Using my own designs Archives | Master Engraving

If you are uploading photography or non-vector artwork (e.g. JPEGs), please make sure they are no less than 96dpi (ideally at 300dpi). If your designs are a mix of photography and design, make sure the embedded photographs used are above the recommended pixel sizes.

Remember large, high-quality JPEGs will produce the best results for photography.

If you’ve already created your files, take a quick look at these guidelines before you place your order. It might save you time – and should help ensure your artwork is in the best possible format for your award, trophy or plaque.

1. Where possible designs featuring graphics or text should be submitted as vector based PDFs. To keep your text in vector format, we recommend applications like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign and more recent versions of Adobe Photoshop. Please note, saving text in JPEG format could result in ‘fuzzy’ edges.
2. When your design features a mix of photography and text, make sure your placed photographs are 300 dpi, and where possible that your final design is saved as a PDF.
3. Make sure you pre-flight your PDFs using the ‘Adobe PDF/X-1a:2001’ preset. This option can be found in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign and more recent versions of Adobe Photoshop.

Graphics and text designs  are best submitted as vector based PDFs. This will ensure your lines and text are nice and crisp. If you upload bitmap-based content (JPEGs or PNGs), there may be some fuzziness around your text.

You should also make sure that there are no cut or crop lines, all transparencies have been flattened, overprint is switched off and any fonts used are embedded, before saving your designs. For best results, we recommend using the following preset to preflight your designs: Adobe PDF/X-1a:2001.

If you can’t get files from your marketing department or printer that meet our artwork requirements then we can provide graphic design services at a small fee to bring your logo or artwork up to speed. We’ll quote based on what you provide but don’t worry, we won’t break the bank.