What is actually in these files
Happiedays publishes its print area outright as 250 by 370mm but says nothing at all about bleed or page counts, and these files do not pretend otherwise. The PDF and SVG are built at the 280 by 400mm trim with no bleed added, and the InDesign script opens an eight page document because there is no published multiple to follow. If your design runs artwork to the edge of the page, ask them before you order rather than assuming either way.
Each file carries three pieces of geometry and keeps them visually distinct, because they are not the same kind of thing. The black outline is the trim: where the guillotine comes down and the finished 280 by 400 millimetre page begins. The cyan dashed box is Happiedays's required printable area, 250 by 370 millimetres, which is their rule and not our opinion. The pale tinted blocks are the column grid, which is our recommendation and the only thing on the page you should feel free to ignore.
Why the columns do not fill the whole printable area
On this format the margin applies to all four edges, so the column grid and the printable area line up exactly and there is nothing to reconcile. The cyan box and the outer edge of the columns sit on top of each other in the files.
Bleed is not published for this format
Happiedays does not say whether it accepts bleed. These files are built at the trim size with none added, which is the safer of the two assumptions, but it is still an assumption. If your design runs a photograph or a colour block off the edge of the page, ask them before you order. We would rather tell you that we do not know than print a number we cannot support.
Which column count to choose
There is no correct answer, but there is a readable range. A column narrower than about 40 millimetres forces so many hyphens that the text starts to look shredded; a column wider than about 80 makes the eye lose its place on the return sweep. On this format the four options work out as follows.
| Columns | Width | Width | Reads as |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 80.7 mm | 3.18 in | Comfortable for body text |
| 4 | 59.5 mm | 2.34 in | Comfortable for body text |
| 5 | 46.8 mm | 1.84 in | Comfortable for body text |
| 6 | 38.3 mm | 1.51 in | Comfortable for body text |
If you are printing a paper that is mostly writing, fewer and wider columns read better. If it is mostly pictures and short items, more and narrower columns give you more places to put things. School and community papers usually land on four or five.
Opening the files
InDesign
Run the .jsx script rather than opening the PDF. Go to File, then Scripts, then double click the file, or drop it into your Scripts Panel folder first. It builds a new document at the right size with the margins, the column grid and the per-edge bleed already set, and it does not touch anything you have open. Everything it does is plain text in the file, so you can read it before you run it.
Illustrator, Affinity, Inkscape and Figma
Open the .svg. All of the guide geometry sits in a single group called guides, so when the layout is finished you select that one group, delete it, and what remains is your artwork on a correctly sized artboard. There is also an empty group called artwork to build inside if you like working that way.
Word
The Word file is set to 280 by 400 millimetres with a 15mm margin on every edge and the columns already configured, so you can type straight into it. Word has no idea what bleed is and no per-edge margin control worth using, which is why it gets the margin on all four sides rather than only the ones Happiedays requires. That is more conservative than the specification, never less, so a Word file laid out this way will always pass.
Canva, Publisher and everything else
Anything that lets you set a custom document size can use the PDF as a background reference: place it, lock it, build on top, then remove it before you export. For Canva specifically, the numbers to type into the resize box are on the Canva newspaper setup guide, and the thing to watch for is that Canva will happily let you place text outside the printable area without warning you.
Before you send the file
Happiedays does not publish a page count rule for this format, so the InDesign script opens an eight page document as a neutral starting point rather than following a multiple we would have had to invent. Confirm the page count with them before you commit to a layout.
Check your photographs as well as your layout. Newsprint is absorbent and unforgiving, and an image that looks acceptable on screen at 100 percent can be well under the resolution Happiedays needs. The image DPI checker will tell you the effective resolution of a photograph at the size you are actually printing it, which is the number that matters rather than the one in the file's properties.
Finally, read the full Happiedays Tabloid specification before you order. These templates encode the geometry, but they cannot encode colour handling, font embedding or file naming, and those are the other three reasons files come back.
Figures on this page come from Happiedays artwork guidelines, read on 2026-08-20. Presses vary and printers revise their guidelines, so run a test PDF through their own preflight before you order.