Sending Your Design
If your artwork is to big to email or if you want to talk it over as we see it, feel free to come on by and drop it off in person. We can talk over the design with you, scan your original and/or transfer a file from your flash drive, CD, or iPod.
If the file is within email file size limitations you can email. (Please include as much detail as possible about your job in the email)
If a file is too big for email, you can upload it to our iDisk by clicking here. (Simply click on the "upload" button in the upper right of the window and guide the computer to your file.)
Please make sure to send an email alerting us to your file.
THE BASICS
(Please visit our Getting Started page for a general introduction to the screen printing process.)
For our purposes, artwork needs to be clean, crisp, and of a high resolution (this is known as Camera Ready Art), which means that many of the low resolution images floating around on the internet will not suffice.
If your design does not meet the specifications it may need additional preparation by our art department (which we are more than happy to take care of for a small fee).
At the end of the day, we will do our best with whatever you bring us : )
Solid Tone vs. Half Tone
Computers display tone through transparency, but in screen printing this is not possible. In order to create the different tones (or shades) of a design we use a Halftone, where the illusion of tone is created by a pattern of dots of varying sizes.
In most situations it is a good idea to create a design that employs a solid, stark lines, and shapes.It avoids some of the complications of halftone printing, and helps produce the clearest, cleanest, most striking printed image.
Line Quality & Line Size
Ink spreads, lines fill in! Consider the final size that your design will be printing and build it accordingly. We always try our best to retain the highest amount of detail from you artwork, but some details simply become to small to print. Very small areas can be tough, although we do have a few magic tricks to go above and beyond the basics.
Hand Drawn Designs
If you have a hand created piece of artwork we will be happy to scan it for you.
Solid tone line drawings are best created using black ink on white paper with no tonal variations. Tonal greys in a pencil drawing can be acheived through the use of halftone.
High resolution scans of colored pencils, original paintings, and other such media can be used to create high quality screen printed reproductions.
Computer Based Images
File Formats
We will always do our best to work with what you have, but providing us with the best possible file will always help get you exactly what you want without having to recreate or prepare.
We prefer Vector designs. This crisp resolution-independent format is ideal for screen printing and is practically immune from many of the problems that arise from pixelation in digital graphics.
You can send your vector artwork in any of the following files formats : .ai / .pdf / .eps
* Please make sure all text has been converted into vector shapes.
(in Adobe Illustrator select the Text in the design and choose: Type > Create Outlines)
However, if you have a Raster design then that is no problem either.
We require all files to be set to the final print size at minimum resolution of 300 Dots Per Inch.
* Please make sure all text layers are left editable (not flattened). We may need you to send the actual font file itself if we do not have the font in our library.
Although we prefer the Photoshop format (.psd), you can also send your design in the following file formats : .tiff / .jpg / .bmp
Scans
Scans must be of a high-resolution format (created at a minimum of 300 Dots Per Inch), and should be set to the final desired print size.
Fonts
If we don't have the font you are using in our collection, then we will need the actually font file in order to see/print the design correctly (we will do our best to find a close match if that isn't possible). As with anything to be screen printed, low resolution pixel based files are essentially unusable and will have to be re-typeset.
Please visit our Fonts page for more information, resources, and font suggestions.
