Monarch Print - Artwork Guidelines for High-Quality Printing

We have recently prepared and released Print Specification sheets for our most popular products which includes details on what print method we use, any unique features of the product and print templates for our customers to use to prepare their artwork to us.

While our set up and origination costs are included in our printed product prices, we thought we would like to provide you with a few useful tips in preparing your artwork for print to get the most out of your designs.

Print Area Dimensions

When planning your artwork for print, we highly recommend checking the dimensions of your desired products print area first. By looking at the product description page, you will find the print area measurements as well as the print template. Have a quick look if the print area has a specific orientation, for example:

James I T-shirt print area: 8cm wide x 5.5 cm high

The orientation of the print area is landscape. If the design you have is in a portrait orientation, the design will have to be made smaller to fit into the print area where as a landscape orientated design will fit much better.

Artwork Size

Generally, when we request artwork, we say “the bigger the better”. This is because large images typically are of higher quality and this means a better print.

On a more technical level we ask for the image to be at least the size of the print area and 300dpi – dpi refers to dots per inch. This originally referrers to actual printed dots per inch but now is used to mean pixels per inch or the resolution of the image. 300dpi is the standard resolution for high quality printing.

If the image is smaller than the print area, we will need to expand it to fit the print area. This can lead to the pixels of the print becoming visible and result in a blurry image.

A larger image that we can shrink to fit a print area is going to be much sharper.

File Type

Our team is experienced in many design programs and their respective file types so please send your artwork through in a format that you are most happy with.

PNG and PDF files are the best files to send to us – JPEG files are also good if the image is large; they tend to compress with each save or change so quality can be lost.

If your order requires a screen print – if it is going onto a coloured soft toy T-shirt for example – we will need to convert the artwork to a vector. If you have your artwork saved as an EPS or AI file, this is a great help, but not to worry if not.

We hope this is provided you with some useful tips in making the most out of your promotional printing and in getting your designs and vision set up perfectly.