Artwork guide

Print-ready PDF is ideal: CMYK, fonts outlined, 10mm bleed. We also accept AI, EPS, PSD, TIFF, and high-resolution JPEG or PNG.

We can work from almost anything. Word documents, Canva exports and phone photos all print — they just have more ways to go wrong, and we'd rather tell you before the press than after.

Large format is viewed at distance, so the 300dpi rule from litho printing does not apply. A banner read from ten metres does not need the same detail as a business card read at thirty centimetres.

A practical guide: 150dpi at final size for anything viewed within two metres, 100dpi for a few metres, and as low as 40–72dpi for a building wrap seen from across a car park. Our online designer shows the effective dpi of every image at its printed size and warns below 100.

The common mistake is the opposite of what people expect: supplying a 400MB file for a banner that will be seen from fifty metres, which slows everything down and improves nothing.

Add 10mm of bleed on every edge — background artwork extended past where the banner will be trimmed, so a millimetre of drift never shows as a white sliver.

Keep text and logos at least 25mm inside the trim. Hems fold over the edge and eyelets punch through it, so anything closer risks being folded under or punched through.

Our online designer draws both guides live while you work, which is the easiest way to get this right.

Supply CMYK where you can. RGB files convert fine, but bright RGB greens and blues have no exact CMYK equivalent and will shift slightly — better that we manage the conversion than have it surprise you.

Screens are backlit and print is not, so a banner will never look quite as luminous as your monitor. If an exact brand colour matters, give us the Pantone reference and we will match as closely as the substrate allows.

The same file prints slightly differently on PVC, mesh and fabric. Mesh is roughly 30% holes, so it reads a little lighter. If you are matching an existing banner, tell us which material it was.

Outline your fonts, or supply the font files. A PDF with live text and a missing font substitutes something else, and the first anyone notices is usually the printed banner.

For readability at distance, a rough rule is 25mm of cap height per 10 metres of viewing distance. A banner read from 30 metres wants letters around 75mm tall.

Every file gets a human pre-flight: resolution at final size, colour space, bleed, safe area, and whether the material suits the location. If something will print badly, we contact you before printing.

We do not proofread. Spelling, phone numbers, dates and prices are reproduced exactly as supplied. Read it twice — a typo on fifty banners is an expensive one.