Artwork Guidelines

You do not need artwork to order. The puck builder and the golf ball builder make the design for you, and most orders never send us a file at all. This page is for when you do have a logo or a crest.

What to send

Best: a vector file - .ai, .eps, .svg or a vector .pdf. These scale to any size with no loss, and they are what we work from.
Fine: a .png at 1000 pixels or more across, with a transparent background.
Usually not enough: a logo pulled off a website, a screenshot, or a photo of a jersey. We will tell you rather than print something that looks poor.

Send files to sales@printaballs.ca. If a file is too big to email, say so and we will sort it out.

How much room there is

Less than people expect, which is the single most useful thing on this page.

Hockey puck: the face is 76 mm across. We print inside a 70 mm circle, and anything that must not be clipped should sit inside about 63 mm.
Golf ball: a circle roughly 24 mm across - about the size of a thumbnail. We confirm the exact area on your proof.

A logo that reads well on a jersey has a whole chest to live on. The same logo on a golf ball has a thumbnail. Detail that survives one does not survive the other.

What prints well

Bold shapes and solid colour. Simple beats detailed at this size, every time.
High contrast against the background. Every design prints over a white underbase, so colours stay true - but a pale colour on a white golf ball still disappears.
Type no smaller than about 2 mm tall. Below that it fills in and stops being readable.

What does not

Hairlines and fine outlines. They break up or disappear.
Photographs and faces on a golf ball. A dimpled surface is the hardest thing we print on, and a face smaller than about a third of the circle will not read. We will always proof these before running them.
Gradients and soft shadows. They band. Solid colour is better.
Long words in a small space. A surname past about eleven letters prints noticeably smaller; we flag it on the proof rather than shrinking it quietly.

Colour

We print UV ink over a primer coat. Printed colour varies slightly from what you see on screen, and the black rubber of a puck changes how lighter shades read. If you have brand colours, send us the Pantone or hex values and we will get as close as the process allows. The preview and the proof show layout and colour placement, not a colour match.

Team logos and crests

We can print your association's own artwork if you can confirm the team has the right to use it. Please check with your association before sending it - that confirmation is on you, not on us.

If your artwork includes a photograph of a person, please make sure they are happy for it to be printed. If it shows a child, we need that to come from a parent or guardian.

We do not reproduce professional team marks or lettering systems. NHL crests, wordmarks and number fonts are off the table, and we will say no even if asked. What we do instead is match your team's colours and build the jersey design around them, which honestly tends to look better on a puck anyway.

Not sure?

Send what you have to sales@printaballs.ca and we will tell you straight whether it will work, before you order.