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Designing your own flyer in Canva?
About to send business cards to print?
Feeling quietly confident?
Pause.
Because print is not forgiving.
What looks crisp and beautiful on your screen can come back:
- Darker
- Blurry
- Cropped weirdly
- Or with random white lines that make you question your life choices
Let’s avoid that.
Here are the biggest DIY print design mistakes I see all the time — and how to fix them.
1. Designing in RGB (When Printers Don’t Even Speak RGB)
One of the most common print design mistakes is designing in RGB instead of CMYK.
Screens glow. Printers use ink.
That means your artwork needs to be in CMYK, not RGB.
If you upload RGB artwork, your colours will print duller. Especially bright blues and greens.
Before you export:
- Make sure it’s CMYK
- Choose “PDF Print”
- Tick bleed
- High resolution
Yes, Canva does most of this automatically. But check anyway.
2. Forgetting Bleed (A.K.A. The Mystery White Line Problem)
Forgetting bleed is one of the easiest print design mistakes to make — and one of the most visible.
Let’s talk about bleed.
Bleed is the extra 3mm of colour that extends past the edge of your design.
Why?
Because printers trim stacks of paper. And trimming is not laser-perfect. It can shift slightly.
So if your background colour stops exactly at the edge of your design… and the cut shifts even 1mm…
Hello awkward white line.
Bleed = your safety buffer.
It’s basically your design saying:
“Go ahead, trim me. I’ve got backup.”
Minimum: 3mm bleed
And keep text safely away from the edges too.
No bleed = design roulette.
3. Using Tiny Fonts on Uncoated Paper
Small typography is another overlooked print design mistake, especially on textured paper.
Uncoated paper absorbs ink.
Which sounds harmless.
Until your delicate little 7pt font turns into a fuzzy grey suggestion of a word.
If you’re printing on uncoated or recycled stock:
- Minimum 8–9pt
- Avoid super thin fonts
Thin + textured = blur city.
4. Making Black… Not Actually Black
100% black often prints slightly washed out.
If you want deep, luxe black backgrounds, use Rich Black instead.
Example:
C40 M40 Y40 K100
Tiny tweak. Big difference.
5. Putting Important Stuff in the Booklet Fold
Booklets eat content in the middle.
Anything too close to the spine disappears into the gutter.
Keep important text at least 1cm away from the fold.
Otherwise your beautiful headline becomes a guessing game.
6. Choosing the Wrong Paper (Because Paper Changes Everything)
Paper is not just paper.
Quick cheat sheet:
- 150–170gsm silk → great all-rounder for flyers
- 350gsm → solid business cards
- Gloss → sharper photos
- Uncoated → softer, natural feel (but slightly duller colours)
Paper can make your design feel:
- Premium
- Cheap
- Vibrant
- Flat
It matters more than most people realise.
7. Using Low-Resolution Images
Print needs 300dpi.
If you drag a tiny image off Google and stretch it… it will print pixelated.
For big posters viewed from far away, 150–200dpi is usually fine.
But for standard print?
300dpi or don’t bother.
8. Tiny White Text on Dark Backgrounds
In print, white text isn’t printed.
It’s “knocked out” — meaning the printer leaves that area blank and prints colour around it.
If the alignment shifts slightly, small white text can look fuzzy or uneven.
Avoid white text under 10pt on dark backgrounds.
It’s just not worth the risk.
9. Printing 5,000 Copies Before Seeing One
Especially if you’re using:
- Foil
- Embossing
- Recycled stock
- Big bold colour blocks
Get a sample first.
Screens lie.
Paper tells the truth.
If You’re DIYing Your Print Design…
If you’re creating your own flyers, brochures or print materials and just hoping they come back okay… you don’t need to be more creative.
You need to understand the rules.
That’s exactly what we teach inside The Good Design Club — practical, real-world design skills so you can stop guessing and start designing with confidence.
Because good design isn’t about being artistic.
It’s about knowing what not to mess up.
