Top Tips For Gift Artwork
OK so here are my top tips built up from years of experience within the promotional gifts industry. When you put artwork onto a promotional product there are, straight away, three defining characteristics: (1) the imprint area, (2) the imprint colour and (3) the product background colour. Let’s just forget about imprint methods and focus on these three first.
When you look at a product on the Promotional Gift Store you will see that we define a print area. This is generally stated in terms of (mm) and defines the area within which your imprint will be applied. Take these dimensions and put them into a Word document or Photoshop or even just cut them out to represent the print area. Now you can see this area in isolation and start to think about just what you want to have there in terms of a logo, contact details and marketing message. Try to leave a little blank space as ‘less if often more’ and it may be more important to have a large website address and phone number than company logo. Also will your logo suit the shape of the imprint area or will it need a new layout?
Then start to think about your imprint colours. Are you having a 1, 2, 3 or 4 colour imprint? Is it being embossed or laser engraved. One you have this defined you can move onto the product colour itself. Now this is important because it will provide a contrast background to your imprint which can be strong or weak depending on your preference.
Some people want their background colour to be one of their corporate logo colours but this can often mean that you need to produce a ‘neutral’ version of your logo i.e. in white, black or silver. If you choose an imprint with a weak colour set and a weak product background i.e. translucent or a frosted plastic pen, then you may end up with an imprint which is only really clear during certain light conditions or at certain angles.
So if in doubt get a full colour virtual visual or order a one-off sample. Though one-off samples are expensive (and they may use a slightly different imprint process to a mass produced item) at least you get the chance to verify before committing to a large print run.
