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Artwork Guidelinesdigital art


Before we begin, let us mention that there are basically two types of artwork that you will be working with: Vector and Raster artwork. These two types of artwork are very different in the way they are created and stored.

vector artwork

Vector Artwork



For instance, vector artwork is made up of a group of instructions describing how your artwork should be "drawn" by the computer. It can generally be scaled to any size without resulting in a loss of quality. Some programs which create and save their artwork in this fashion are:


Adobe Illustrator
Adobe InDesign
Quark Xpress
Macromedia FreeHand
CorelDraw

raster artwork


Raster Artwork



Raster artwork, on the other hand, is made up of "pixels" (picture elements), or dots, which together form a picture of your artwork. If you examine something which has been printed out from a computer printer, you will notice that it is made up of tiny dots. Raster artwork cannot be scaled without losing some quality. Adobe Photoshop is an example of a program which creates and outputs its artwork as raster images.

We have templates to be used for both types of artwork (vector and raster).

For VECTOR based templates (i.e., Illustrator, Quark Xpress, Pagemaker, InDesign, FreeHand, CorelDraw, etc.):



When using a template, please do not leave elements from the template on your artwork. All elements must be removed. The only thing that should remain on your artwork is the final border that matches the required size of your artwork that is displayed on the upload page. For instance:

If the product DOES NOT bleed, then you need to leave the border that indicates the PRINT margin on your artwork, but delete the bleed margin border, etc. from the template when you are finished with it.

If the product DOES bleed, then you need to leave the border that indicates the BLEED margin on your artwork, but delete the print margin, etc. from the template when you are finished with it.

You will also need to set the stroke and fill color of the remaining border to NONE so that it does not actually print on the product.


For RASTER based templates (i.e., Photoshop):



If you are using the Photoshop template, you will need to crop the final artwork down to the size specified on the upload page. For instance:

If your product DOES NOT bleed, then you need to crop it down to the size of the PRINT margin of that product. A business card that does not bleed, for example, would need to be cropped down to 3.25" wide and 1.75" high.

If your product DOES bleed, then you need to crop it down to the size of the BLEED margin of that product. A business card that bleeds, for example, would need to be cropped down to 3.75" wide and 2.25" high.


Accepted artwork saved as TIFF, BMP and EPS files.
For full color products also JPG files.

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