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Resources · Artwork specs

Send files that
run the first time.

What we need for each process, why we need it, and the one mistake that causes the most reprints in each category. No jargon for its own sake.

Start here

Four things that
decide everything.

Get these right and most of the rest follows. They apply whether we are printing a business card, stitching a polo, or hanging a thirty-foot banner.

Vector art scales to any size with no loss. Raster art has a fixed number of pixels, and enlarging it shows them.

Light creates colour on screen; ink builds it on press. Bright RGB values shift when they are converted for printing.

More pixels across the same space means a finer edge. Resolution is measured at final print size, not on screen.

Live text depends on us having your font. Converted to outlines it becomes vector shapes that cannot be substituted — or edited.

By product

Specifications,
process by process.

Each process puts its own demands on artwork. DTF prints your design in full colour and cuts to its edge; embroidery rebuilds it in thread; large format is read from across a car park.

DTF and digital transfer

Direct-to-film prints your artwork in full colour onto a transfer film, which is then heat-applied to the garment. There is no per-colour setup, so it handles full-colour art, photographic detail, and short runs equally well.

Watch out for

A white or light halo around the design usually comes from artwork saved without a clean transparent background. Send layered or transparent files so the cut edge follows your art.

Full-colour transfer
Standard print placements
Preferred format
Vector, or 300 PPI raster with transparency (PNG, PSD, TIFF)
The transfer is cut to the edge of the artwork.
Background
Transparent, not white
A white background will print as a white box.
Colour mode
RGB or CMYK both accepted; CMYK previews closer to the result
Digital printing converts to CMYK plus a white underbase.
Colour count
No limit, and no extra setup per colour
The whole design prints in one pass, so a six-colour design is no harder than a one-colour design.
Resolution
300 PPI at final size
Full-colour detail shows softness more readily than flat, solid artwork.
Gradients and photographs
Reproduce well
Nothing has to be reduced to flat separable colours.
Very fine lines
Keep above roughly 1 pt
Extremely thin elements can lift during application or wash.

Embroidery and patches

Embroidery is stitched, not printed. Artwork is converted to a stitch file (digitised), which is a separate craft — the design is rebuilt as stitch paths rather than converted automatically. We also do patches on hats.

Watch out for

Small text and fine detail are the most common cause of disappointment. Thread has physical width, so detail below roughly a quarter-inch tends to fill in and become illegible.

Art to stitch
Preferred format
Vector — AI, EPS, PDF, or SVG
Gives the digitiser clean shapes to follow.
Minimum text height
About 0.25 in (6 mm) for legible lettering
Below this, thread width closes the letterforms.
Colours
Thread colours are matched to a thread chart, not mixed
An exact on-screen or brand colour may have a nearest-thread equivalent rather than a perfect match.
Gradients
Not reproducible as-is
Stitches are solid. Gradients are approximated by blending techniques or simplified.
Backing / stabiliser
Chosen to suit the garment
Knits, fleece, and performance fabrics behave very differently under a needle.
Digitising
A one-time step per design and size
A design resized significantly usually needs re-digitising to stitch cleanly.
Patches on hats
Send the artwork and tell us the hat — ask us about shapes and sizes
A patch carries detail a directly-stitched cap cannot, and the options depend on the hat.

Commercial print

Business cards, flyers, brochures, booklets, and forms. This is where bleed, trim, and safety margins matter most, because sheets are cut in stacks and cutting has a small natural tolerance.

Watch out for

Text placed too close to the trim edge is the most common reprint cause. Keep anything you care about inside the safety margin, even though the cut looks precise.

Bleed, trim, and safe area
Colour mode
CMYK
RGB colours are converted for press; bright RGB blues and greens shift most noticeably.
Resolution
300 PPI at final size
Standard for material held in the hand.
Bleed
0.125 in (3 mm) beyond trim on every side
Guarantees ink to the edge after cutting.
Safety margin
Keep text and logos 0.125–0.25 in inside the trim
Absorbs normal cutting tolerance.
Rich black
For large solid areas, a rich black mix rather than 100% K alone
100% K alone can look washed out across a large area. Ask us for the mix that suits the stock.
Fonts
Outlined, or embedded in the PDF
Prevents substitution on our machines.
Multi-page
Single-page PDF, in reading order — not spreads
We impose the pages for the binding method.

Signs and large format

Banners, yard signs, vehicle graphics, and storefront work. Large format is viewed from a distance, so resolution requirements are lower than print held in the hand — but legibility and contrast matter far more.

Watch out for

Judge a large-format design at the distance it will actually be read from, not zoomed in on screen. A design that is beautiful at 100% on a monitor can be unreadable from across a car park.

Banner finishing
Preferred format
Vector wherever possible
Scales to any size with no loss.
Raster resolution
100–150 PPI at final size is usually sufficient
Viewing distance is measured in feet, not inches.
Scaled artwork
Building at 1:10 or 1:4 scale is fine — label the scale clearly
Keeps very large files manageable.
Bleed
Ask us — bleed depends on finishing
Hemmed, grommeted, pole-pocket, and mounted pieces each need different edge allowances.
Live area
Keep critical content away from grommets, hems, and mounting hardware
Hardware will otherwise sit on top of your message.
Contrast
High contrast between text and background
The single biggest factor in whether a sign is readable at distance.
Vehicle graphics
Templates are vehicle-specific — give us the year, make, model, and trim
Body curves, door handles, and trim lines differ even between model years.

Direct mail

Mail pieces are commercial print with an extra constraint: the postal side. Size, thickness, aspect ratio, and the address area are all regulated, and getting them wrong can change the postage rate or make a piece unmailable.

Watch out for

Design the mailing panel before you finalise the layout, not after. Retrofitting an address block and indicia into a finished design is where mail projects lose time.

Colour, resolution, bleed
Same as commercial print — CMYK, 300 PPI, 0.125 in bleed
It is printed the same way.
Address area
Must stay clear of design elements
Addressing is applied after printing and has to be machine-readable.
Postal dimensions and indicia
Confirm with us before you design
These are USPS requirements and they change. We will give you the current spec rather than a guess.
Mailing list
Excel or CSV with one column per field
Clean, separated fields are what makes a merge reliable.
EDDM vs targeted
Decide early — it changes the piece
Saturation and targeted mail have different requirements and different design implications.

File formats

What to send,
and what not to.

If you only remember one thing: vector files scale to any size without losing quality, and everything else has a ceiling.

Send these

  • AI

    Adobe Illustrator. Vector, fully editable — the ideal starting point.

  • EPS

    Vector, widely portable between design applications.

  • PDF

    Excellent when exported with vectors and fonts preserved, not flattened to an image.

  • SVG

    Vector, common for logos exported from web tools.

These work

  • PSD

    Layered Photoshop. Fine for photographic work; keep layers intact.

  • TIFF

    High-quality raster. No compression artefacts.

  • PNG

    Good for raster art with transparency — but only at high resolution.

  • JPG

    Workable for photographs. Never ideal for logos or text.

These cause problems

  • DOCX / PPTX / XLSX

    Office files re-flow differently on every machine and rarely hold colour or position. Send a PDF export as well.

  • CANVA LINK

    Share a print-quality PDF export instead of a link — a link can change after we have quoted or proofed it.

  • Screenshot

    A screenshot is capped at screen resolution. It cannot be scaled up.

  • Logo pulled off a website

    Almost always too low-resolution for print. We can usually rebuild it as vector.

Nothing on the third list is a dead end. Send what you have — rebuilding artwork properly is normal work, not a problem, and we would rather do it than print something soft.

Every job

The short list.

Whatever the product, these six save the most time.

  • Send the highest-quality original you have — we can always reduce, never truly add detail back.
  • Include fonts, or convert text to outlines.
  • Build artwork at final size, or at a clearly labelled scale.
  • Name files so a human can tell them apart: business-card-front.pdf, not final_v3_REAL.pdf.
  • If a colour has to match something you have printed before, tell us and send a sample.
  • Tell us if you do not have usable artwork. Rebuilding it properly is normal work, not a problem.

Start here

Not sure your files are right?

Send them with your project details. We check artwork before we price the work, so you find out now rather than at proof.

  1. 1 Start your project
  2. 2 Tell us what you're creating
  3. 3 Receive your estimate
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