Help and Advice

SCANNING YOUR GRAPHICS
Many home owners, and most businesses - have a desktop printer that is also cabable of scanning images.

If you have a desktop printer and need to scan a graphic before you send (or upload) it to us, the recommended settings are:

RESOLUTION: At least 300 dpi (dots per inch), but not greater than 600 dpi.
The higher the dpi - the larger the file size of your graphic - and we can accept file sizes of up to 2MB (megabytes).

BLEED AND CROPPING: This relates to the amount of border, or "edge" that we can erase (or ignore) when we size up your graphic. Only you can really determine the cropping area and bleed distances. It is important to consider both the SIZE of the substrate onto which your image is to be applied, as well as the ASPECT RATIO. (Aspect Ratio is the relative height and width of your graphic). It is important to calculate whether your image will fit nicely onto one of our products. Smartphone users are familiar with the terms "portrait" and "landscape", where portrait is a vertically-oriented image, and landscape is a horizontally-oriented image.

Some of our products are more suited to portrait aspect, others are more suited to landscape. Some products are square, while others have odd shapes. When considering your graphic, try to visualise your graphic on the shape of your choice.

If we get sent a graphic that is difficult (or impossible) to re-size / configure for the desired shape, we may have to contact you to discuss alternatives.

IMAGE QUALITY
Graphics and photographs must be in sharp focus! While we use professional graphics software to enhance graphics, we cannot turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

If you send us graphics that are out-of-focus, bit-mapped or otherwise of poor quality, the end result will be poor too. Please make sure your graphics are good quality.

Companies that may need a company logo or corporate brand on their products should ask their graphic designer to contact us, and we can discuss the best ways to submit these files.

In some cases, we can design a graphic from scratch, but there will be a cost for this service.

TEXT ELEMENTS
Most of our processes use specialist printing and dye-transfer techniques, and we can therefore apply practically any typeface or font to your products.

If you use special fonts, we must know the font family, as well as the specific font name. All TTF (TruType) fonts can be used, but it is no good saying for example: "Times Roman"... Is it Bold, Italic, Light, Condensed... ? We need very accurate information.

FILE FORMATS
One of the best ways to send a final design to us is a PDF file (Portable Document Format). If you have a final design, then a PDF can be quickly opened and applied to our production systems.

For more advice, please use our CONTACT PAGE.