An aqueous coating is a fast-drying, water-based, protective coating which is applied right after the ink on a press. It provides a super high-gloss surface, extreme durability (good for post cards and business cards), dries fast, and is environmentally friendly. If glossy paper isn't glossy enough for your project, an aqueous coating takes your product's sheen to the next level. Or, some people chose to downgrade to a lower quality (less expensive) paper and then apply an aqueous coating. This makes the final product look and feel much more expensive than it really is. Either way an aqueous coating is a great upgrade for your full-color printed product.

When you supply us with a logo or other artwork for a promotional product or embroidered/screenprinted item, it is important to provide artwork that is 'print-ready'. In the past, there were exact technical specifications for what constituted 'print-ready' artwork. However, with the advent of advanced image manipulation software, we can be much more flexible with the type of artwork we can accept.

The best format for artwork is EPS, AI (Adobe Illustrator), or any other sort of vectorized digital artwork. If you are not sure if your digital artwork is vectorized, send it to us and we can determine if it is or not. We prefer digital EPS/vectorized artwork because it can be printed with very little additional manipulation, which saves money and helps accelerate the production of your promo item.

(Vectorized Northstar logo in Adobe Illustrator showing outlines)

We can also accept high-resolution JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP or printed art with solid colors. Our software can vectorize the image (or the scan the image, in the case of printed art)...as long as it is a crisp, clean, large, well-defined image. A small conversion charge may apply in this case, but it will usually be very reasonable.

 
(Partial high-resolution JPG of the Northstar logo)

The least preferrable form of artwork is small, blurry images or images with gradients or non-solid colors. Copying your company's logo from your webpage definitely does not constitute 'print ready'. But never fear! Our talented graphic designers can redraw your artwork or create a new logo that will be both print-ready and a corporate asset for years to come.

(Time for a re-design!)

See also "Vector vs. Raster Art"

Pantone Matching System (or PMS) color is a standardized color matching system. By standardizing colors, customers and suppliers in different locations can all refer to the Pantone system to make sure colors match without having to contact eachother directly. There are literally thousands of PMS colors across several libraries. For example:

Spot colors, such as those in the PMS system, are simply solid colors. Printing in spot color is usually a good idea for text and non-photographic art, because it is much cheaper and faster than 4-process color. (Most of our envelopes and letterhead are printed using spot colors). Here is an example of a logo printed in PMS 363 spot color:

4-process color is derived from printing the 3 primary colors plus black. Printing in 4-process color is generally necessary for photographic reproduction. It is more expensive because each page must be printed on four times (one time for each color). Here is an example of a photograph split into 4-process color: