Most promotional products are branded with a logo or message, use pad or screen printing, embroidery or engraving to decorate onto a product or apparel.

The finished result of an overprinted or branded project is very much dependent upon the quality of artwork. The following is a general guide to artwork preparation and varioous terms and arrangements used in artwork setup.

• Image Resolution - images for printing onto promotional products should be at a high photographic quality (at a resultion of 300 dpi or 300 dots per inch). Most images used for websites are generally 72 dpi. While these images are ideal for a website and will appear clear on a computer screen, the printed version will not produce the same result.


• Font and Text Selection - branding, whether it be a long or line of text, is usually styled to represent a particular corporate image and with reproduction quality in mind. Selecting a font is important to ensure it reproduces cleanly, especially if the size is small.


• Software formats such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Freehand or Corel Draw are accepted as standard for artwork preparation. Word documents, Power Point and Publisher are not compatible. Artwork scanned from letterheads and business cards is generally not suitable without redrawing required.

Explanation of Common Terms

• CMYK - A print process that uses four colours - cyan (C), magenta (M), yellow (Y) and black (K) to produce all other colour ranges. Used in most full colour commercial printing.


• PMS Pantone Colours - a format in the Pantone Matching Format to describe standard colours for printed colours using specific inks and therefore, results in the best colour replication for your artwork.

Most logos are designed using pantone colours. Many larger organisations in particular, create style guidelines with exact pantone colours and layout details (and colour and b&w options and various layouts to suit print and product projects).


• Vector - files created by drawing software such as Adobe Illustrator, Freehand and CorelDraw. The files are made up of lines and curves defined by mathematical objects called Vectors. Vectors describe graphics according to their geometric characteristics. A vector graphic is resolution independent, that is, it can be scaled to any size and printed on any output devise at any resultion without losing its detail or clarity.


• EPS (encapsultated post script) is a file format that supports both PC and MAC images. EPS files are platform independent.

• PDF (portable document format) is used by Adobe Acrobat. PDF files can represent both vector and bitmap graphics.

Proposals generally stipulate 'print ready' artwork which incidates artwork should be provided to size and in a format such as a vector file. Promotional product companies can assist you with the preparation of artwork if logos need to be redrawn.

Source: some information used for this article is from Your Guide to Creating Artwork by Epic Legend.

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