Art + Design
Hands-on assistance throughout the entire production process.
In-House Prepress Capability
In-House Prepress Capability Body
Producing a new line of packaging, or even switching suppliers, can be a multi-step process. Having prepress expertise on site reduces the number of steps required to make sure your packaging and labels look precisely the way you intended. Or even better.
Art & Design Buckets
If It’s Not Right, We Can Pause, Fix And Resume
In-house design, production, and testing allows us to address any issues immediately, without needing to take your production completely offline. Saving time, money, and inconvenience.
Cracking the Code
UPC codes may seem like an afterthought, but special care must be taken to ensure everything goes well — from design to warehouse, store shelf, and checkout till.
Everything On Our Plates
Our prepress department takes full advantage of the company’s In-house tooling capabilities to create precisely what’s required from scratch, or work within a wide of existing dielines to deliver exceptional results within modest budgets or limited production runs.
Time Warp
Our state-of-the-art Distortion Management Technology, and in-house printing and forming capabilities take the guesswork and headaches out of complex projects like combining heat-molded shrink sleeves with asymmetrical bottles. We have complete control—from initial design to finished roll stock—so everything lines up at your packing facility.
Breathe Easy
Our capacity to incorporate micro or macro perforation into your food packaging designs, together with production that measures up to the highest standards of IFS PACsecure certification, means you don’t need to hold your breath.
Art Submission Guidelines
File Types
We utilize state of the art equipment and software, including the latest Adobe CS applications integrated with an EskoArtwork PDF work flow. This means we are capable of receiving a wide variety of electronic file types and converting them to suit our parameters on press. Along with the electronic files, you should also supply us with color hard copy or PDF file to ensure that our output matches your intended results.
Note: You will be charged for changes that must be made to your files in order to meet our requirements.
* Please Note: Associated Labels and Packaging DOES NOT accept film or plates from outside sources.
Email + FTP
Small files – those less than 5 MB – may be emailed to info@associatedlp.com.
Files that are 5 MB and larger should be supplied on disk or uploaded using a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client application, such as Fetch or FileZilla.
Please use this login info to access our FTP server:
FTP: ftp://files.associatedlp.com
User: labelart
Pwd: labelart
Fonts
There are two ways to ensure that the text will display correctly on your supplied files:
Supply all fonts used in the files for us to load when working on your job.
Convert all text to outlines to ensure exact placement of all characters.
Note: due to copyright limitations, we advise that you use the second method (convert to outlines), though this makes it very difficult to edit should there be any revisions after the file has been submitted.
Postscript or OpenType fonts are preferred, but we are able to use other file formats, including Truetype. Ensure that all text is created in a vector drawing program (Adobe Illustrator) or page layout application (Indesign or QuarkXpress), and NOT in an image editing application (Adobe Photoshop). Typefaces with very fine serifs may require a 0.1pt stroke to improve their printability.
Minimums (general rule, dependent on typeface): Positive Type: 4 pt | Reverse Type: 5 pt
Images
Include all linked files, current and updated, that are placed in your artwork layout. All bitmap images, linked or embedded, must be supplied in CMYK format at a minimum of 300 ppi. In Photoshop, when you are converting from RGB to CMYK, use the North American Standard (SWOP Coated) setting at 20% dot gain. Please provide an original layered Photoshop document whenever possible.
Production
Do not trap the artwork. Our art department will trap the job to our specifications.
Include a minimum bleed of 1/16″ outside the die cut area. This is particularly important when an image (a linked or embedded Photoshop file) bleeds off the edge of the label. Also, allow 1/16″ type safe area inside the die line.
Line weights (strokes) are to be a min. of 0.007″ or 0.5 pt for isolated elements (strokes on a separation that are not supported by surrounding text or graphics).
Proofs
Approvals may be delivered via email using PDF files, or through WebCenter, our web-based, online approval system. We recommend using the latest version of Adobe Reader to view and print pdf files successfully. For information on colour match or digital proofs, please contact our sales department.
Food Label Guidelines
Follow these links to find important information and guidelines regarding food labelling.
