Creating outlines
When sending digital files to us where the original has been designed in a vector-based
program such as Adobe Illustrator, you must create outlines. Outlines convert your fonts
into a mathematical format. Outlining eliminates the need to send fonts along with your
files while still achieving a nice crisp typeface.

How To Convert Fonts To Outlines (Adobe Illustrator)
You can convert fonts to outlines in Illustrator by highlighting all text with the "Selection Tool"
and selecting: Type > Create Outlines. This will ensure all fonts in your artwork look correct
at our end, and our software doesn't substitute your selected fonts.

How To Convert Fonts To Outlines (Corel Draw)
You can convert fonts to outlines in Corel Draw by highlighting all text and selecting: Arrange > Convert to Curves (Ctrl + Q). This will ensure all fonts in your artwork look correct at our end, and our software doesn't substitute your selected fonts.

What is Bleed?
When you do not want a white border on your printing and you want the image to extend
beyond the edge of the page. Any time an image or a colour is printed to the edge of a
page, the image or colour should extend at least 5mm off the edge so that when the page
is trimmed on a mechanical cutter, small variations in the trim will not result in a white line
down the edge of the page. (Bleed is only required for flags)

What is Resolution or DPI?
DPI stands for (dots per inch). If you have a picture/scan within your layout/graphic program,
remember that the resolution (DPI) must be correct. For a good quality image to print properly,
the DPI needs to be at least 300dpi.

Will my printed piece look exactly like it does on my computer monitor?
Colours vary widely from monitor to monitor. That means, the colour you pick from a graphic
program might be seen different on other monitors.
There are a host of reasons. Different brightness or contrast settings. How old your monitor is
and who made it. Different software colour-matching. (Windows has some colour matching
built in) Even the same file viewed in different applications will look different.

Why can't you use my file?
Because we work with large sizes, we ask for the files at actual size when printing photos,
this is to ensure the resolution is high enough for output. If you send us a small, low resolution
photo, we cannot scale it up to the commercial Signage sizes we have and still maintain a
quality image - it will become pixelated.
Send us images in the highest resolution available - 600dpi if small image size, or 150dpi if at
actual output scale (your signage size). Where no images are involved, we ask for Vector files.
These are files drawn in curves, not pixels. They can be scaled to any size and therefore are
perfect for our commercial Signage sizes.
Vector files are .AI, .EPS, or .PDF, however not all of these files are vector files - some may have
images saved into it and for this reason sometimes cannot be used.

It is possible to make colours in RGB that you can't make with CMYK?
They are said to be "out of the CMYK colour gamut". What happens is that the translator just
gets as close as possible to the appearance of the original and that's as good as it can be.
It's something that everyone in the industry puts up with. So it's best to select any colours you
use for fonts or other design elements in your layout using CMYK definitions instead of RGB.

Publisher, Power Point, Excel or Word Files - Why they are not used for signage?
Publisher files are set up for A4 printing or computer presentations.
They 'squash' all the information down to fit into A4 size.
If your logo is in Publisher, Power Point, Excel or Word, you will not be able to scale it up
without losing copious amounts of resolution.

Can Internet or website images be used?
No, images from the Internet or any kind of web site are 72 dpi GIF, JPEG or PNG files, which
are not often reproduced, in large format printing due to the small size and (optimized-reduced
colour numbers) low pixel quality. Colour and resolution are removed from these images to
allow rapid transfer throughout the Internet.