Custom Embroidery Tips and Embroidery Hints for Custom Embroidered Caps, Aprons and Apparel from asapshirt.com

Customized embroidery on embroidered caps, sewn aprons, embroidered polo shirts requires different artwork than screen printing. We offer you tips and hints on how to give our apparel the best embroidery possible.

Generally speaking fonts below 20 pts. do not sew well. The more detailed the font the larger it needs to be. For small embroidery use a simple font like Arial. Fonts below 24 pts. generally lose the unique features of the font and appear as simple block lettering. Fonts should not be spaced closely together in order to prevent the letters from sewing on top of each other. Remember stay large, bold and simple for the best product.

COLORS: Designs should be reduced to spot colors. Most web art is rendered in hundreds of colors, shades, blends, etc. which is not useable for embroidery. Most embroidery machines can produce upto 9 thread colors. Most corporate logos contain 3 to 4 colors. When designing a logo an ILLUSTRATION should always be used over a photographic design. Small details below 2mm need to be omitted. Photo editing effects such as shadowing, color fading, blends and bleeding, metallic fibers and blurring are not useable for embroidery. A Photoshop or Corel rendered shadow may contain 32 shades of gray, imagine trying to produce this in thread.

OUTLINES of objects or text need to be a minimum size (1.5mm or thicker). Outlining small text or object is NOT recommended as it will not produce clearly.

SIZE of your finished logo, including text, should be limited to 3 - 4.5" wide for left-chest emblems on polo shirts or t-shirts. Cap embroidery is limited by the width of the front panel and the area from the visor to the crown. A cap logo should be no taller than 2.25" and about 3 - 4" wide.

ARTWORK FILES for embroidery should be sent to us as .eps (encapsulated postscript) file only. Web graphics (.gif, .jpg, jpeg) and Bitmaps will not be useable. Faxed graphics are not useable. Business cards are usually to small and distorted to be copied. email us with questions for send your design.