1. Plan Out Your Color Scheme
When planning out your color palette in advance- it is helpful if you create mock-up designs to test colors- this will help with any issues when it comes to printing time.
2. Use Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw
If you have access to the Adobe Suite, or Corel Draw then you should be using them to create your designs. This is important for using spot color and saving as vectors. Always be sure to save your designs in vector format! Unlike other formats (JPEG, GIF, or BMP), vector images can be resized without sacrificing quality. This helps especially if you’re planning to print the design across different materials such as business cards, postcards, t-shirts etc.
When using other products, like Photoshop, you’re creating a raster-based application. This means you are pretty much stuck with the original dimensions. This can greatly affect the quality of the printing process and final product.
A pro tip: Always create your design at a larger scale and higher resolution than you need as you can scale art down without any issues, but not the other way around.
If your artwork is hand-drawn and needs to be digitized, make sure that you have scanned your design at the correct resolution! Generally, if the drawing is actual size, then scanning at 300 dpi will produce the best end result.
