Guidance Notes for Submitting Artwork

Please not send any artwork or design instructions before you have spoken to , or received an e-mail response from our sales department.

When we quote a price to you, it does not include the cost of the design. We normally insist that customers provide us with print ready artwork, in our design templates.

"Print ready artwork" means artwork which can be loaded onto printing machines, without any redesign or manipulation by our inhouse designers. If your artwork is received requiring any complex redesign there will be an additonal charge.

If you are not sure whether your proposed design is suitable for large scale digital printing on fabric, please do contact our sales department who will be more than happy to assist you.

 

If you have access to professional design software we prefer to receive your artwork, complete and drawn to scale as a vector file, within our standard templates. Adobe Illustrator including CS3 and Coreldraw up to version 11 is acceptable. PDF format is also acceptable provided the orginal drawing is vector, rather than bitmap. Please do not send us final artwork as PDF image files.

If you have other software which can export a native vector format, such as Freehand, Quark or generic *.EPS, these can be used, but difficulties sometimes arise.

Where your artwork includes text, please convert fonts to outlines/curves or provide the font.

If your artwork includes bitmaps, please do not embed but place, and always supply any bitmaps as additional files. If there are quality issues with the bitmap our designers can probably overcome them, but only if it is supplied as separate file.

Use of pantone references will make our job, matching your colour requirements, that much easier.

Unless colours are specified as pantones, that is your artwork is CYMK or RGB, it will be printed as found.

Pantone Colours

When specifying pantones use Solid Uncoated (U) or Solid Coated ( C) colour references rather than Process, or other pantone colour book . Please do not send artwork as CVC pantones. CVCs only have application to your own print management system, not ours.

We will do our best to match any pantone colour references, but there are limitations as to the colours printing machines are able to print. Where an accurate pantone match is critical, please supply a colour sample, preferably on fabric : If do not have a sample on fabric, we shall be happy to supply a small print of the requested colour.There may a be a charge for this service

Further guidance about using colours, design and the limitations of the digital printing process can be found on our Design Assistance Page

Please contact us before you commit to your project if you are planning to send us your final design, or it contains a photo or background image saved as a bitmap such as PSD, TIFF etc. However large, bitmaps can never acheive the same quality of a vector file and the final print is sometimes very disappointing.

If your artwork includes photographic images, Photoshop PSD, DNG , PSB or TIFF is the preferred format. We normally reject artwork which contains JPEG images. However large JPEG compression introduces artefacts - boundary lines around adjacent colours - which can be so visible as to spoil the whole design.

If your artwork includes bitmaps, please do not embed , but place, and always supply any bitmaps as additional files. If there is a problem with the bitmap our designers can try to solve it, but only if it is supplied as separate file.

Also, please do not save and send bitmap images, especially JPEGs as EPS format.; the compression formulas used by these two formats can sometimes contradict each other, corrupting the image, increasing pixelation to the extreme.

Any bitmap image should be no less that 50% of the final printing size, and be no less than 350 dpi resolution. Should artwork not meet our standards it will be returned.

We shall however be happy to accept a bitmap, JPG, TFF, PSD , MSWord as part of a your design brief, from which we can produce a final drawing for you in a vector format. With your bitmap also provide instructions as to colours, fonts, and final outline shape. There will be an additional charge for redrawing.

We try and accommodate most customers with tight delivery schedules. Our task to support you is made much easier if your initial contact with us is very early in your planning process. This allows us to advise you on artwork standards and design, saving precious time later :

If you are able to supply us with finished artwork to the standard we require, in conjunction with our templates, lead times are normally 7-10 working days.

However well you artwork is prepared, we insist on that all customers sign off a proof and confirm order details before any work is carried out. If you delay, so will your delivery date. Any consequent errors in the design, or order details become the responsibility of the customer.

If your need a faster turnaround, we can sometimes fit your order into our scheduling. Please ask, but there may be an extra charge.

These are guidelines only : We reserve the right to refuse artwork if it does not meet our requirements, or we judge that the final print will not meet our quality standards.