Graphics FAQs
An excellent garment decoration
begins with
the best possible graphics
for that decoration. The S & E Graphics Department is experienced
and capable, and will
do our best to meet or exceed
your design requirements.
Camera Ready Art
At Artbox, "camera ready" means digital art needing
no modification and meets one of the following criteria:
- vector art using up to 5 spot colors, including white and black, with
all text converted to objects, curves, or outlines.
- vector art using cmyk palette, with all text converted to objects, curves,
or outlines.
- bitmap art for spot color printing separated into layers by color,
150-600 dpi at full print size.
- flattened bitmap art in grayscale for black & white printing. 150-200
dpi at full print size
- flattened bitmap art for full-color (cmyk) printing, 150-600 dpi at full
print size.
The quality of your garment decoration begins with
the artwork. Starting with graphics designed for screen printing will
yield the best results.
Artists/designers can click here for more ways to make your art truly
ready for screenprinting & embroidery services.
'Finished' designs
If your design is all laid out and looks just the way you want it on a garment, you have what we call a 'finished' design. It looks great, but it may not be quite ready for the garment decoration process. We may need to recreate the artwork in order to get a satisfactory print or sew-out. Even professionally created art and logos are often not properly prepared for screen printing.
Minimizing art charges
You can save on art charges by sending us the best possible art. Make an effort to get the original art file(s) from whoever created your logo and other graphics. Let your artist know the intended use of the art. If you ask for a copy of your logo, the qualities of the art are likely to be very much different than if you ask for a copy of your original art files for large scale reproduction.
Text and fonts
Lettering styles, or 'fonts', can be a very important element of garment decoration. If you have a specific font in mind for your design, please provide as much information as you can. If there are more than a few words, send the font file if possible. Tell us the font name if you know it. There are so many fonts and minor variations that exact font matching may not be possible unless the original font file is supplied, or the text is converted to graphic objects in the art file you supply.
Vector or bitmap?
Vector art is a collection of outlines and objects
which, when enlarged, retain their shapes, edges, and definition. Vector
images are scalable, or can be resized without affecting the image in
any other way.
Bitmaps are a collection of colored squares which make up an image. When
the bitmap is enlarged, the squares are enlarged just as they are,
resulting in pixelation and/ or jagged, 'stairstepping' edges. For this reason, bitmaps are not considered
scalable.
Web graphics
Web graphics are perhaps one of the worst possible things you can send as a basis for screen printing graphics. Reproducing an image from a graphic on a web page is more labor intensive than creating a design from scratch. The problem is they are very low resolution images, and become unrecognizable when enlarged enough for garment decoration. Our best advice is to be flexible, and think of these images as references, not finished art.
Here's an example:
Our logo, for web display, looks great here, right?
Enlarge the image enough for a left chest, or pocket imprint, and it looks like this:
Another example is the WACC logo from the bottom left of our web page:
As you can see, these images are very fuzzy and would be difficult at best to recreate without some deviation from the original artwork. These are very simple images as far as the graphic elements. Imagine trying to trace a more intricate design!
Sending your design
Be clear about what you're sending us - if you want it reproduced as closely as possible, or if you want any modifications.
If you're not sending vector art, send the highest quality image you can. Unless the file is over 10 megabytes, there is no need to downsample or compress the file - this reduces the quality of the image.
Supported File Types
Vector art: Corel Draw 12 or earlier, Adobe Illustrator CS2 (version 10) or earlier, PDF or eps from vector art with editing capabilities enabled, wmf vector art. Other formats may be supported. Please contact us if you have a question.
Bitmap art: TIFF, EPS, JPEG, PSD, and CPT are preferred. Other formats may be supported. Please contact us if you have a question.