Artwork – Dogtooth

As a brand designer or commercial interior designer, you always have brilliant ideas for spaces. You usually know what you want to see—but have you ever wondered what it takes to make those ideas reality? How do large photographic wall murals go from your screen to the walls of a building? How do you turn a dull space into something inspiring?

In this series of articles, we cover these processes—from initial concept through to finished installation. In this post, we look specifically at the artwork procedure. Some of the terms used may not be familiar, so a glossary is included below.

At Dogtooth, we have many years’ experience creating and working with artwork. High-quality artwork is at the core of everything we do.

You might not know the print industry’s definition of the word ‘artwork’. In print, it’s short for ‘print-ready artwork’. This generally means having a design file that, when sent to a printer, will produce a result that’s fit for purpose. In traditional litho printing, this could mean a brochure laid up correctly with the right pages facing each other. On a full-colour business card, it might mean including crop marks and enough bleed to ensure the cards trim cleanly and look their best.

Wide format digital printing

In wide format digital printing—Dogtooth’s area of expertise—we have to allow for things like walls that might be slightly larger than expected, and include an overlap for printing across multiple drops. Producing final artwork requires experience; there’s a lot more to it than many design teams realise.

We often collaborate with designers to make the process easier, by supplying a full specification sheet (see below), or a minimum spec sheet if preferred. These outline the basic requirements to help ensure the final output is correct once installed.

Here’s how we typically work with design teams providing base artwork for a project:

Firstly, the artwork is sent to us using Dropbox, Box, WeTransfer, or another large file transfer service. Once received, we create a job folder with two subfolders: one for Customer Artwork (the original files) and another for Print Artwork (the modified, print-ready files). A spec sheet and visuals—often sent earlier in the process—are added to this folder. A member of our production team then works through the artwork and prepares it for print.

The Software

We use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator (always the latest versions) to prepare print-ready artwork. If photographic images are included, these are resized in Photoshop and prepared for high-quality output. Our files are typically around 1GB, but for very large murals—such as a 15m corridor—they can reach 6–7GB. These are saved at 1:1 scale and at the highest resolution available.

Once complete, the artwork is sent to our RIP (Raster Image Processing) software, which splits the mural into separate drops. We add the necessary overlap for installation, and then the print process begins. A mural with three drops will typically take around 90 minutes to print.

We differentiate murals from stickers in this way: anything that covers the full height of the wall without cut-out shapes is considered a mural. Anything requiring a cut-out shape is treated as a sticker. For sticker jobs, artwork needs to be supplied to our specification—usually as a vector EPS or AI file. After printing, we create a cutter guide, load the design into our vinyl cutter, and send the file to cut. The machine scans and cuts the design, and we manually remove unneeded areas during preparation (more on that in our Print Prep post).

Stickers are typically used for text, illustrations, and shapes rather than full photographic images. Where photographic elements are included, a cutting path will need to be supplied.

We’re always happy to help designers without technical experience in artwork production. We often offer part-artworking as standard, and can also provide a full artwork service—working alongside designers to help realise their vision, even if they don’t have the required production knowledge.

When working with window manifestations or full-glass prints, we follow the same general process, but artwork may need to be mirrored if applied to the reverse side of the glass. Cut-out window graphics follow sticker specs; full-glass prints follow mural specs.

Glossary

Artwork – Print-ready design files

Bleed – Extra printed area beyond final trim size

Crop Marks – Lines to indicate where the design should be trimmed

CMYK – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black (used in print)

RGB – Red, Green, Blue (used on screen)

Full Colour – A design using all four CMYK process colours

Wide Format Printing – Large-scale digital printing, usually over 1300mm wide

Litho Printing – Traditional offset printing using metal plates

Drops – Sections of a mural; each drop is up to 1300mm wide

RIP Software – Converts artwork into printer-ready files

DPI – Dots Per Inch; higher DPI means better print quality

Adobe Photoshop – Image editing software for pixel-based images

Bitmap – Pixel-based images, like digital photos

Adobe Illustrator – Vector graphics software for logos and scalable graphics

Vector – Path-based graphics that can be scaled without loss of quality

EPS – Encapsulated PostScript file format for vectors and images

AI – Adobe Illustrator’s native file format

JPG – Compressed bitmap image format

Manifestations – Glass graphics using etched or frosted vinyl

Artwork – Full Specification

For smooth processing, please supply artwork using the following format. Include a spec sheet with final mural/sticker sizes and visuals to ensure everything is scaled correctly. We’re happy to help if anything is unclear.

File naming convention:

Job-Name-Artwork (folder)

Job-Name-Room1-Banner.jpg

Job-Name-Room1-Logo.eps

Murals:

– JPG or TIF (for photos/bitmaps)

– EPS or AI (for vector or mixed files)

– 100% size at 200DPI

– RGB colour format

– 50mm bleed width, 100mm bleed height

Stickers:

– EPS format

– 100% size

– RGB colour format

– Cut-path on a separate layer as a named colour “CutContour”

– 5mm bleed, or offset cut-path by 3mm for white halo

– Flatten transparencies

– Include images and convert all fonts to paths

Artwork – Minimum Specification

If full formatting isn’t possible, please send your designs using the guide below. Include a spec sheet, visuals, and final sizes to avoid sizing issues.