THE NEWS HOUND
The Original Digital Newspaper Printers
Call us! 0800 0354580
The News Hound Guidelines and FAQ
The News Hound Guide to Digital Printing
Digital printing is the cheapest and quickest way to produce a newspaper!
The News Hound were the first company in the world to print newspapers using high speed inkjet technology. So, if you’ve had a newspaper digitally printed, it’s more than likely we actually printed it for you. We use the Océ Jetstream inkjet machine to print all of our newspapers. It prints on standard newsprint grades, so your finished newspaper products actually look and feel identical to their traditionally printed stable mates.
Océ Jetstream Inkjet Printer
It is also the fastest and most responsive method of printing, with most digital newspapers being delivered in 3-5 working days in the UK. We can print hundreds of copies digitally and we can also produce them 'same day' for you, but only on application. Just email or call us on 0800 0354580, and if it’s physically possible we’ll get it sorted!
Artwork Checklist
Digital printing is the cheapest and quickest way to produce a newspaper!
Please ensure that you have downloaded a template for guidance. If not, please view Our Templates.
Please check that the PDF page size is correct and there are no crop marks.
Have you supplied the PDF in Single Pages rather than spreads?
Have you adhered to the ‘no-print’ margins?
Have you checked the image quality?
Is the page count divisible by 4? (4pp, 8pp, 16pp etc). Please note: page count should be a maximum of 64pp for newspapers, 80pp for magazines and supplements.
What to expect with digital printing on newsprint
Remember, digital newspaper printing is an industrial process, designed to be fast and economical.
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Sometimes the colours won’t look as bright and vibrant as they do on screen and in some cases compared to when you print Traditionally.
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Newsprint is an absorbent and fairly low grade of paper. It’s an off-white colour and is not as bright as the copier paper that we are all familiar with.
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Inkjet ink manufacture has focused on lessening the impact this method of printing has on the environment by introducing water soluble pigments that aren’t as dense as the oily inks used in Traditional printing so it’s not possible to print a true deep black. So for example large areas or panels of black will look more like a dark grey when printed.
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Digital printing uses inkjet technology, and there may be some microscopic fine lines or stripes visible on your newspaper, these can be more noticeable over large areas of flat colour but aren’t apparent for normal designs.
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We’re sure that you’ll be pleased with the results but to help things along we’ve popped a few obvious pointers below that should help.
Laying out your newspaper
As we mentioned in the previous paragraph, newsprint is notoriously thin and is susceptible to “show through”, this is where you might be able to see the faint outline of a dark image printed on the other side of the paper, so when designing your newspaper try to consider this. We recommend using at least a minimum 8pt font and try to not use fonts less than 12pt for white text reversing out of pictures or coloured backgrounds. We do not require crop marks on the PDFs that you send us, so please export your PDF to the exact size, as on the supplied Newspaper Template selecting profile PDF/X-1a:200 if possible. Please supply your newspaper PDF selecting “Single Pages” rather than “Spreads”.
Remember these are just some basic guidelines, if you have a more specific question please drop us a mail…or call us!
What about colour? How does it work?
We use a four colour process when printing either digitally or traditionally. So if you have any special colours in your file our automatic file conversion will convert them to an enhanced CMYK format. We apply a specially formulated setting on the machine that will optimise your PDF’s to give the best quality possible. Due to the nature of printing from an inkjet onto Newsprint achieving an exact reproduction is virtually impossible. Obviously what you see on a monitor will look very different to the printed copy. It will look flatter and less vibrant. So whatever setting you export your PDF to we apply our own optimised printer settings in order to achieve a standardised result.
What about images and photos?
Due to the fact that newsprint is porous we struggle to keep detail in the shadow areas of images “open”. They tend to “fill in” so where ever possible use nice crisp images which have plenty of contrast. As most of you will be aware of you need to try to use images at the highest possible resolution. Anything over 150dpi will produce the best results. Images from digital cameras will easily achieve this level of quality, but be careful if you use images downloaded from the internet, they are sometimes tiny 72dpi images which, in some cases will give you poor results.