Artwork Submission Guidelines

No two printers are built the same. Factors such as the starting white point of the substrate, The health of the print heads, humidity, and the temperature of the room can impact the appearance of colours by the smallest margins. These factors are controlled by running colour calibrations, keeping temperature controlled rooms, and careful maintenance by a print operator, however margins of error can still occur. 

To avoid any room for error, Spot colours can be used. Spot colours are colours recognized printers as colours

• Guaranteed to be in gamut (achievable through CMYK colour mixing)
• Part of a larger library that can be referenced to ensure consistency (Pantone is the most popular variety of this, but other reference systems can be used such as 3M, Benjamin Moore, Avery, etc.
• Gives a printer a consistent starting point when mixing colours to match to make the process quicker

All of these factors help ensure colours produced are in line with your branding every time they’re produced. 

To ensure accurate colour production, we ask that defined colours are either included in your file data, or communicated to your sales representative. Accepted metrics are:

• Pantone colours
• CMYK values
• Vinyl colours (ex. 3M, Avery Dennison, Arlon)
• Paint colours (ex.Benjiman Moore, Behr, Sherman Williams) 
• Other: Our sales representatives will ensure your colour needs are communicated.

DPI vs PPI

PPI

(pixels per inch) are the amount of pixels that come together to make a digital image. More pixels = crisper edges, more detail, smoother gradients.

DPI

(dots per inch) are the amount of halftone dots a printer translates these pixels into. The more pixels in an image, the more unique dots a printer can translate, and the more detail that can be seen in your image. 

Resolution/Sizing

Images for print can be a mix of bitmap, vector, or both.

For vector images we recommend:
PDF files preferred, also accepted AI., EPS., and SVG.

Fonts and shapes should be converted to curves
If there are transparencies (including effects, drop shadows, opacity changes, outer glows, filters etc.) use the PDF export preset option “PDF/X-1a:2001” and then change “transparency flattener” settings in “advanced” menu to “high resolution”. This makes your effects bitmap, so this may not work best for you if your image is going to be sized up significantly after sending. Either supply your image at the size it’s going to be produced, or supply the original AI, CDR, or PDF file so we can export it at the proper size for the printer.
Program of origin is assumed to be either Illustrator or Corel Draw, Specifying if otherwise is helpful information.
Export colours as CMYK, Only convert spot colours to cmyk if you do not require colour matching

If you have images in your file, For highest possible resolution we suggest you attach a max quality image along with your file to ensure your image is not down sampled.

For bitmap images we recommend:
PDF, or PNG preferred, also accepted JPG

Viewing Distance

When exporting images for wide format print, 300 ppi can become unrealistic when images are being produced at 20’ tall. It’s important to consider viewing distance when setting up you images for print. The further away your viewer is from the print, the more the eye blends together pixels and the less noticeable poor print quality is. This trick of the human eye can be a useful tool for helping us determine what image size we can get away with based on how well people will view your images. Before sending your image, we recommend sizing your image up to 100%, printing out an 8.5×11” cropping, and backing away until you’re roughly the distance your viewer will be at. If you can still see pixels, you may want to choose to size up.

Suggested resolution ( at 100%):
72 ppi= acceptable from long distances, and grand scales.
300 ppi= standard resolution
600 ppi= small details, high resolution, and smaller scale images to be viewed at close distances.

Bleeds

Bleeds are the outer edge of a print which gets trimmed after printing to ensure an image has straight edges that are uniform over high production volumes, and is situated right to the edge on every interaction of a print.

With our production methods, we typically lose ⅛” on each side of an image, meaning that the image that gets printed is ¼” larger both ways than the final image.

Much of the work produced at Jones Neon Signs is custom made for each location or is dependent on the construction of the surrounding structures. This means the exact size of an image produced can change from the drawings by whole inches, which isn’t much proportionally when you’re building a 30’ sign, but is still significant for production purposes.

Due to this, Our design team needs to be able to resize images to work with the rest of construction, so we automatically set up your bleeds. Due to this, we usually don’t require designers to include bleeds in their file, and if the bleeds are included we recommend that they remain on a separate layer than the rest of the image so they can be edited or removed as needed.

Fonts

Before exporting, you should convert your type to curves to ensure that your type won’t get interpreted differently when opened by a program different than the one your type is generated in.

Exceptions: if you have a large amount of signs that exporting individually is impractical, and we may need to edit the type. In this case ensure fonts are included in the files you send as TrueType Font files. If this isn’t possible, please include the name of the font, as well any text properties (Regular, Bold, Italic etc.) so we can locate the fonts for reproduction.

CNC and Vinyl Cutting

-Any shapes to be cut must be vector paths.

-Any fonts should be converted to curves in advance

– Overlapping paths should be merged

Supported file types: pdf, ai, eps, svg.