Our Optimal Artwork Setup Instructions

There are so many ways out there to have professionally made artwork created, and all of them come with various settings to export your project to print ready files. While we appreciate that you may not get all the terminology, or be that tech savvy, we ask that you read the following instructions in order to keep the print process as speedy as possible, reduce any chance for errors, and avoid any artwork handling charges from us.

These instructions are an excerpt from our Terms and Conditions and by purchasing from us, you state that you have read our Terms and Conditions, our Cardstock, Laminate and Foil Guide, and this Optimal Artwork Setup Instructions page, and confirm that you understand and accept them and their conditions.

Let’s get started!

File Type

We ask for, where possible, PDF only artwork submissions.

Artwork Quality

Artwork quality, mainly raster images and photographs, is probably one of the easiest to get wrong. A raster image’s quality is measured in DPI (dots per inch). We ask that artwork submitted is provided, is already sized to the print type you are ordering, and that the quality is 150dpi or higher. Lower DPI ratings than this can result in blurry or pixelated results; and we do not take responsibility for these if the artwork guidelines are not followed. Work with your designer (if using one) to make sure your print ready files are high enough resolution to avoid any of these issues.

Print Ready File Preparation

Trim/Crop Marks: When we print your project, we apply any embellishments ordered, and them trim the artwork according to crop marks. Crop marks are lines on each corner of the outside of the artwork which show us where to cut. These aren’t mandatory for you to have as we can apply these ourselves, but they do help.

Artwork Bleed: This. This is the important part, especially if your artworks design goes edge-to-edge. We ask for a minimum of 2mm of bleed. Bleed is an extension of the artwork over to outside of where it will be cut. Without bleed, you run the risk of having white edges around some parts of the trim, or us having to cut the document slightly smaller to compensate. Sometimes we will reject artwork if it does not have bleed. If working with a designer, they should definitely understand the terminology and be able to provide you with artwork that has bleed on it.

Font use with your artwork

This is also another pretty important part. When your artwork is designed, it will contain fonts that have been used (most of the time). We ask the any fonts used in your artwork are outlined; incase we have to edit your artwork and we don’t own the fonts required to do so.

Setting your artwork up for foiling

Because of the process involved in our foiling, we normally offer to edit your artwork in order to extract the foil elements ourselves. When needed, we will contact you to help us with extracting it. We ask, but don’t expect, that you separate the elements of your project that will be foiled from the non-foil elements, and provide them on separate PDF pages/documents. This is because when we foil, we print the non-foil parts separate to the foiled parts. We also ask that all elements to be foiled, are coloured 100% K (black), and ideally in vector format.

If you have not extracted certain elements, we reserve the right to refuse the job unless the extracted elements are provided to us. This is only in rare circumstances, e.g. you want the image of a car to be metallic, but still contain the detail of the printed image. This requires tracing the car, printing a solid black outline of the car with foil, and overprinting the original image on top.

Artwork Handling Charges

Whilst we try to avoid this, sometimes we are required to make changes to artwork, with the clients approval, and must issue an invoice for this. This is because we do not design in house; instead we work with highly skilled design businesses (who bill us for the work). This is a cost we cannot absorb, and require payment for prior to the project being worked on. A quote for this can be provided upon request via our Contact Form. We reserve the right to refuse a job request within reason if payment has not been provided, or requests made to us are unreasonable.