Embroidery Tips

Below are some general guidelines for embroidery. Suggestions for artwork to give the best final product as well as space limitations depending on the size/location of the garment. Also please read our Frequently Asked Questions for answers to commonly asked questions.

Artwork

Your design must start with some sort of artwork. We can create a design with just text using one of our fonts, or you can supply your own artwork.

Your artwork must not be a trademarked name or image (that includes college and professional sports teams), or you must be able to provide written permission from the trademark agent that you give us permission to duplicate the trademarked name/logo. For companies, that is usually a marketing or procurement department. Just because you work for a company that does not usually allow you to create merchandise with the company’s trademarked property.

We highly prefer a vector image like Adobe Illustrator (.ai), or Encapsulated PostScript (.eps). While we can convert other formats like JPEG/JPG, and PNG, they must be a high resolution image on a solid color background. Please don’t use an online converter to create an AI or EPS image as those programs usually just paste the bitmapped image into a vector container and are not a true vector image. Below are some examples of good and bad artwork. 
NOTE: Technically these are all bad because they are trademarked images. Only shown here as examples of good and bad resolutions/quality.

Bad	Good
Low resolution leaving jagged lines (pixelated)	Good resolution, solid background
Fading and blending of colors	Solid colors
Photograph of logo on shirt, no clean edges, logo at an angle	Good resolution, solid background, solid colors
Multiple color background	Solid color background

Sizing

We have several sizes of “hoops” available to attach your garment to our machines. Below is a table of the hoops we have, their usable area, and their common applications.