Use Adobe Illustrator To Setup Artwork

Adobe Illustrator is a great program for setting up your print file. Here is how to do it!

It is very easy to set up your artwork in Adobe Illustrator. We have free templates that you can download for most of our products in various sizes.

Example Template

How To Setup Your Artwork

The white board indicates the print area, the red boarder is the bleed area (3mm) and the blue lines indicate where the safe area is for text and borders.

We recommend that you do not put any text outside of these blue guides and if your artwork has a boarder to make sure it is a minimum of 3mm wide.

Converting Fonts To Outlines

Once you have all the content in your artwork setup you will then need to convert all the fonts into outlines. This ensures that the fonts that you have setup in your file are what is printed. If we do not have them in our system they will revert to a default font.

To convert the fonts to outlines, highlight all the text in the document. Right Click and then select ‘Create Outlines’.

This can also be done by highlighting all text, selecting ‘Type’ from the navigation in the top bar and then ‘Create Outlines’ from the dropdown menu.

Exporting Your File For Print

Now that you have your file ready and setup for print, it is time to export the file as a PDF. To do this you will need to go to ‘File > Save As’ and then name the file and be sure to call it ‘Front’ or ‘Back’ depending on what the file is.

For example we would call the file for the front of our business cards ‘Space Print BC FRONT’

Next, change the format from .ai to Adobe PDF and click ‘Save’

Check all settings match the below screenshots for each of the options and then ‘Save PDF’ (Note that the ‘Adobe PDF Preset:’ option of PRINT will not be available in your program, this has been setup in our system. You can save these settings once you replicate them.)

Adobe Illustrator Export Settings