How to Prepare Print-Ready Artwork (Without Design Skills)

The gap between “I have a logo” and “I have print-ready artwork” causes more order delays than anything else in this industry. Here’s how to close it — and what to do if you can’t.

The gold standard: what printers want

The ideal file is a PNG or PDF at 300 DPI with a transparent background, sized at or near the final print dimensions (our maximum print area is 30cm × 40cm). If your designer gives you options, a vector file (AI, EPS, SVG or vector PDF) is even better — vectors scale to any size without losing sharpness.

Why 300 DPI matters

DPI is dots per inch — print resolution. Screens are forgiving at 72 DPI; presses are not. A logo screenshotted from your website might look fine on your phone and print like a blurry postage stamp. Quick test: zoom to 300–400% on your computer. If the edges go fuzzy or blocky, the file is too low-res for its print size.

Why transparent backgrounds matter

A white box around your logo will print as… a white box around your logo. Transparency (the grey checkerboard in design software) means only your actual design goes on the shirt. JPEGs can’t hold transparency at all — which is why we ask for PNG or PDF.

A word on colour

Screens mix light (RGB); printers mix ink (CMYK). Most files convert cleanly, but extremely vivid neon-style RGB colours can shift slightly in print. If an exact brand colour matters — and for uniforms it should — tell us the hex or Pantone reference and we’ll colour-match before anything is pressed. You’ll see the result in your free mockup first.

The checklist before you hit send

PNG or PDF format. 300 DPI at print size. Transparent background. Nothing important within a few millimetres of the edges. Fonts converted to outlines if it’s a vector file (so our system doesn’t substitute your typeface). That’s it.

Can’t tick those boxes? Send it anyway

Here’s the part most shops bury: you don’t actually have to solve this yourself. A blurry JPEG, a photo of your old shirt, a sketch on a napkin — send whatever you’ve got. Our in-house design studio fixes, recreates and vectorises artwork from $49, and every enquiry gets a free digital mockup within 24 hours so you approve exactly what will print before a cent is committed.

Got your file (or your napkin)? Build your order in the calculator, then email it through — we check every file that comes in, and we’ll flag any issue before it becomes your problem.