Print Project Journal Entry

For this project, I hate to admit, but I did decide to use software that I'm already familiar with. I've used Word and Publisher in the past, but I really like the quality of product I can put out with Canva. I discovered it about a year or two ago when someone I know talked about it on FB (it may have been on Think Tank, I don't remember). I played around with it some, and wound up falling in love with it. Soon, everything we produced in Youth Services was made using Canva. Eventually we persuaded our Friends group to pay for a business membership, and all of our advertising was being made through it.

That being said, I did decide to use a template/format I had never used before - the tri-fold brochure. Putting together the elements I needed was pretty easy, but then came the test - printing it out. I decided to do black and white because it's cheaper and it's always a good idea to see how something reads when printed out that way. I first messed up, because when I sent it to print, I told it to flip the wrong way to make it two-sided - so one side printed upside-down. The other mess-up is getting it to go all the way to the edge of the paper. There's an option when you download it to show page bleeds and crop marks. I checked that, but am still having issues. The template is standard page size, but when I go to print it, the preview shows it going off the page to one corner. So I resize it to show the whole image, but am left with a white margin all the way around. I'm not sure if there's a way to fix that.

I also found that after I printed it and folded it, that the template didn't line up to the foldings. I talked to the graphic designer in my library, and she said that it may be set up for use with a folding machine - which usually doesn't fold into perfect thirds. She gave me some hints to try to make it better, and I've tweaked it to try to help it fold evenly. I'm not sure if there's a way to fix the margins through Canva. It may be one of those things that is un-fixable unless you use their print service. I've notice they have issues with things like that. I've done projects in Canva and then tried to import it into something like Word or Publisher (so that I could make it tiled - like for business cards), and there's a sudden major loss of resolution. If that's the case, then this may not be the best software for print jobs.

Pics of attempt 1:

Printed with it flipped along the wrong edge. So the inside is upside-down.

Printed correctly (though you can't see) with trimmed edges.

Inside of pamphlet with trimmed edges. Unfortunately the folds don't line up with the template.

Update: One thing I forgot to mention that I like is the "Design School". They offer short online tutorials to help push your design abilities. So while you may not have a degree in graphic design, you can still make things that look professional.

Made changes suggested by my library's graphic designer. Tweaked the template so it folds into neat thirds. I still can't get the white edge to go away, but it doesn't look awful. I did a black and white and color print of the brochure and I think it looks pretty good.