| There are two ideal format for artwork, which depend on what is to be printed onto the bag.
Process printing
If the bag is to be printed CMYK (process printing) with an image or photo, we can accept a large image file of any of the following formats: JPG; TIFF; PNG; GIF. The larger the file, the better the finished print will be. If too large to email, files can always be sent over via CD/DVD or FTP. We will then provide a PDF (low resolution if emailed) for you to approve prior to printing. It is possible to have a pre production print sample, however, there is usually a cost associated with this.
Spot colour printing
If the bag is to be printed using spot or pantone colours, artwork is required in a vectorised format. This essentially means that each shape, letter or part of the logo, is defined within an illustration program as a shape outline. This allows us to produce printing plates for each colour. Artwork can be supplied in a non suitable format and we can, subject to the technicalities of the design, transfer it into an outlined format. As with the process print, you will be provided with a PDF to approve prior to printing.
When supplying artwork, it helps if you can specify or attach the required fonts.
All artwork is best supplied in an Illustrator format, either *.AI or *.PDF. Most other formats can be used and converted.
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| A patch handle carrier bag can be fully printed (externally) in up to 8 colours. Commonly the bags are either printed using process inks, CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black), or spot pantone colours. In some cases, CMYK printing can be backed up with spot colours to ensure brand colours are adhered to implicitly.
Commonly, a patch handle bag can be printed with just one or two colours. As with the varigauge style carrier bag, the common print area on a standard size (15"x18"+3") carrier bag is 12"x12", roughly in the middle of either face. Unlike a varigauge carrier bag though, the patch handle bag can be printed all over 100%. If this is the case, it may be a consideration to leave the area above the handle blank. Prolonged holding of the bag can cause the inks to come off in a customers hand, so is something to be wary of. Many high street stores incorporate an unprinted area into this style of carrier bag.
As with all of our polythene carrier bags, the design is best sent over in a suitable format.
Another added benefit of the patch carrier bag, is that the base gusset can also be printed. As this style is printed as a flat sheet, then folded into the correct shape with gusset, a logo or details of advice or material compositions can be subtly included within the print.
The handle is generally positioned 2" below the top of the bag, and approximately 0.75" in height, and 3.5" wide.
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| The design of a varigauge carrier bag needs to be placed into the main central area of either face of the carrier bag. If you are designing a 15"x18"+3" (381mm x 457mm + 76mm) standard size carrier bag, your design will need to be kept approximately within a 12"x12" area (300mm x 300mm) on either side. As shown in the image.
The blue area represents the maximum print area for this style of carrier bag.
The bag can be printed on both sides, up to a total of 6 colours. If black is printed both sides, this is counted as 2 colours. 5 colours can be printed one side and 1 the other to make a total of 6. Or the bag can be simply printed 1 colour on one side.
The print area is located between the base of the handle and the top of the internal base gusset. The dotted line shown, it the top of the base gusset within the bag. As the material for the varigauge carrier bag is folded before being printed, the print must not overlap this line as it will be imprinted upon the design.
The handle, if straight cut, as shown, is typically 3.5" wide, 0.75" high and roughly 2" from the top of the bag. An allowance must be made for the handle position moving slightly as the polythene material does not always stay in exactly the same position when being printed or converted. The other main style of handle for a varigauge carrier bag is the kidney shape. The kidney shape handle is usually placed a little less than 2" from the top, is approximately 2" high and have a width of about 3". These handles are considered to give a little more strength as the polythene is not cut at such a steep angle when being held, however, this style of handle can impact slightly on the available print area.
Please note, PDF artwork is usually provided showing the dotted line as below. This line is an internal line for reference. It denotes the top of the base gusset, where the bag fold up inside itself to give a greater capacity.
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| If you've been asked to supply artwork to us, you may have heard the term, "vectorised artwork". Usually a computer image is made up simply of pixel or dots. If we try to zoom in on this image it simply becomes blurry. See the image of the two letter Bs. When we open an image and zoom in, the top image is an example of what we see. If the image is of a high enough quality, we can scan to a vectorised format, however this is not ideal.
A vectorised format, as per the two lower letters, can be scaled to any size without losing definition. The letter is actually defined as a shape rather than a text character.
JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF or similar format files are always made up of pixels rather than vectorised images. PDF or Illustrator ready files can be made up of either. If you have a PDF to send over, some graphics companies supply these simply as a JPG (or similar) file within the PDF. To test if the image is vectorised, simply try and zoom in on a word or piece of text. If the edges of the text keep their definition and have no blurry outline at all, it is most likely a vectorised image.
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