Artwork & File Prep Guide for Printing

If you read one paragraph

Send vector art (.ai, .eps, vector .pdf) with fonts outlined, built at final size, with 0.125″ bleed on anything that runs to the edge. If you only have a photo or a JPEG, send the biggest original you can find and let us look at it — half of what people think is unusable is fine, and half of what they think is fine is not.

01 — THE CORE IDEA

Vector vs raster: the only concept that really matters

Vector art is made of maths — points, curves and fills. It can be scaled to any size with no loss, which is why logos should always live as vector. Raster art is made of pixels. Photographs are raster and always will be; the catch is that a raster file has a fixed amount of detail, and enlarging it cannot invent more.

The practical consequence: a vector logo prints identically on a business card and on a 20-foot banner. A 600-pixel PNG of the same logo looks fine on a card and looks like a crime scene on the banner. If you are not sure which you have, open it and zoom to 800% — if the edges stay razor sharp, it is vector.

02 — BY SERVICE

What to send, by job

Job	Preferred	Also fine	Watch out for
Screen printing	Vector .ai / .eps / .pdf, colours separated	300 DPI .png at print size, transparent	Gradients and drop shadows — they cost a colour and often a screen
DTF / DTG	300 DPI .png, transparent background, at print size	Vector	White glow or matte edges left behind by a bad background removal
Embroidery	Vector logo (we digitize from it)	Clean, high-res raster	Text under 0.25″, hairlines, and fine gradients — thread cannot hold them
Business cards & print	Press-ready .pdf, CMYK, 0.125″ bleed, fonts outlined	Native .indd / .ai with links	RGB images, missing bleed, live text near the trim
Stickers & decals	Vector with a named cut path	300 DPI raster + a drawn cut line	Detail thinner than 1⁄16″ on a weeded vinyl cut
Signs & large format	Vector, or raster at 100–150 DPI at full size	Scaled art at 10% with DPI multiplied	Web images. A hero image from a website will not survive a banner

Large format is the one place 300 DPI is overkill — nobody reads a billboard from six inches away. 100–150 DPI at full size is plenty and keeps files sane.

03 — COLOUR

Pantone, CMYK and RGB

RGB is light — screens, phones, the web. CMYK is ink — four process colours combined on paper. Pantone (PMS) is a specific pre-mixed ink, matched to a physical swatch.

The reason this matters to you: RGB can describe colours that ink cannot make. That vivid orange on your monitor may simply not exist in CMYK, and no printer on earth will hit it. Two rules save almost every colour problem:

If a colour is part of your brand, give us the Pantone number. Screen printing mixes to it exactly; digital gets as close as physics allows and we will tell you when it cannot.
Judge colour on paper, not on a screen. Every monitor is calibrated differently, and yours is probably brighter than reality. If colour is critical, ask for a physical proof.

One more: a rich black on print is not K100. For large solid black areas we build a rich black (roughly C60 M40 Y40 K100) so it reads as genuinely black instead of dark grey. We handle this — you do not need to.

04 — SETUP

Bleed, trim and safety

Three lines on every printed piece:

Bleed — 0.125″ of artwork past the edge, so a cutting shift never shows white.
Trim — the finished size. A 3.5 × 2″ business card is built at 3.75 × 2.25″ with bleed.
Safety — 0.125″ inside the trim. Nothing you care about goes past this line. Stacks of paper move a hair when they are cut; safety is what stops your phone number losing its last digit.

Also: outline your fonts before sending, or package the font files. A press that does not have your font will substitute one, and you will not like what it picks.

05 — CHECKLIST

Pre-flight checklist

Built at final size — or at an exact fraction with resolution multiplied accordingly.
Vector where possible, fonts outlined or packaged.
300 DPI at final size for raster on paper and apparel; 100–150 DPI for large format.
0.125″ bleed on anything running to the edge; nothing important inside the safety margin.
Correct colour mode — CMYK for print, Pantone numbers named for anything brand-critical.
Transparent background on apparel art, with no leftover halo from a rushed background removal.
Layers named and separated if there are multiple print locations or colourways.
One file per piece — send the front and back as separate, clearly named files.

06 — MISTAKES

The five files we get most often that cannot be printed

A logo copied off a website. Web images are 72 DPI and typically a few hundred pixels wide. It is not a printing file, it is a picture of one.
A logo pasted into Word, PowerPoint or Canva and exported. Each step throws away data. Go back to the original.
A JPEG with a white box behind it. JPEG cannot store transparency. On a navy shirt that box will print, and you will see it.
A screenshot. Of anything. Ever.
“The designer we used in 2019 has the file.” Get it now, before you need it. And when you commission design work, always ask for the vector source — from us, you get it.

07 — FAQ

File prep FAQ

What file format do you need for printing?

Vector is best: .ai, .eps, or a vector .pdf with fonts outlined. If you only have raster, send the largest original you have — 300 DPI at final print size, .tif or .png with a transparent background. Never send a logo pulled off a website or pasted into a Word document; both lose the resolution you need.

What does 300 DPI actually mean?

It is 300 dots of ink per inch at the size the piece will print. A 300 DPI image is only 300 DPI at one specific size — blowing a small file up does not add detail, it just spreads the same pixels further apart. The test is simple: at final print size, does it still measure 300 DPI?

What is bleed, and why do you keep asking for it?

Bleed is artwork extended past the trim line — normally 0.125 inch on each edge — so that when the stack is cut, a hair of movement does not leave a white sliver on the edge of your card. Anything meant to run to the edge needs it. Anything you want to keep should also stay 0.125 inch inside the trim, in the safety margin.

Should I send RGB or CMYK?

Send us your original, whichever it is, and tell us the colours that matter. RGB is a screen colour space and has colours that ink physically cannot reproduce — bright orange, electric blue and neon green are the usual heartbreaks. For brand-critical colour, give us the Pantone number and we will match to it.

Can you redraw my logo in vector?

Yes, and we do it often. It is a small quoted job, and afterwards you own a file that works on everything from a business card to a building banner. Anyone who has only ever received a JPEG from a previous designer should get this done once.

What do you fix for free?

A free design review comes with every order: we check resolution, colour mode, bleed, fonts and trapping, and we fix small things — outlining a font, adding bleed to a solid background, cleaning a stray point — at no charge. Redrawing a logo, rebuilding a layout or creating original artwork is quoted work, and we will tell you which situation you are in before we start.

What do you need for embroidery?

A vector logo to start, then we digitize it — converting the art into a stitch file (.dst or .emb). Digitizing is a one-time charge per design and after that reprints are just stitching. Keep text at 0.25 inch tall or larger; below that, thread cannot hold the shape.

Not sure whether your file will work? Send it over. We look at files for free and tell you honestly what we see — that is the whole free design review.

How to send artwork that prints right.