
ARTWORK QUIDE

Below are guidelines explaining how to correctly prepare your artwork files for screen printing and sticker printing.
If anything doesn't make sense, please get in touch and a member of our team will be able to assist with any queries you have.
SCREEN PRINTING
Vector Art
• Program: Adobe Illustrator
• File formats: .ai .pdf or .eps files
• Must be at least print size
• Fonts must be outlined
• Minimum stroke line 0.3 pts
• Supply visual mock up
Vector files are perfect for printing. They can be scaled, modified easily and resaved without losing print quality. If a designer has provided your artwork, it is always worth checking if this is available.
Please note: Taking raster art and placing it inside a vector file format does not make it a vector. A file made this way will be treated as a raster file rather than vector (see Raster Art).
Raster Art
• Program: Adobe Photoshop
• File formats: .psd .pdf .TIFF or .jpg
• Must be at least print size
• Must have a resolution of 300 DPI
• Fonts must be rasterized
• Supply visual mock up
The initial dimensions and resolution are incredibly important with Raster Art. If you’re unsure how big to create your art, always go bigger than you’ll need. Providing low quality raster files will result in a low quality print.
Preparing Fonts & Type:
When including text in your art, it’s important to make sure the type elements have been Outlined or Rasterised in order for us to be able to open your files successfully. If they haven’t been, and we open the file and don’t have the font on our system, it’ll be substituted with a standard system font (which will break the art). Files we aren’t able to open properly, won’t be usable.
Scanned Art / Drawings
If you’re looking to print a drawing created on paper and aren’t intending to modify it digitally, it’s still important to make sure the file is correctly prepared. Due to the nature of scanned art, we will assume that everything is to be printed exactly as supplied. We aren’t in a position to know what is intentional/unintentional, and will assume this for stray marks, smudges, hand written text, etc.
For the reason above, it’s important to ‘touch up’ your scanned artwork before sending it to us. Things to watch for include: stray marks (from pencils, rubber usage), smudges, wonky / blurry text and dirt/dust from scanner. You should make sure that the background / areas that aren’t the design are completely white (#FFFFFF) or transparent. If any slightly off-white background areas are left in the artwork, these could be picked up and carried over into the screen print.
DONE PRINT CO.
Unit 2
Submarine Cable Depot
Warspite Road,
London
SE18 5NX
STICKER PRINTING

Cutline & Bleed

The cut line determines where the stickers will be cut, so it is important to include this in the artwork file positioned precisely where the sticker needs to be cut.
• The cutline must be a path placed on a separate layer above the artwork layers.
• A 3mm bleed area is required for designs that go right to the stickers edge. This bleed area must continue around the entire perimeter of the design.
• If there is a white boarder around the artwork, the minimum amount of space between the artwork and the cutline is 2 mm.
Vector Art
• Program: Adobe Illustrator
• File formats: .ai .pdf or .eps files
• Colour profile: CMYK
• Must be at least print size
• Fonts must be outlined
• Minimum stroke line 0.3 pts
• Supply visual mock up
Vector files are perfect for printing. They can be scaled, modified easily and resaved without losing print quality. If a designer has provided your artwork, it is always worth checking if this is available.
Please note: Taking raster art and placing it inside a vector file format does not make it a vector. A file made this way will be treated as a raster file rather than vector (see Raster Art).
Raster Art
• Program: Adobe Photoshop
• File formats: .psd .pdf .TIFF or .jpg
• Colour profile: CMYK
• Must be at least print size
• Must have a resolution of 300 DPI
• Fonts must be rasterized
• Supply visual mock up
The initial dimensions and resolution are incredibly important with Raster Art. If you’re unsure how big to create your art, always go bigger than you’ll need. Providing low quality raster files will result in a low quality print.
Preparing Fonts & Type:
When including text in your art, it’s important to make sure the type elements have been Outlined or Rasterised in order for us to be able to open your files successfully. If they haven’t been, and we open the file and don’t have the font on our system, it’ll be substituted with a standard system font (which will break the art). Files we aren’t able to open properly, won’t be usable.
Scanned Art / Drawings
If you’re looking to print a drawing created on paper and aren’t intending to modify it digitally, it’s still important to make sure the file is correctly prepared. Due to the nature of scanned art, we will assume that everything is to be printed exactly as supplied. We aren’t in a position to know what is intentional/unintentional, and will assume this for stray marks, smudges, hand written text, etc.
For the reason above, it’s important to ‘touch up’ your scanned artwork before sending it to us. Things to watch for include: stray marks (from pencils, rubber usage), smudges, wonky / blurry text and dirt/dust from scanner. You should make sure that the background / areas that aren’t the design are completely white (#FFFFFF) or transparent. If any slightly off-white background areas are left in the artwork, these could be picked up and carried over into the screen print.