Our marketing proposals and contracts require submission of materials in usable electronic form, unless otherwise specified. Additionally, if you are under a maintenance contract, or we are performing work on an hourly rate basis, submission of materials in the wrong format can greatly increase the amount of time it takes for us to do the work. Here is what you need to know about submitting materials, to keep your costs down and to prevent errors.
EFFICIENCY:
Know what you want before you order work. Having to re-do or edit work can greatly increase the amount of time on a project.
Don’t bit-and-piece us to death. There’s a certain amount of overhead in doing ANY work – opening files, uploading to your site, etc. Sending a series of minor changes in separate emails or ticket over a period of time can actually double or triple your cost. Send all at once if possible.
COPY (TEXT):
Copy is best submitted in Microsoft Word or Google docs with descriptive names. We can also accept Publisher (until 2026) or text files or copy simply typed into an email.
IMAGE FILES:
We can accept image files in .png, .jpg, .gif, .psd, .tif, .eps, .ai or .bmp formats. In most cases we prefer original, unedited, uncompressed files, as large as possible for print purposes. Files for use in the web do not need to be larger than 1 MB. .Pdf (Adobe Acrobat) files may also be acceptable for images. Images can also be too small. When in doubt send to us to check.
Logos should be sent in .eps or .ai format. We cannot guarantee the usability of logos in other formats. Also embedding or converting a file in another format, into .eps or .ai format will not render it more usable.
Do not send image files in Word docs or Publisher files unless it is impossible to provide the material in any other way (we cannot guarantee their usability).
NAMING OF FILES:
Please name your files in a descriptive manner, for example, Jenny.jpg for a photo of Jenny, not DSC0034.jpg, or Services Description.doc for a write-up of your services. We also recommend you save all material yourselves in a well-organized fashion. You’ll probably need it again in the future.
SENDING MULTIPLE AND LARGE FILES:
If you are sending individual files 25MB in size or smaller, you can email them as an attachment. For files over 25MB, send them to us using a file upload service such as Dropbox or Hightail (ask for our upload address if you don’t have one).
If you have several files to send, even if they are small files, please combine them into a single compressed (,zip) file. We can accept other compression formats.
On PCs, you can create .zip files by putting all the photos, etc. into one folder, selecting the folder, and right clicking “Send To” and “Compressed (zipped) Folder.” On a Mac the process is similar.
REVISING COPY:
Don’t say “In the second paragraph, third sentence. change the third word from ‘the’ to ‘of’.” Instead, send us the entire paragraph containing the changes. You can copy the entire paragraph, make your edits and paste the entire revised paragraph into the document you are sending us. That is faster for you, faster for us, and it prevents errors.
