Vinyl Banners: Safe Zone for Printing

How to Design Vinyl Banners: Keep Images, Text & Logos in the Safe Zone

By Jana Schaumburg, Marketing Coordinator

Vinyl Banners: Banner Size, Hem Line, Grommets and Safe Zone

 Designer Tip #42: Keep images, logos & text away from the edge of the banner
When you are designing your vinyl banners, it is important that you keep all of your important text, logos and images away from the edge of the banner.

Banner Size: 
The finished size is the printed size of your banner. If you want a 3' x 6' vinyl banner, you should set your artwork size to a 3x6 proportion. Your background image should extend all the way to the edge of the banner. You will not need to add any bleeds. We will add the hems and grommet marks to the file for printing.

Banner with Hems and Grommets

Hem Line:
Vinyl banners are finished with heat welded hems and grommets. The hem line is approximately one inch of the vinyl banner that is folded over and welded together. The hem line is a little thicker than the rest of the banner because there is twice as much material there.

Grommets:
Grommets are placed every 2-4 feet around the banner perimeter. They are used to help hang the banner.

Safe Zone:
The safe zone is the area on the inside of the banner that will not have any hems or grommets on it. We recommend leaving at least two inches around the edge of the banner that doesn't have any text, logos or important information on it. This will prevent a hem or grommet from going through the information.

When your file is ready, click here to upload your artwork.

Purple CMYK Color Mixes for Printing Banners

List of Common Purple CMYK Colors for Banner Printing

Vinyl banners are digitally printed in full color using the CMYK color mix. Some colors will look good on your computer screen, but they will print differently. Purple is often a difficult color to print correctly, so we recommend using one of the color mixes below when you design your files in Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop.

Designer Tip: Be sure you're in the CMYK color mode, not the RGB color mode

Purple CMYK Colors for Digitally Printed Banners

Purple CMYK Color Mixes: 76-99-0-0, 78-94-0-0, 48-70-0-0, 69-100-1-5, 73-98-0-3, 84-100-0-4

Click here to get started on your full color vinyl banner

Gold CMYK Color Mixes for Printing Banners

List of Common Gold CMYK Colors for Banner Printing

Vinyl banners are digitally printed in full color using the CMYK color mix. Some colors will look good on your computer screen, but they will print differently. Gold is one of the trickiest colors to get right for digitally printed banners, so we've put together some of the common gold color mixes that print correctly. We recommend using one of the color mixes below when you design your files in Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop.
Designer Tip: Be sure you're in the CMYK color mode, not the RGB color mode

Gold CMYK Colors for Digitally Printed Banners

Gold CMYK Color Mixes: 0-32-66-0, 7-55-100-34, 0-27-100-0, 0-35-70-0, 5-46-100-21, 3-36-100-6, 0-45-69-0

Click here for more common CMYK color mixes

Click here to get started on your full color vinyl banner

Maroon CMYK Colors for Printing Banners

List of Common Maroon CMYK Colors for Banner Printing

Maroon is one of the trickiest colors to print on vinyl banners. We put together a list of some common maroon CMYK color mixes that work well for vinyl banner printing. We recommend using one of these maroon color mixes when you design your files in Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop.

Maroon CMYK Color Mixes for Banner Printing

Click here for more common CMYK color mixes

Click here to get started on your full color vinyl banner

How to Convert Text to Outlines for Printing

Step by Step Instructions on How to Convert Adobe Illustrator Text to Outlines for Print

If you want your artwork file to print properly as a banner, it is essential that you have your fonts converted to outlines. If you do not submit files with the text converted, your font will be converted to a default font. When you convert your text to outlines, your text turns into a vector image. The text is no longer editable.

Designer Tip: Always keep a copy of your original file in case you need to make edits later

Once you have designed your artwork in Adobe Illustrator and you are ready, select all of the text. You can tell your text is still a font because it will be underlined.

Text as a Font will be Underlined