Just Buttons

Yes, we keep copies of all the buttons we produce on file. If you ever want to re-order simply place the size/shape/quantity of buttons you would like into your cart. On the last page of the order form is a notes section. In the notes section type in the PO of the order you want to re-run and we'll take care of the rest.

You can have as many designs as you like. However, we allow up to three designs for free. After that we charge a small set up fee per design. If you are designing or uploading multiple designs make sure you select the correct number of designs during the check out process, otherwise we will bill you separately for the additional designs. 

Just Buttons respects copyright laws, and strictly adheres to copyright policies. Please note that while we do our best to notify our customers when we are unable to reproduce a recognized copyright character or logo, we are not aware of every copyrighted image, and are unable to verify every order. All logos or copies received for use in producing products must be in compliance with all trademark, copyright, patent, or related laws or acts and are the responsibility of the customer. The customer assumes full responsibility for all claims and/or litigation arising from alleged infringement of licenses, patents or copyrights on any requested design or copy.

For the best results we suggest using one of our photoshop (PSD) templates. However, we can accept pretty much any file type you send us as long as it is at least 300DPI, the text has been saved as an outline or shape, and it's saved as CMYK. We are not responsible for color shifts if your design is sent to us as RGB. If you don't have photoshop you can download it's open source (free) equivalent, GIMP. Templates for Gimp,and installation tips can be found on buttonmakers.net blog.

Your computer monitor emits light and displays colors as RGB (Red, Green, Blue), by merging these colors, your monitor is able to produce all the colors in the visible spectrum. Ink and paper on the other hand absorbs or reflects light. Our printer prints CMYK, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. It is because of these differences that colors that you see on your monitor may not be reproducible when printed. When a color can not be reproduced, a color shift occurs. Which is why we ask that you set up all your artwork in CMYK. Setting up your art work in CMYK will limit color shifts. If you have questions, please feel free to CONTACT US.

DPI is actually a printing term. It refers to how many dots per inch a printer can print. In reality, the images you have on your screen are pixel based. So you need to make sure that your Pixels Per Inch (PPI) are high enough to print . PPI is how digital images are represented. The higher PPI the smoother and less grainy and image will be. Most images on the web are saved at 72 PPI so that they can be downloaded quickly. They will look great on your screen but when you go to print them, not so much. In oder for your buttons to print well you need to make sure that they are as large as the button you intend to make, and be saved at 300 PPI. For instance, if you are creating a 3” button, but your image is on 2” but had 300PPI, the image will have to be stretched to fit your button, which will result in your image being distorted.

 

300 DPI/PPI is by no means the maximum that we can print at. Our digital press can print upto 2400 x 2400 PPI. 

You spent hours searching the interweb for the perfect artwork for your buttons. Finally, while browsing Google images you come across the perfect picture. You right click, save it to your desktop, and quickly drop it into one of our BUTTON TEMPLATES. The image is a little too small, so you enlarge it just a bit and save. Proud of your new found graphic design skills you send off your button art confident that you've created the worlds greatest button.

A week later your buttons arrive, but they don't quite look like the design saw on your screen. They're  blurry, a little grainy and the colors are off. “Oh Man!' you think. “Their printer sucks!” or maybe you even go as far to think that the  button company sucks. The fact of the matter is the quality of your buttons is directly related to how you set them up.

 

As a first year design student I was given a project to create a newsletter. I followed the steps above but instead of sending my art out to a button company I had to get my art printed at kinkos. About a hundred dollars later I was handed a handful of printouts that looked like absolute garbage. I was confused. Everything had looked so perfect on the screen. What my professor had failed to explain was how to properly acquire and set my artwork for print.

Free Images?

Number one rule, don't steal other people's images. Yes, it's easy, but it violates copyright law, and really sucks for the person who created the art/photography. Just because an image comes up in Google image search does not mean it's free for you to use. If you don't have your own original artwork or photography look into websites like WWW.ISTOCK.COM or WWW.SHUTTERSTOCK.COM. These sites offer inexpensive royalty free images that you can use for your promotions and other marketing materials. If you plan on selling your buttons, you may have to buy an extended license.

Stock images usually give you a price structure, where you pay more for higher quality images. The reason most of the images you download off the Internet look blurry or grainy when printed is that they are optimized to download quickly. So when buying stock images always pay for the higher resolution or larger file. The rule of thumb is to make sure the image will be just a bit larger than the output you want. You can always shrink and image, you can't make it larger. For instance if you are designing a 1” button, make sure your image is larger than 1”.

What the heck is DPI?

Now you're probably wondering what is all this talk about DPI, and how do I set my artwork? Here's where things get a little confusing. DPI is actually a printing term. It refers to how many dots per inch a printer can print. In reality, the images you have on your screen are pixel based. So you need to make sure that your Pixels Per Inch (PPI) are high enough to print . PPI is how digital images are represented. The higher PPI the smoother and less grainy and image will be. Most images on the web are saved at 72 PPI so that they can be downloaded quickly. They will look great on your screen but when you go to print them, not so much. In order for your buttons to print well you need to make sure that they are as large as the button you intend to make, and be saved at 300 PPI. For instance, if you are creating a 3” button, but your image is on 2” but had 300PPI, the image will have to be stretched to fit your button, which will result in your image being distorted.

RGB vs CMYK

If all that isn't confusing enough, you also have to worry about RBG vs CMYK. Your computer monitor emits light and displays colors as RGB (Red, Green, Blue), by merging these colors, your monitor is able to produce all the colors in the visible spectrum. Ink and paper on the other hand absorbs or reflects light. Our printer prints CMYK, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. It is because of these differences that colors that you see on your monitor may not be reproducible when printed. When a color can not be reproduced, a color shift occurs. Which is why we ask that you set up all your artwork in CMYK. Setting up your art work in CMYK will limit color shifts.

Hopefully you are now less confused about setting up your button artwork than you were before, but if you still have questions, please feel free to CONTACT US.

Fonts Fonts Fonts

Typography is an art form that is often overlooked and under appreciated. A good type designer needs only letter forms to evoke an emotional response from the viewer. Now, most of us are not typographers. In this age of desktop publishing and free font archives we sometimes forget about the subtle nuances of organizing and modifying type. When designing buttons there are a few rules of typography to keep in mind.

 

 

Type Color and Background Color

You want the messaging of your buttons to stand out. Make sure that the color of your type contrasts with your background. Don't put pink type on a red background, it will get lost. If you really want to keep the colors of your background and type close, try outlining the type or adding a glow or drop shadow. Remember when choosing the colors for your fonts and backgrounds that you are viewing them in RGB, and when they get printed in CMYK they may not appear to contrast nearly as much.

Choosing the Right Font

When designing your button take into consideration the actual size of the finished product. It's easy to forget that a one inch button is only about the size of a quarter especially when you're viewing it on a 27” monitor which displays the design 200-400 times bigger than it will print. That tiny 3 point type you added will not be visible or printable. On smaller buttons bold San-serifed fonts with clean lines are much more readable than italicized, wispy serifed display fonts. The cleaner the font the better.

 

Although we use high quality digital printing press capable of printing up to 2400x2400 DPI, we can't make magic happen. Always make a test print of your button design at home to be sure the fonts make sense when printed. What you see on your screen may not always translate well into print. To be sure your type is readable when printed try not to use a type size smaller than 5 points.

Saving your Text

If you're saving your artwork as a .jpg this does not apply to you, but if you're working with a layered file time like PSD it does.There are thousands and thousands of fonts in existence for both MACs and PCs, and we don't have them all. When digital art is supplied to us with missing fonts, it makes processing your order problematic. You picked your fonts for a reason and don't need us making substitutions. You have two choices, embed your fonts into your graphic, or convert them to outlines. Most graphic design software can embed/create outlines relatively painlessly. If you need help figuring your software out, don't hesitate to contact us

Download one of the templates from our button templates page.  We recommend you use our Photoshop templates. If you do not have Adobe Photoshop, you can download a free 30-day trial version from their site: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop or you can download GIMP, an open source (free) image editor. Open Office also offers an open source graphics program as well,  which you can download here.  Button templates for GIMP can be found onbuttonmakers.net blog.

When creating your design, you will want to fit everything you want to appear on the face of the button inside the inner circle.The area from the inner circle to the outer circle is the "bleed" area. This is what will wrap around the side of the button. Your design or background color should extend into the bleed area. You have the option of including your myspace, facebook, and/or web address in the bleed area. The bleed area is not visible from the face of the button. Any text you place in this area will be printed on the outer rim of the button not on the face.

What file-types do you accept?
We can accept pretty much any file type you send us. The most convenient file types are PSD, PDF, PNG, or high-quality JPGs. For the best results we suggest using one of our templates above. We ask that the designs you send us are ready to print to the best of your ability. If we have a problem with your files we will email you. Please make sure that you convert all your text to paths, and either save your file as a layerd file or turn off the guides.

A few tips:
Our templates are setup for 300 DPI (dots per inch) in order to provide you with the best quality buttons possible. The images that you use for your buttons need to be 300 DPI or they need to fit well in the template design/bleed edges. If the images start out smaller than our template (and must be enlarged to fit) they will not produce good quality buttons. Low quality images make for bad buttons. In other words, don't enlarge images to fit in the template. Our digital printing press is capeable of printing at 2400x2400 DPI. Feel free to send us higher resolution artwork!

Fonts/Colors
Please remember that what you see on your screen is in most cases larger than what your button will be in real life. Do not use small thin fonts. They will NOT print well. Do not use saturated colors on top of one another, for instance, black type on a purple button.  

Spell Check Your Design
Make sure you have spell checked your design. We do not proof read your design. We will print your design EXACTLY how you send it to us. We will not refund or reprint orders because of typos or misspellings. 

Still need help?
If all this talk about templates and bleed areas and resolution confuses you, consider requesting our design services. For a flat fee of $20 per design used, we will help you create a design for your buttons. Contact us for more information.

Yes, for most designs we charge a flat fee of $20. This includes us laying our your text and sourcing or creating graphics for you. In some cases the changes our clients need are so small that we also offer a Basic Design fee of $5.  If you have questions about our services, please do not hesitiate to contact us.  Please be as specific as possilbe when describing what you would like your button to look like. Also, please give us your time line. Custom design work is a time consuming process and we like to do it right!

Yes, during the check our process you will have the option of requesting a digital proof. Simply add the digital proof service to your order. We DO NOT charge for this service! 

If you have a print ready design, you do not need to use our custom button designer software. All you have to do is navigate to the size and shape of the buttons you would like to order, add the total number of buttons you would like to your cart.  During the ordering process you will be prompted to upload your design(s).  Please make sure that the design you are uploading adhears to our GRAPHIC GUIDELINES. 

We have a number of custom button templates avaialable for download.  We currently have templates available in PSD, PNG, and EPS formats.  If you require a different format please do not hesitate to contact us.