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Artwork Preparation

Depending on the type of award, promotional item or sign you want to produce, the artwork required may be very simple (a business card we can scan) or specialized (specific electronic file formats).

Based on the job, Mementos will advise you on which type of graphic format is required to achieve the highest-quality result. If you don’t have it or can’t get it, we can reproduce it for you.

If your logo has been professionally produced, to minimize start-up costs it is always a good idea keep a copy on hand from the graphic design firm that produced it. “Ideal” file formats include:

• .eps (Adobe Illustrator)
• .tif (300 or 600 dpi, high-resolution Adobe Photoshop)

Sorry! No Web Graphics Please

Unfortunately, sending us an image off a Web site isn’t good enough. Graphics optimized for the web are very small in dimension and are also low resolution (72 dpi). We need the original files that were used to make the internet version.

So… who made your company logo? Did they send you a copy of the original files? If not, have them e-mail it to you (or us) in the optimal formats described above.

More About File Formats

For those who want to know a little more about graphic formats, we’ve provided some additional information below on “bitmap” and “vector” formats.

Any image that is scanned on a computer scanner is converted into a bitmapped image, which is then saved in a specific format (.tif, bmp, jpg). Bitmapped graphics are comprised of individual pixels or dots like you see in a newspaper photograph (dpi = dots per inch). You can’t enlarge a newspaper photo with good results because the dots just get bigger and the image distorts. That’s why we recommend at least 300 dpi at the actual size that the graphic will be used (a newspaper photo is only 150 dpi). 600 dpi is even better! The higher the dpi, the sharper the image (it maxes out at 2540 dpi).

JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group – pronounced “jay-peg”) is a form of compression that is used to make bitmap file sizes smaller so they load faster on a Web page or travel faster when sent by e-mail. The file size of a 300 dpi .jpg file will be smaller than a 300 dpi .tif  file (Tagged Image File Format) file. When a 72 dpi .jpg file (the kind you get off the Web) gets converted to 300 dpi, the image size decreases proportionately.

Vector graphics are wire-framed objects with “fills” and “strokes” assigned to the image displayed on a monitor. A circle is just a wire-frame circle that becomes, for example, a blue circle with a fat black stroke when displayed on the screen in “artwork mode” (there is a preview mode and an artwork mode – you assign the attributes). If you saw the wire-frame dinosaurs running around in the making of Jurassic Park, you’d get the idea that wire-framed images are very light and have the particular advantage of being able to be scaled to any size without any distortion. Bitmaps can only be scaled down in size. Vectors can be enlarged to the size of a house because there is nothing to distort.

If you want to learn even more about graphic file formats and how they are used, go to www.google.com and search on “jpg definition”, “tif definition”, “eps definition”, etc.