Artwork guide

What to send

• best

  Vector — SVG, AI, EPS, PDF

  Logos, lettering and line art. Vectors are instructions rather than dots, so they print at any size without losing an edge. If you have this, send this.

• good

  PNG with transparency

  The right choice for a photograph or a design that is already flattened. Transparency is what lets the artwork sit on a coloured garment without a pale box around it.

• workable

  JPG

  Fine for photographs. A JPG cannot hold transparency, so a design with a background will print with that background unless it is removed first.

• usually too small

  A screenshot, or an image from a website

  Screens hold far fewer dots per inch than a press needs. These often look perfect on a phone and print soft. Send the original file if you can find it.

Not sure what you have? Send it anyway. It takes a moment to look at a file and say what size it will print well at, and that is a far better conversation to have before the press is running.

How big it can print

A press wants roughly 300 dots per inch at the finished size. That is the whole rule, and it has one practical consequence: a file's pixel width divided by 300 is about the widest it can print sharply.

So a 1200-pixel-wide logo is comfortable up to about four inches. Asked to cover a twelve-inch shirt front, the same file has a third of the detail it needs, and no amount of enlarging invents what was never captured. If a design has to be large, it needs to start large.

Why the colour shifts

A screen makes colour by emitting light; fabric makes it by reflecting light. They are different physical processes, so a print will never match a monitor exactly — and two monitors rarely match each other either.

Material matters too. The same ink lands differently on cotton and on polyester, and a design printed on a dark garment reads differently from the same design on white. If an exact colour matters to you — a company blue, a team's red — say so, and send the colour reference rather than leaving it to be judged by eye.

Placement and size on the garment

A full-width chest print on an adult shirt is usually somewhere around ten to twelve inches across, sitting two to three inches below the collar seam. A left-chest logo is much smaller than people expect, typically three to four inches wide — it looks alarmingly small on screen and correct on a body.

Youth and toddler sizes are not simply the adult design shrunk. Small garments usually need the artwork re-sized, and sometimes need fine detail thickened so it survives.

Looking after a print

Prints rarely fail on the press; they fail in the first few washes. Inside out, cold water, and hang to dry where you can. Never put an iron directly on a print.