Artwork Formatting & Submission

Submitting and formatting your artwork can appear complicated at first glance. It’s really not too complicated though and if you do run into any hiccups along the way, just give us a call at (310) 527-6212. A Sales Representative or our Graphics Department will be happy to help.

Before you submit your artwork for proofing, you’ll want to make sure that it’s formatted properly. Here are some tips from our Graphics Prepress Manager, Lee Baba.

File Format:

The preferred file format is Adobe Illustrator. We also accept Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, Freehand MX and Quark Xpress files however, in some instances, there may be additional charges to convert these files to a workable format. Please include all placed graphics, images and font files when submitting your artwork.

Type

• Smallest positive type: 4.5 pt

• Smallest reverse type: 6 pt

If reversing type out of two colors or more, we suggest holding lines for type clarity. PLEASE INCLUDE ALL FONT FILES. OUTLINING TYPE IS PREFERRED.

Line Weight

• Smallest positive line: .5 pt

• Smallest reverse line: 1 pt

• Smallest screen line: 2 pt

Colors

Our presses can print up to 10 colors (including varnish and lamination stations). Please identify any Pantone colors required for your art.

If a white plate is necessary, please identify this in your art.

Spot color gradients must have a 2% minimum dot.

For rich black print use Cyan 60%, Magenta 40%, and Black 100%. An additional Line Black spot color may be used also.

Links or Embedded Images

Save images as CMYK color mode. Scan resolution should be a minimum of 300 dpi.

Barcodes

Use the darkest spot color, black is best. Set bar width reduction to .002”. We cannot guarantee scan-ability on barcodes created below 80%.

Bleeds

1/8” minimum bleed is required outside of die line.

Once you’ve got your artwork formatted, your next step is to submit it to our Graphics Department for the purposes of creating a proof. Submitting your artwork to Western Shield is easy. Here’s how:

We accept files via email, FTP, and CD. To submit via email, please compress the files using ‘ZIPit’ or a similar self-extracting compression application. If your file is over 10MB, we recommend submitting via FTP or CD.

Here’s you how you submit artwork using our FTP site.

-First, you’ll want to contact your Sales Representatives and ask them for your user ID and password.

-Go to ftp://mail.westernshield.com. If you do not have a preferred FTP client, we recommend Filezilla for Windows and Fetch for Mac. They can be download using the links below. From there, you just upload the files to Western Shield.

Filezilla

Fetch

Again, if you run into any problems along the way please reach out to us at (310) 527-6212 and we’ll get you right back on track.