file prep & requirements

Please reference, use and follow this guide to submit your files for screen printing. If they are not up to par, we can help get them print ready which is billed at our hourly rate at the time of submission. The quality of artwork provided affects the quality of the print you receive.

File types/formats

Artwork provided should always be at the size you want it printed at. We do follow industry standards regarding placement positions and sometimes have to make adjustments to make sure it fits and will print across various sizes and locations. Please feel free to reach out and ask if you have any questions regarding any of this. If you have someone who designed your files, like a graphic designer, they should have no problem providing you print ready artwork set to these specifications if you direct them to this handy guide. Below are the file formats we will accept, in order of their preference, as well as what we won’t:

Vector Art

Vector files are perfect for printing. They can be scaled, modified easily and resaved without losing print quality. If a designer has provided your artwork, it is always worth checking if this is available.

Please note: Taking raster art and placing it inside a vector file format does not make it a vector. A file made this way would be treated as a raster file instead (see Raster Art).

Raster Art

The initial dimensions and resolution are incredibly important with Raster Art. If you’re unsure how big to create your art, always go bigger than you’ll need. Providing low quality raster files will result in a low quality print.

Not Accepted

Supplying these types of files is likely to increase your turnaround time and will require you to re-supply the artwork in an alternative format.

If the sketch is ‘finished artwork’ as you would like to see it printed, it still needs to be prepared for printing. We can get it scanned and cleaned up for you at an additional cost.

Ink Colors & Pantones

When you want to take your print up a notch and start adding custom colors, there are a few very crucial things to keep in mind and be aware of. We have a good amount of standard primary ink colors offered at no additional fee. If your design needs a specific color matched, we do offer custom, Pantone ink mixing and matching. This service is offered for plastisol, water based and discharge inks. When submitting specific colors for your textile job, we ask that you pick your colors from the Pantone family, you use the Solid Coated Pantone Guide. When submitting specific colors for your flat stock poster job, we ask that you pick your colors from the Solid Uncoated Pantone Guide.

We can’t accurately guarantee a color match without having a Pantone reference. It’s very important to only choose Pantones from a physical copy of the book, in order to get an accurate match (what you see as a Pantone swatch on a monitor, is likely to be different to the real thing). Monitor calibrations and phone screens just aren’t consistent. A file you send me is always going to look different in terms of colors. If you don’t have access to a physical book, you’re more than welcome to schedule a quick meeting to check ours. If neither providing a Pantone or physical reference is possible, we will have to make a Pantone selection based on the artwork as it appears on my monitor. Although we will try to be as accurate as possible, this can only be approximate. We will only accept responsibility for colors that were approved through a physical Pantone book, otherwise, we will use our best discretion based off what we are seeing on our end. If you approve a proof with our color selection, we will automatically default to working under the assumption you’ve checked against a physical guide or have accepted our discretion.