Setting Up Your Artwork Canvas

For customers not familiar with creating artwork for large-format print, we have created this guide to make sure your designs can be processed and printed as quickly and accurately as possible.

Canvas Size

When creating your design canvas, the most important thing to remember is that your artwork should be setup at an equal proportion to the print you are ordering. If your order is for a banner with a 3:1 proportion, your artwork should perfectly match this.

It's often best to use a smaller scale, such as half-scale or quarter-scale as this can reduce filesize. If your design exceeds 5m in either direction, please use a smaller scale.

Adobe software and PDFs have an in-built limit of 5080mm for either width or height. However, some software (such as CorelDRAW), allow the creation of canvases beyond this size. Unfortunately, this will cause issues at our end, and this should be avoided.

For instance, a 5m × 1m design could be created like so:

To calculate the canvas width and height you'll need for a smaller scale, simply take your full-size measurement (eg. 5000mm) and multiply it by your desired scale. We've included these below:

So, for a quarter-scale design:

5000 × 0.25 = 1250

Artwork Bleed

All standard banner and print artworks should be supplied with at least 5mm bleed (when scaled to full-size). This ensures your printed design can be hemmed or trimmed with no white edges showing.

For banners, artworks must be supplied with at least 10mm bleed.

For bespoke flags, display polyester and Stretch Fabric, artworks must be supplied with at least 30mm bleed.

Please make sure that any supplied bleed area is not overlapped by:

• Crop marks
• Bleed marks
• Colour bars
• Registration marks
• Any other marks

These marks are often added with default PDF export settings - please disable them before exporting.

If any marks are positioned within your bleed, we cannot guarantee that they won't be visible on the finished item, due to movement when printing or finishing.

Crop Marks

Crop marks are not required as standard, but they may be useful for customers that provide artworks within a larger artboard/canvas/page, where we would need the marks to use as a positional reference.

If your artboard/canvas/page is setup correctly to the size and proportion of the ordered item, crop marks are not necessary.

If you are providing crop marks in your artwork, please make sure these are kept outside of any bleed areas, especially on fabric and double-sided graphics. This allows us to make full use of the bleed, if necessary in the case of movement when printing or finishing.

If crop marks are positioned within your bleed, we cannot guarantee that they won't be visible on the finished item, due to movement when printing or finishing.

Keylines and Trim Lines

Please avoid supplying keylines or trim lines in your artwork, espeically if your graphic is to be trimmed to size.

If keylines are provided in your artwork, we cannot guarantee that they won't be visible on the finished item, due to movement when printing or finishing.

The only exception to this is when ordering a shape-cut item.

Colour Mode

All artworks should be created in CMYK colour mode. Artworks sent to us in RGB mode will be converted to CMYK by our pre-press system, and will nearly always render unsatisfactory results.

For Roller Banners

The easiest way to create your Roller Banner artwork is to use our pre-made templates, which are available for you to download. These are setup at the correct proportion, and also include guides to ensure your design fits perfectly in the unit.

However, if you need to create your Roller Banner canvas yourself, please make sure to get the width and height correct as these come in a variety of sizes.

Roller Banners also require an additional section at the bottom of your graphic, which will be rolled into and hidden within the unit mechanism. This area is very important and can vary in size, depending on the model of unit you will be using. For our units, the height of this area is 150mm, so typically the height of the graphic will be 2150mm. This 150mm section should be kept free from any important content (text, logos) and only used for background images and colours.

Setting Up Your Artwork for our Finishes

Hems & Eyelets

We recommend allowing an inner-margin of 60mm within your design. This perimeter area around the edge of your design will leave space for the weld of the hem and any eyelets. This area should be kept free from any important content (text, logos) and only used for background images and colours.

Please note, this is 60mm inside of the ordered size, not 60mm bleed and not added to the ordered size.

Our standard distribution for eyelets is one in each corner with one per metre (no greater) in between. If you would like eyelets with custom distribution or positioning, please let us know. This can be provided at no extra cost.

If you would like to use our eyelet mark to indicate where you would like eyelets placed, please use the Illustrator files below. The center of the mark should be 34mm from the edge of the design canvas.

If you would like to use your own marks to indicate eyelet positions, please use a light-coloured circle with a border to contrast the background (if necessary). This circle should be 8mm in diameter (when scaled to full-size), and again, the center of the mark should be 34mm from the edge of the design canvas.

Trimmed to Size

Please ensure the design uses the correct proportion, is supplied with the required 5mm bleed and contains crop marks

Pole Pockets

The most common confusion with pole pockets arises when some customers expect the pockets to be added to the overall size of the banner. Instead, we produce pockets inclusive of the overall size.

This method requires an internal 'pocket allowance area', which varies in size depending on the diameter of pole that will be used. This pocket allowance area should be used on any edge where a pocket will be present.

In the same way as hems, we recommend this area is kept free of any important content (text, logos) and only used for background images and colours.

Below are the values for some popular pole diameters:

If you need to calculate the pocket allowance area for a pocket of another diameter, please use this formula:

Pole Diameter × 2.5 + 30mm

This formula (and the values above) include a little extra for 'wiggle room', as well as an additional 30mm which will be used by the weld.

Double-Sided

For all double-sided prints, please supply your artwork with at least 10mm bleed (when scaled to full size). This allows for small amounts of movement in the printing process without any white edges showing on the finished item.

Please make sure that your crop mark offset is high enough that your crop marks do not overlap your bleed. This also allows for movement in the printing process and will ensure your crop marks are not visible when your graphics are finished.

We also recommend keeping any important content well within the finished size to also allow for this movement without any clipping.

Shape & Contour Cut

Artwork to be shape-cut should contain a clearly visible path that we can use. Any text in your design should be outlined and any images should be embedded in the file.

Each cut path shape/object must:

• Be vector (one continuous path)
• Be a stroke
• Be overlaid on top of your design (not in a separate file/page/canvas)
• Be a contrasting colour to your design

A £25 charge applies to each shape cut required. If you would like us to create the cut path for you, a £75 charge applies for each shape cut required. For any paths we create for you, we will provide a proof before printing.

We process the path solely for our cutting machines - the path is not printed and so isn't visible when reproduced.

Please note, cuts containing a high level of intricacy may lose accuracy on thicker materials such as PVC Foamboard.

Drilled Holes

If you are ordering one of our standard drilled hole finishes (corner-only, 5mm diameter drill holes), you do not need to supply your artwork any differently - our internal processes will automatically add the holes. Our standrd drill holes are one in each corner at 5mm in size, with the edge of each hole 15mm from the edges.

However, if you have any different requirements (e.g. hole diameter, distance from edges, quantity, positions), these will need to be ordered differently - please let us know when ordering. If you have exact/specific positions for the drill holes, it is best to provide these as part of your artwork.

Please note, when providing a measurement for the distance to the edge, we ask for a distance-to-edge amount, rather than a distance-to-centre amount.

If you are providing exact hole placements as part of your artwork, all fonts must be outlined. Please make sure the holes are easily visible. If more than one design are sharing the same drilled holes, please provide the drilled holes as a separate page/file.

Please note, the minimum drilled hole diameter size we can provide is 3mm.

Rounded Corners

If you are ordering one of our standard rounded corner finishes (corner-only, 5mm diameter drill holes), you do not need to supply your artwork any differently - our internal processes will automatically add the rounded corners. Our standrd rounded corners are 10mm radius.

However, if you a different requirement for the corner radius, this will need to be specified as part of your order. This does not require any path to be supplied as part of or alongside your artwork.

Please note, due to limitations with finishing tools, there may be a minimum radius we can safely and reliably achieve on certain materials.