Top Ten Artwork Mistakes for Custom Label Bottled Water

Most of the advice we feature on Bottle Your Brand is designing to help you figure out how to order your custom label products. We think you'll also find it helpful to know to know what things to watch out for when submitting a custom label design.

To make sure your artwork prints up as nicely as it looks on your screen, here are some common mistakes that people make with their artwork:

1. Use a low resolution image.  It may look fine on your screen, but low resolution images will print fuzzy in real life.
2. Fax us a scanned image of your label design.  If you need to use an image and you only have a physical copy of it, have a high-resolution scan of the image done either at a Kinko's or at home, and then upload that scanned image into our Design Online system.
3. Upload a 72 dpi image.  You want to make sure that the images you upload are at least 300 dpi.
4. Copy and paste pictures from someone else's website.  The images you get off the Internet are usually 72 dpi, and they will not print well in real life.
5. Use a photo from a commercial photographer without his/her permission.  We are not liable for copyright infringement from images uploaded to our site, but you would be if you used a commercial photographer's work without his/her permission.
6. Design your label outside the "Safe area".  If your image extends past the dashed line you see around the label, it will get cut off when we print it.
7. Use clip art from Word, Corel Draw, or PowerPoint.  The resolution of these images is not high enough to print well.
8. Expect the colors on your screen to match exactly the colors on your printed label.  Monitors are calibrated to display color, and if your monitor hasn't been calibrated recently there's a good chance that the colors you see on screen will differ slightly from the colors of your printed labels.
9. Cram too much text on your label.  Remember, just because you can fit a manifesto on your label doesn't mean you should.  Too much text on your label will likely result in making it difficult to read once it's finished.
10. Expect us to proofread or refine your artwork.  We do not make any revisions to your artwork once you've placed your order.  It will look exactly the way it does when you place your order, so make sure you go over it to check that the dates, spelling, and images look exactly the way you want them to.