We are always pleased to accept your artwork in electronic format. It is important, however, that data be sent in a recognisable format, depending on signage requirements. Please read the following checklist and guidelines detailed below which will help you achieve this.
We have a more extensive guide available to download here (you'll need Adobe Reader to view).
Supported DTP Software
| Software Package |
Version |
| QuarkXpress |
up to version 6.5 Standard, (not the Passport version) |
| Adobe Illustrator |
up to version CS3 |
| Adobe Photoshop |
up to version CS3 |
| Adobe InDesign |
up to version CS3 |
| Macromedia Freehand |
up to version MX |
| Corel Draw |
up to version 12 |
| Gerber Graphix Advantage |
up to version Omega 4 |
Artwork Checklist - 5 Prerequisites
| 1. Outline Fonts |
|
| 2. Always allow a minimum of 5mm bleed |
|
| 3. If possible, use Pantone Spot Colours not CMYK mixes |
|
| 4. Use Vectored Paths for your cutlines and save them separately |
|
| 5. Minimum of 400ppi at a quarter scale for bitmap images |
|
Guidelines
- For banner artwork always allow an additional 40mm bleed around your artwork for hems and eyelets.
- With artwork for Banner Roll-ups allow an additional 100mm onto the bottom so it can roll into the cassette.
- Make sure your document colour mode is optimised for CMYK, not RGB, when preparing to save for final output. In Photoshop RGB colour mode is required to use some filters so it will be necessary to work in that mode first, remember to convert over to CMYK when finished.
- Make sure any extra channels created in Photoshop are removed prior to saving for output.
- If you are creating artwork that is going to be cut vinyl, it has to be in the form of vectorised data, not bitmap data. Placing a bitmap of your company logo in Adobe Illustrator or Microsoft Word and saving it out in that application’s native format means that we would have to vectorise the logo ourselves, which places additional unplanned production times and costs on the job which may not have been previously agreed. We are always happy to convert any bitmapped data to vectors provided it is arranged beforehand and the bitmaps are of sufficient quality.
- Try to use Pantone spot colours when designing your artwork, keep the names assigned to them by the software you are using and do not convert them to CMYK, this will enable us to output colour in your artwork as accurately as possible.
- Fonts used in Photoshop can be rasterised as a final step before saving for output; this means that the fonts do not need to be supplied with the file.
- You can e-mail the finished artwork to us , be sure to compress it first in a ZIP archive for compatibility with the e-mail system. If your ISP (Internet Service Provider) refuses to send your file (or ours refuses to accept it) due to size restrictions you can either burn it to a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM (MAC OSX or Windows formatted) or copy it to a memory stick which we will be happy to accept. You can also upload your file(s) to our FTP Server, instructions on how to do this are in our complete Artwork Guide, click here to download.
- Ultimately, we can accept artwork saved in a huge range of formats, although it is important to remember that there are many file types we can read (such as Microsoft PowerPoint, Word, Excel, GIF, PNG, WMF) we may not be able to work from them to a sufficient standard.
Artwork Guide