Artwork
Guidelines and Hints
If you do not have your artwork designed already, we offer free design services to a certain extent. You may describe to us the sign you would like and we will create a layout for your approval. If there are changes that need to be made we will provide up to 4 revisions for free. More revisions and other services like logo creation will cost $35 per half hour.
If you have already prepared your art we will accept print ready quality art. This is the fastest way to have your order produced. In order for the art process to go as smoothly as possible please follow these guidelines:
- Vector Art - CS5 or lower compatible .ai, .eps or .pdf file. Receiving vector art allows us to separate the colors and print crisp art no matter what the size.
Vector art is ideal for printing; because the art is made from a series of mathematical curves it will print very crisply even when resized. For instance, one can print a vector logo on a small sheet of copy paper, and then enlarge the same vector logo to billboard size and keep the same crisp quality. A raster graphics (.jpg, .png, .gif etc) would blur or "pixelate" excessively if it were enlarged from business card size to billboard size. (more info) - Text = Paths - Any text in your art must be converted paths prior to sending it to us, this helps alleviates any font problems which ultimately gets you your signs faster.
- 3/4 inch no print border - Your art will include a 3/4 inch no print border around your art. We support full bleed in special cases but the waste involved is senseless.
- Discard raster elements in vector files - No drop shadows, gradients, opacities - solid colors only. Halftones available at an extra charge.
- Political Orders - please check state law and political affiliation rules to see if you need a "paid for by" disclaimer (disclaimer text size no less than .25 inches in height)
- Colors - We keep 19 of our most popular colors in stock which are free to use (see color chart). We can also make any Pantone solid coated color for an extra $45 per color. Reasoning for the extra charge is, we mix the color ourselves, so we use extra ink, materials and time to insure the color is a match. Please change your art to these colors before submitting. We have made an adobe illustrator swatch file with all of these colors available for download (here).
- Sign Templates - Check out some example signs - Political - Business - Bandit
- Text Size - Typically 3 to 4 inch headline text size is acceptable for small yard signs. For more information see our Letter size chart.
PMS 012
0 / 4 / 100 / 0
PMS 123
0 / 24 / 94 / 0
PMS 1505
0 / 42 / 77 / 0
""
0 / 75 / 90 / 0
PMS 186
0 / 100 / 81 / 4
PMS 1807
0 / 100 / 96 / 28
""
0 / 100 / 15 / 4
""
3 / 86 / 0 / 0
Process Cyan
100 / 0 / 0 / 0
PMS 300
100 / 44 / 0 / 0
""
100 / 73 / 0 / 2
PMS 2747
100 / 85 / 0 / 13
PMS 361
69 / 0 / 100 / 0
PMS 347
100 / 0 / 86 / 3
PMS 349
100 / 0 / 91 / 42
PMS 2603
69 / 100 / 0 / 2
PMS 273
100 / 96 / 0 / 8
PMS 4625
0 / 60 / 100 / 79
""
75 / 68 / 67 / 90 *Colors shown here including PMS / CMYK breakdowns are approximate only*