Using Transparency

Super tight transparency!

On some products it is possible to create products that allow the material of the item underneath to come up through parts of your artwork. 

This is great for areas of the design where you want to show off the natural beauty of the materials. 

Transparency works on many products, including:

• Graphic Jewelry pieces (Where the artwork is applied to the piece itself)
• Acrylic products 
• Leather products
• Apparel

Transparency is not compatible with the following products:

• Home Goods: Blanket, Pillow, Towel, Mat, Stocking
• Wall Art: Tapestry, Canvas, Pennant, Metal Art
• Tote Bag, Zipper Pouch
• Message Cards

Make sure you PNG it!

In order to benefit from transparency you must set the design up correctly. 

Transparency will only work with .PNG files. Make sure you are saving your design as a PNG within your design software and make sure transparency is enabled.

Additionally there are a few extra steps you should take to prepare your artwork for transparency. 

Choose the correct DPI.

The DPI (dots per inch) setting controls the amount of detail a print will have when the artwork is applied to the product. For best results you should set the DPI of your artwork to 300. Lower DPI settings will work too, but you'll be missing out on quality.

Different product types.

Enabling transparency on your products will change the way some of them are printed. Transparency is handled differently depending on the product - this is because designs are applied differently depending on the product type.

Acrylic and leather products:

Both acrylic and leather products will apply transparent artwork as expected. With all colors supported including black and white. You generally don't need to make any additional considerations when designing transparent artwork for these products. However on leather products some colors might be effected. 

Graphic Jewelry:

In the case of Graphic Jewelry pieces - Instead of loading in a white coated jewelry piece into the machine ready to transfer your design onto, we load a blank jewelry piece.

This means that any transparency within the PNG you upload will come through as bare metal, but this will also happen with any white used on your designs. As - just like your home printer - white isn't a printed color, and relies on the color of the material underneath.  This will impact the sort of design you can use, and the colors you can use. 

Because enabling transparency will "knock out" any white on your designs, colors that rely on white like pastels, will instead look faded into the metal. 

However, bold colors and neon shades will instead enhance the color of the metal, and take on some of it's reflective qualities. 

Pictures of real world objects should also be avoided. Details of photos or real world objects will be lost when shrunk down onto a jewelry piece, and without the ability to print white will appear smudged instead.

 

Be bold, keep it simple.

Our marketing research and sales data has shown that simple designs sell the most. Plus, simple designs transfer better onto products, too. 

Sticking to one or two bright colors, simple easy-to-read fonts, and keeping a minimal look has proven time and again to make very effective designs.