To assist you and your customer in designing your next card project, we have included some of our most popular card and tag design Templates and Mechanical Specifications. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to call and one of our trained associates will assist you. Services We offer complete artwork design and composition services which include: Project consulting Image and text assembly Digital color proofing   Quote estimates are available for artwork production. These quotes are based on specific job requirements. A sketch or diagram with proposed job specifications are generally required for a quote. Project Planning Project planning should commence prior to any artwork design or creation. The planning process considers the type of colors (PMS matches, special logo or trademark colors, metallic or fluorescent inks), the use of colored backgrounds and their effect on overprinted ink, and clearance and spacing requirements for additional finishing steps (magnetic stripes, slots, holes, foil stamping, numbering, embossing, thermal imprinting, etc.). Constraints, which should be considered due to printing on vinyl substrate, include the transparent nature of offset inks, the necessity for larger traps due to vinyl handling issues, and registration issues inherent in offset and silkscreen combination printing. We are available to advise in the planning process of complex designs to minimize difficulties or problems that may occur once the artwork or file is received at the factory. If you will be preparing you own files or will be using a service bureau, the following information is provided to assist in the preparation of electronic media for submittal for plastic card production. Electronic Media We prefer files to be created on a Macintosh computer, however we can accept digital files created on the PC. Font substitutions may occur when PC files are opened on our Macs. Preflight All digital jobs are preflighted with FlightCheck before being submitted into our workflow. The process is designed to catch missing or corrupt fonts or graphics. Should your job fail our preflight procedure, your representative will contact you. Digital Media Files are accepted on 3.5 inch diskettes, Zip disks or CDs. Include a laser output of the job with the media to ensure accuracy as well as a contact name and phone number for questions.   Electronic Prepress Equipment Mac workstations: G3 and G4 HP 4550 Color Laser Printer Creo Scitex Brisque 4 RIP Creo Scitex Lotem 800 V Platesetter AGFA Horizon Ultra Flatbed Scanner 2 Epson 7600 Inkjet Proofers Software: Mac, latest versions We prefer files to be created on the Macintosh platform; however, we can accept digital files from the PC platform. Please keep in mind that PC platform files will be converted to the Macintosh platform which may cause font Issues. The following is a list of the software that we support: Adobe Illustrator Adobe Pagemaker Adobe Photoshop Adobe Acrobat Macromedia Freehand QuarkXpress Fonts We support only Macintosh Postscript Type 1 fonts. Type 1 fonts consist of two parts, a screen font and a printer font. BOTH must be sent with files to print accurately. Also, please check all vector EPS files and send along fonts files for those graphics as well. Do NOT use "applied" type styles in the control or measurements palettes in PageMaker or QuarkXpress to make the type bold or italic; always choose the bold or italic versions of the font from the font list in order to prevent unexpected print results. Color Please use the following guidelines for color: Save all color photos and vector images as CMYK if the job is to be 4 color process. Specify which colors are to be spot and which colors are to be 4 color process. Choose colors from the Pantone swatch books,rather than color combinations that look good on your monitor. Colors from a low-end, non-color managed printer do NOT represent the color that will be printed. Make sure colors that are the same have the same name: PMS 300 is different than PMS 300CV, which is different than PMS 300CVC; unfortunately, graphic application programs default to different colors, so it is necessary to manually check color names for consistency. Please provide any previously printed cards or collateral pieces that we may have to match for color. Bleeds Please build your file and graphic elements with a .125" bleed. Trapping Please do not trap your job. Arthur Blank & Co. uses state of the art trapping software specific to our print process. Our prepress technicians will set all trapping parameters that will yield the highest quality final product. Laser Proofs It is important for you to send us composite hard copies ("lasers") of the final file at the size it will print. It is also a good idea to print out separated lasers from the graphics application, as this will clearly show you and the prepress department what elements will be printing on each color plate. This is also one way you can preflight your job: if the job is two colors, you should have two laser prints with all the appropriate elements separated on them. Graphics and Scans Please include all linked graphic files. This includes all graphics that were placed from vector programs such as Illustrator and Freehand, as well as any images placed into the vector programs. For example: if you have created a logo in Adobe Illustrator that contains a Photoshop image, you must provide us with both the Illustrator file as well as the Photoshop file. Graphics application programs will not collect the Photoshop file, so you must manually copy it. All graphics should be in EPS or tiff format; avoid PICT and Windows BMP files. Scan all color and grayscale photos at 300 dpi at the final size that they will be used in your document. All color scans must be saved as CMYK color space; if RGB images are received they will be converted to the CMYK color space. All linework should be scanned at no less than 1200 dpi at final size and saved as a tiff or bitmap. Electronic File Transfers Digital files can be transferred to Arthur Blank via E-mail or uploaded to our FTP site. Please call your representative for more information. If sending your files electronically, please follow-up with a fax of the file so that we can proof your files to ensure all the elements are present. Prepress Checklist For your convenience you can now download a printable Prepress Checklist to insure that your submission meets our requirements. In order to view and print the Prepress Checklist you will need the latest version of the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Please click on the link if you do not have the reader already installed on your computer .     Click here for the Prepress Checklist Click here for Data Submission Guidelines