Artwork Guidelines

These guidelines detail general printing requirements. We need vectored artwork so we can manipulate it to work with any kind of printing or any shape of printing surface. Certain kinds of products or printing processes require special artwork. Consult your salesperson for project-specific artwork. When “4-color process” printing, other artwork guidelines may apply.

So what's the difference between vector and raster?

There is a huge difference between vector and raster (bmp, jpg, gif, tif) images. Raster is defined by a grid of pixels, each pixel is a different color to make an entire image. This is a great type of image format for photographs, but not for logos.
Vector graphics, on the other hand, are not defined by pixels, instead using “wireframes” described with mathematical expressions. Vectored graphics can be resized, recolored and manipulated without ever losing clarity.

Acceptable Artwork

• Computer Generated Artwork is required
• PC Compatible
• All art must be vectored graphics (Very Important)
• NO linked images
• Artwork should be done in “Spot Color” with no halftones or gradients or shadows
• All fonts must be converted to outlines
• Save as an Adobe Illustrator format (Or EPS) Use version 10.0 or earlier

Unacceptable Artwork

• JPG
• GIF
• BMP
• Most TIFF (or TIF)
• PNG
• Word Documents
• Publisher Files
• PowerPoint Presentation
• Most PDF Documents
• Illustrator documents with linked or placed raster images
• EPS files created with programs such as Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop (Specifically Raster Images)