Want to provide us with your own custom designs? Read this first!
If you choose to create your own custom design, please make sure to read this article carefully before placing your order.
Design can be a very exciting task. You get to pick some amazing colours, some amazing patterns, to play around in Illustrator to come up with tons of super cool design concepts! This is one of the reasons why we created Swift Paintball in the first place!
However, design can be a tricky and pretty technical task, especially when it comes to preparing a digital design for printing. This is why it’s very important to do your due diligence and to prepare your files properly for printing in order to avoid any issues or surprises.
By taking on the design task on your own, you are taking on the responsibility of handling the whole design process, from ideation to printing preparation.
As our brand policy clearly states, we do not offer any refunds for custom orders, so it's very important that you do your due diligence before sending us your final files. When we receive your final, print-ready files, we will simply forward them to our production partners, without altering or "fixing" them in any way.
With that said, here are a few things to keep in mind when preparing your design for printing:
1) Your design file must be set in CMYK colour mode.
2) Your file must be saved in a legacy .ai format.
3) Your files must be packaged (file>package).
4) All the fonts used in the designs must be outlines or expanded.
5) You must colour match every single colour code in your design to the equivalent colour code found on the printed colour book provided by our production partners. Please Contact Us to order your colour book.
6) You must make sure that no important visual elements (such as logos, names, numbers) overlap the stitching margins. Stitching margins are the inner guidelines on our Illustrator product templates.
7) Plan for 2 to 4 extra weeks in your design process for any potential issues in your printing files that may need to be fixed.
8) Order a test print to ensure that the colours and design come out exactly as you want them to before placing a bulk order. Please Contact Us to learn more about test prints.
9) Do not assume that what you see on screen is what you will get. Every digital display, unless professionally calibrated, has its own colour profile and tint, and so does every single printer. Every human also perceives light (and thus colour) slightly differently. Every fabric responds differently to sublimation and display colours slightly differently.
NOTE: It's physically impossible for us to guarantee a perfect colour match, even if you follow an extremely thorough colour matching process. The best we can do is to minimize the risk of colour discrepancy as much as possible.
If you choose to create a custom design on your own, we do not take responsibility for how your design will come out of the factory. We will simply forward your print-ready files to our production partners and ensure that it is manufactured and shipped out to you.
Please note that we do still offer free replacements on all defective units. Providing us with your own design does not conflict with this policy. Please note however that we do not consider colour discrepancy a production defect in this context.
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Understanding Colour Matching
Colour matching is a very tricky task that every designer has to go through in order to ensure colour accuracy when going from a digital design to a physical (printed) design. As mentioned above:
"Every digital display, unless professionally calibrated, has its own colour profile and tint, and so does every single printer. Every human also perceives light (and thus colour) slightly differently. Every fabric responds differently to sublimation and thus displays colours slightly differently."
When you create a design yourself, there are a minimum of 7 levels of colour discrepancy that are possible, as detailed below:
Level 1 - Your eyes perceive colour in their own unique way. Many issues related to vision may affect the way you perceive colour, such as colour blindness for example. Tiredness or extended time periods in front of a digital display may also affect the way your eyes perceive colours.
Level 2 - Your digital display(s) (computer, tablet or mobile device) - unless professionally calibrated - display colour in their own unique way.
Level 3 - Our team's displays - which are not all professionally calibrated.
Level 4 - Our eyes, just like yours, each perceive colour in their own unique way.
Level 5 - Our Production Partner's displays - which are not all professionally calibrated.
Level 6 - Our Production Partner's multiple printers - which each have their own unique colour profile.
Level 7 - Our Production Partner's eyes, which just like yours and ours, each perceive colour in their own unique way.
When using one of Swift Paintball's custom design services, our production partners make sure to use a calibrated screen and a printed colour book to manually match every single colour displayed digitally to a physical swatch. They then apply the exact colour code of that swatch to the digital design. This process minimizes the potential colour discrepancy to only 2 levels, as detailed below:
Level 1 - Your eyes perceive colour in their own unique way.
Level 2 - Your digital display(s) (computer, tablet or mobile device) - unless professionally calibrated - display colour in their own unique way.
Level 3 to 7 do not apply to this workflow as the production partner ensures the colour matching. Our team does not handle colour matching in any way. What you approve is what we send to the production partner for printing preparation, which includes colour matching.
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If you do not feel comfortable or skilled enough to design your own jersey, we offer custom design services for every single one of our products, as well as other complementary design services, such as Logo Design and Visual Assets for Esports Athletes and much more. Please contact us to learn more or to get started on your custom design today.