Top Ten Artwork Mistakes for Custom Label Bottled Water

Most of the advice we feature on Bottle Your Brand is designed 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. Please DO NOT:

1. Upload 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 FedEx Office 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 take off the Internet are usually 72 dpi, and they will not print clearly.
5. Use a photo from a commercial photographer or use a licensed logo without permission.  We are not liable for copyright infringement from images uploaded to our site, but you would be if you used a commercial image without permission.
6. Design your label outside the "Safe Area".  If your image extends past the red outline 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 programs is not high enough to print clearly.
8. Expect the colors on your screen to match exactly the colors on your printed label.  Monitors are calibrated to display color in RGB, and if your monitor hasn't been calibrated recently there's a good chance that the colors you see on screen will differ a lot from the colors of your printed labels. Also, labels are printed in CMYK process color. CMYK are the four ink colors mixed together to created label colors.
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. Use too many font styles. Using multiple font styles is okay, but if you use a different font for every line of text on your label it won't look good.
11. Use a script font in All Caps. That just screams amateur plus it's hard to read.
12. Expect us to proofread or refine your artwork.  BYB is not a graphic design company. 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 make it on the screen, so make sure you go over it to check that the dates, spelling, and images look exactly the way you want them to.