This article will help you transition your winning design to a more functional version that will work well with our systems and guidelines. The following covers the basics for setting up the front of cards for most categories, as a way to familiarize yourself with the Minted design process. It also includes links to other articles to provide you with more information.
Colorspace:
To ensure your design looks as accurate as possible, please set your CMYK colorspace in Illustrator to U.S. Web Uncoated v2 (Edit > Color Settings). While not necessary to design in this colorspace, doing so ensures your template will more closely match what is previewed on-site and to the actual print itself.
(Note: due to the nature of our preview and printing process, designs may not 100% match the original Illustrator file.)
For more details, check out our other article on color profiles: Adobe color discrepancy issue on some files.
Blending modes:
Due to the nature of our preview generation process, we encourage artists to use only the following blending modes in their artwork: Normal, Multiply, and Lighten. Blending modes outside these three will often cause the design to appear discolored in our customizer (when compared to the original), and customers may believe their print is incorrect.
Arranging Content in Illustrator:
When file requests are sent out, we provide a basic layer setup in the Illustrator templates for you to use. Separating the content into the appropriate layers will increase the likelihood of your design being processed and launched quickly.
In addition to assigning content to the correct layers, here are a few other design tips that can also make the production process smoother:
- Ensure artwork is not grouped with text or photos
- Avoid flattening artwork, if possible, to provide more customization options during the proofing process
- Avoid rasterizing the foil texture with digital artwork or clipping masks
- Simplify vector artwork if possible (fewer vertices = fewer issues during production)
- Keep the text editable whenever possible
- Remove/delete any unnecessary artwork from the file in order to reduce the overall file size
For more details on how where to place specific content in templates, see the following articles:
Guidelines and Bleed:
Our templates include a few different guides to indicate where to safely include certain content. If background artwork is meant to be at the edge of the final card, it should extend to the edge of the artboard (the 0.1” Bleed shown below). Keep in mind that elements that go all the way to the edge will not be seen by the customer on their final card, but doing so ensures no gaps of white background show.
The first inner blue border (Cut Line) indicates where the final cut of the card will be. Artwork on the inside of this guide will almost always show on the final card, barring any shifting during the printing process.
The second inner blue border (Safety) indicates the area that the text should not extend past. Doing so makes sure that no text gets cut off during trimming.
Basic Photo Setup:
Photos should be on their own layer, and each one should be placed inside a single clipping mask. Place a single rectangle the size of your photo shape on top of your photo, and go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make to crop to your desired photo size. Make sure to place this Clip Group on the photo layer when done so it works properly in our customizer.
If you would like to include a gradient to improve text legibility over photos for certain colorways, please feel free to review this section on Using Minted Gradients.
Basic Text Box Setup:
Text boxes should contain fully editable text whenever possible. This allows the customer to have the best experience by allowing them to fully customize their card. However, there are some limitations to what can be editable. Fonts with glyphs and special characters can often cause problems with the customizer, and therefore should be outlined. Below is an example of a text box that is editable when it doesn’t have glyphs, and outlined when it does:
For more details, see Why is the text on my design non-editable?
Movable vs. non-movable artwork:
If there are any pieces of art that you would like customers to be able to move around during customization, please place them in the Movable layer in the template. If there are pieces of artwork that belong in the foreground, but you would like them to remain where they are in the design, please place them in the Foreground section. Please note that if foil is included in the design, it will always be pressed over any artwork, so bear that in mind when designing. Foil shapes cannot be movable.
Example of designs with a moveable element:
-MIN-DG3-CVD (V-day stickers by Creo Study)
-MIN-CQL-CVD (Heart Glasses by Jessie Steury)
-MIN-ZOD-STD (A Touch of Light by Maria Hilas-Louie)
Die-Cut:
Die-cuts are shapes your card will be cut into that can be selected by the customer. Our team will often automatically select the shapes that fit best with your design (i.e. choosing shapes that compliment the design and do not cut off a majority of the artwork).
If you would like to ensure certain elements of your design will be included regardless of which die cut is selected by the customer, it is recommended that you enable the Die Cut shapes - use to preview your design! (front) layer in the Background layer in the templates provided. This layer includes all current shapes allowed for that orientation.
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