Affordable Graphic Design

If your not 100% satisfied with your design, or you pay nothing.

If your design doesn't look as good or better than others competing with you, then you'll definitely have problems selling your products. You need to stand out. Get out of the "do-it-yourself" mode and move up to the serious player.

Your job it to be the creative force. Create the product. The information knowledge specialist. Our job is to help your turn your music, your product, your information into a final product. You need to start with the artwork for your packaging.

Let us create your design.

How your package looks is almost as important as the information it contains. When your in the bookstore, browsing row to row, why do you stop and pick up a certain book or magazine? Its normally the title or cover design that catches your eye. Most of us buy without every trying out, reading or listening to the product. The packaging sells us. We're given assurances that this is the product for us. Solving all our problems, right?

Our staff of creative artist, along with our experience gained from years in the industry can help you create the package that will help you sell your product. Remember, even if your not "selling" your still selling, promoting, marketing, or whatever you want to call it -- you still want someone to pick it up, read it, listen to it, and "buy" you.

*only $49 if done at the time of a duplication or replication project.

How to get started.

First, just send us your text and images, with a rough idea (a stick drawing evens works) of how you want your final product to look, and let us go to work on turning your ideas into finished art!

Already started? No problem, we can pickup at any stage of the design process.

Free Barcode.

Selling your product in store, you'll need a UPC (Universal Product Code) included on the packaging, so that store can track the sales of your product within their inventory system.

If your selling in a traditional bookstore, you might need an ISBN number. This you'll need to get on your own, but we can add it to your artwork. Most places, even the larger booksellers will use the UPC barcode, unless its an actual printed book.

No charge for the UPC barcode if we manufacture your product. This saves you the $750 to join the Council and get your own. You'll still have a unique number on each of your products. If you are supplying your own artwork, the number can be provided to your designer in advance for inclusion in your design.

If you already have a UPC number, simply give the number to our or your designer (whoever is designing your packaging), and the bar code can be generated and inserted.

If you don't want the barcode to be part of your graphics, we can also supply barcodes on stickers applied to the shrink-wrap.

Do you want to do the art yourself?

You'll need to supply us with the artwork files needed to start the printing process. We'll check your files to make sure they are to the correct industry specifications.  We want everything to work properly. Many times the files look great on your computer screen, but when the job is printed, it looks totally different.

Many factors are involved, but the first one, and even professional graphic designers have this one, the computer monitors are not calibrated. You want to make sure that what you see is "close" to what you get.

Second, your files are printed in CMYK, not RGB, which is what the monitor displays and your ink jet printer normally prints. Files need to be converted to CMYK. We'll check this for you, don't worry about it.

We have a checklist included with the necessary templates that go over each step needed for you to do it yourself. Please make sure you read all the specifications. This will make your project move quickly through production. Also, download the templates you need from our website.

Important

Before your project goes into production, we must receive your approval and IPR forms. Download all the forms you'll need here.  This protects you and makes sure that we are producing your product exactly the way you want it. Remember -- no forms, no production. No fudging on this.

If you have any questions or just need to ask questions, please call us or email us anytime.

No surprises.

The "flight-check" of $39 includes checking your files and creating an actual production sample of your product. (If we design your artwork, this fee is waived). You'll get to see your files printed from the press. Check the colors and images to make sure they are just the way you want them.

Upload your files is easy.

You can upload your art files to our FTP site. Click here to upload and instructions. It's fast and easy.

Feel free to copy all your files to a CD-Rom and send us the disc, along with your masters.

Here's a list of the professional programs we use. Feel free to use either Mac or PC. Please use our templates. If you don't see a template that is needed, please contact us right away, and we'll get it sent right out.

• InDesign
• Illustrator
• CorelDRAW
• QuarkXPress
• Generic eps files with all font change to outlines

Please note: Photoshop is fine for editing images, but when used for typesetting, may cause blurry text.

Save yourself time and money by asking your graphic designer use the following checklist when submitting the artwork for your project.

• National Media Services templates used
• Completed graphics/approval & IPR Form included
• 1/8" bleed allowed beyond all trims
• Text & logos 1/8" inside all trims
• All images saved as CMYK or Grayscale
• Correct resolution for all images (300 dpi for color or grayscale and 1200 dpi for bitmap)
• Layout file printout included
• File directory printout included
• All required image files included on disc or upload
• All required font files included on disc or upload
• Log sheet matches all layout pieces

When preparing graphics:

• DON'T use text style buttons in Quark - they will not print.
• DON'T use images from web pages or inexpensive digital cameras - the resolution is only 72 dpi.
• DON'T use software that is not created for production quality graphics - eg. Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, CD Creator, Neato Disk Software, ClarisWorks, or Adobe PhotoDeluxe.

When our graphic design department gets your artwork, it checks to ensure sizing, bleed and trapping are correct before your project gets to printing stages. However, we expect you to have checked for other errors like correct names, spellings, track names, etc.