Artwork Setup

Artwork Templates

Contents:

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 file size. 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:

Scale

100% (Full) Scale
50% (Half) Scale
25% (Quarter) Scale
10% Scale

Artwork Canvas Size

5000mm × 1000mm
2500mm × 500mm
1250mm × 250mm
500mm × 100mm

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:

Scale

50% (Half) Scale

25% (Quarter) Scale

10% Scale

So, for a quarter-scale design:

5000 × 0.25 = 1250

Fraction

0.5

0.25

0.1

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 Double-Sided Block-Out PVC banners, artworks must be supplied with at least 10mm bleed.

For Bespoke Flags, Display Polyester, Backlit 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, especially 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

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.

Seeablesigns Banners Eyelet Mark

EPS

10% Scale

20% Scale

25% Scale

50% Scale

100% Scale

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.

Hems & Eyelets