Anchor Line prides itself on the quality of imprint on all of our products. Therefore, we have estab-lished guidelines for art necessary to maintain our high standards. Most of our products are printed by screen printing methods. Because there are limi-tations inherent in this process, there are minimum requirements for art provided to us to ensure clean, legible printing. They are as follows:

Send Vectored Digital Art

Due to changing technology, and the obsolescence of stat cameras, we accept digital art only. We can receive art digitally by e-mail (art at anchorlineproducts.com) or on removable disk, formatted for either Macintosh or PC. We accept CD/DVD’s. When e-mailing art, please mail or fax your order separately, including a visual reference to the artwork, and indicate distributor’s name and P.O.# in the e-mail message. Macintosh screen fonts and postscript fonts used in creating art should be included or the fonts should be converted to paths/outlines. PC fonts should be con -verted to paths/outlines. Hard copies / flat art may require an art charge to rebuild.

Digital Art Formats

All files should be vectored digital art (no raster files, scans, or digital photographs) except as noted below*. We prefer files formatted in Adobe Illustrator CS5 (or lower) or Adobe InDesign CS5.

* Exception: Art to be used for Acrylic Key Tags, Photo Tags (1 color), or photo paper air fresheners (1 color) may include 1200 dpi raster based (bitmapped or pixel) images. These types of images will be reviewed upon receipt for quality. Examples of raster images are .bmp, .jpeg, tiff, gif, and .psd (Photoshop) files.

Anchor Line can also prepare images for these products from flat art or photographs.

QR Codes are NO CHARGE!

Anchor Line can generate a QR Code for you with no additional charge.
Look for this icon on the specific product page to verify availability. We do not recommend printing QR codes any smaller than 5/8". There are many QR Code Readers available - we cannot guarantee QR Codes we generate will be readable by every reader.

Line Weight and Type

All solid lines in artwork should be no thinner than 1/2 point (.007") – white lines reversed out of solid color should be thicker than 1/2 point where possible. Type should be no smaller than 6 points in size (because type-styles vary so much, it should be noted that some fonts have very narrow strokes or very narrow negative spaces, which requires them to be larger than 6 points).

Halftone Screens

Halftones (Gray tones simulated with dots) in art should be no finer than 65 lines per inch (at print size) to print on our plastic products. Paper Air Fresheners have a higher degree of absorbency so halftones do not print well on these products. We recommend limiting use of halftones on PAF’s to only minor areas. All halftones should be sent in the range of 20% to 85% gray density.

Color Separations

Multiple color artwork should be provided as spot color separations in the form of black & white vectored digital art. Our plastic is glossy, so we follow PMS "C" (coated) colors not "U" (uncoated) colors. Separations should have a 1/32" trap (colors overlap where they meet).

We can not hold exact registration in the screen printing process – artwork that has no trap may be subject to an art charge to fix the problem. Process Color is not possible on our products, except for Acrylic Key Tags (process color is a four color printing method used to simulate multi-colors).

Please note: the inks used in printing are translucent – some colors will change or darken where they are trapped over one another or printed on a colored plastic. For example: when printing purple ink on black plastic, a PMS color with more than 50% white in the mix is necessary. It is helpful to send a composite print of color artwork to demonstrate how it should look when printed. We utilize 4-color Laser Process printing for Acrylic Key Tags, and are unable to provide an exact PMS Color match.

Art Requirements Summarized

All files should be vectored digital art created in Adobe Illustrator with all fonts converted to paths/outlines and no linked images.