the phone number.

Check every number against its source · ring the phone number

Out loud catches the sentence that does not work. Backwards, word by word from the end, catches the spelling, because it stops your brain filling in what it expects to see. Do both on the final file, not on the Word document it came from; the copy changes on the way into the layout more often than anyone admits.

Spell-check in the design software, as well. InDesign and Illustrator both have one and both are routinely ignored.

• One style of capitals in headings, and the same one on every page.
• One currency format: $12.50 or 12.50 AUD, not both.
• One way of writing times, dates and phone numbers.
• Straight quotes versus curly quotes. Pick curly, and search for the straight ones.
• Double spaces after full stops. Search for two spaces and replace with one.
• The brand name spelt and capitalised the way the client spells it, every time.

Can a reader tell in two seconds what the piece is for and what to do next? If the phone number is smaller than the slogan, the hierarchy is wrong. Then look at the ends of paragraphs: a single word on its own line (a widow) or a single line stranded at the top of a column (an orphan) is the mark of a layout nobody read back.

Every image needs to be about 300 pixels per inch at the size it prints, not at the size it was downloaded. A photo that looks sharp on screen at 1,000 pixels wide is a blur across an A3 poster. Check the effective resolution in the layout software, not the file's own numbers.

Then check you are allowed to use it. A stock photo bought on the client's account, a photo the client took, or a photo you took. Anything found on Google is not licensed, whatever the client says.

Our free print file check flags resolution that is too low for the finished size, and the resize tool will fit artwork to a size without stretching it. For what the numbers mean at the press, the print desk's guide to print resolution is the short version.

• The document is CMYK, not RGB, unless the press has told you otherwise. RGB blues and greens go dull on paper.
• Large black areas are a rich black (a mix with some cyan, magenta and yellow), not 100% K alone, which prints as dark grey.
• Small black text is 100% K alone, so it stays crisp and does not need four plates to register.
• Brand colours are the client's specified values (Pantone, or their CMYK breakdown), not something eyedropped from a JPEG of their old flyer.
• If it is a spot-colour job, there are exactly as many spot colours in the file as the quote allows for.

Why RGB goes dull on paper, with examples, is in CMYK versus RGB on the print desk's site.

Anything that touches the edge of the finished piece runs 3 mm past the trim line, so a fraction of a millimetre of cutting drift does not leave a white sliver. Nothing that matters, no text and no logo, sits within 3 mm of the trim on the inside. Crop marks are on, and the page size in the PDF is the finished size plus bleed, not an A4 sheet with the artwork floating in it.

If you are not sure the file has any of this, run it through the print file check: it adds bleed and trim marks and draws the safety margin so you can see what is too close to the edge. The print desk's bleed and trim guide shows what happens on the guillotine when it is missing.

A press does not have your fonts. Either the PDF embeds them, which a print-quality export does by default, or the text is converted to outlines. Open the exported PDF on a machine that does not have the fonts installed, or check the document properties, before you send it. A substituted font is the most common reason a proof comes back looking nothing like the design. How to outline, and when not to, is in fonts and outlining.

• The business registration number, where the country requires it on marketing material.
• Any disclaimer the offer needs: the expiry date, "while stocks last", the terms of the discount.
• Copyright or trademark marks the client uses, spelt as they use them.
• Every web address typed, not copied from an old file, and opened in a browser.
• Every QR code scanned with a phone, from the proof, and the page it opens checked. A QR code that goes to a dead page on 5,000 flyers is a reprint. The minimum size that scans from a poster versus a card is in how big should a QR code be.

The checks above are yours. This one is the client's, and it is the one that protects both of you. One named person approves the final file, the exact PDF that goes to the press, and the approval is recorded with the date and the version. "Looks good" in a chat thread about an earlier draft is not an approval.

This is the step we built our own proofing platform around: the client opens the proof on their phone with no login, pins any comment to the exact spot, and either approves it, approves it with changes, or sends it back. The sign-off is recorded against the job, so when a question comes up six months later there is an answer.

Named approver · final file · dated · recorded

Not the person who designed it, if you can possibly help it. The designer has read the copy forty times and now sees what they meant rather than what is there. A second person, with the checklist, on a printed copy, finds in ten minutes what the designer will never find on screen. In a one-person studio, the second person is you tomorrow morning, on paper.

For social media the same rule holds with a shorter list: the words, the numbers, the date, the link, and a named approval before it is scheduled. Our social workspace exists so that approval is recorded per post rather than assumed.