Nothing delays a packaging order quite like artwork. Not the printing, not the stock, not the courier. The artwork.
The good news is that almost every hold-up we see comes down to the same handful of fixable things. Get these right and your packaging can be printed and out of the door in days.
How to send us your artwork
There are two routes, and neither is complicated.
Use the online personalisation tool. On each product page you can upload a PNG or JPG and see exactly how your design will sit on the product before you order. It is the fastest option, and it shows you the print area as you work.
Or just email it to us. Send your files to info@fast-printed-packaging.co.uk and we will take care of the setup for you. If design is not your strong suit, this is the one to pick.
File formats we accept
We can work with PDF, PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, AI, PSD and EPS.
If you have a choice, send us vector artwork, meaning an AI, EPS or vector PDF. Vector files can be scaled to any size without going soft or pixelated, which means your logo will be as crisp on a large carrier bag as it is on a small postal box. If all you have is a PNG or JPG, that is genuinely fine, but send the largest, highest-resolution version you own. A logo lifted from your website header at 200 pixels wide will look exactly as rough on cardboard as you would expect.
A transparent background (PNG or vector) is worth having too. It lets your logo sit directly on the kraft rather than in a white box.
Design for the print area, not the whole box
This is the one that catches most people out. We print onto pre-manufactured stock packaging, in pre-defined print areas, and we cannot print across the entire outside of a product. Boxes and book wrap mailers print inside and out within those areas; paper mailing bags and carrier bags print on both sides.
Hover the red ? icon in the artwork tool on any product page and it will map the printable zone out for you. Design to that, and there are no surprises. We have written a fuller explanation of which areas of a box you can actually print on if you want the detail.
The four mistakes we see most
Large areas of solid block colour. Please avoid them. We are printing onto an uneven, pre-manufactured surface, and heavy blocks of flat colour print inconsistently. Logos, line work and type reproduce beautifully; a full flood of dark navy across a panel does not. It is more visible again on brown and manila stock.
Expecting an exact Pantone match. We print in full colour, but we cannot guarantee an exact Pantone. Nobody printing digitally onto kraft honestly can. If a specific brand colour is critical, order a printed sample and use it as your reference point.
Tiny text and hairline detail. Cardboard is not glossy paper. Very fine strokes and small type can fill in or break up. Keep type generous and legible, and it will look more confident anyway.
Low-resolution logo files. Easily the most common. If your file looks fuzzy on screen at full size, it will print fuzzy. Dig out the original from your designer if you can.
Less is genuinely more
The packaging that looks most expensive is rarely the busiest. A clean logo, well placed, on honest brown kraft outperforms a cluttered design almost every time, which is why one-colour print can look so premium, and why the top of the box does most of the heavy lifting. Restraint prints better, and it photographs better when your customer puts it on Instagram.
You approve a sample before we print the run
Here is the safety net. We will not print your full order until you have approved a printed sample, by email, by video, or as a physical sample posted to you. You can amend it as many times as you need until you are completely happy, and if you are not satisfied with the printed sample, we refund the order in full, no quibble.
You can also order a sample pack to see and feel the printed product first, or a blank sample for a couple of pence just to check the base stock before you design anything at all.
If you are still working out what to order, how to choose the right printed packaging and our packaging checklist will both help. And if you are ever unsure whether a file will work, email it over. We would far rather tell you honestly up front than print something you are not happy with.
