5 Tips for Creating Great Products
Zazzle offers hundreds of customisable products, each requiring different design shapes and sizes. There are several steps you can take to ensure your designs fit properly on your products, and we’ve compiled a few tips on how to do just that. Take a look at some of the design tool functions that can help you optimise your designs!
#1. Make sure your design is not covered by the product shape.
Double-check the placement of your design when adding it to your product(s) to ensure it’s not obscured by the shape of the product. You can use different functions like fit and fill and arrow keys to adjust your design to where you want it to be or, if you are using mobile, you can drag the image and stretch or shrink it by zooming in or out when it is selected. Check out our Design for the Product blog post for excellent examples of designs that fit well with products.
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#2. Make sure your image fits within the safe print area.
Check your safe print areas by clicking “Settings”->”Show Guidelines", located at the bottom of the design tool. Ensure your design fits within the green dotted line, also known as the safe line. Any part of the image outside this area might be cut off when printed on the product, so always verify that your image stays within the lines.
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#3. Don’t leave unwanted white space on your product.
Leaving white or empty space on a product might make the design appear unfinished. Try using the “fill” function or add a background colour to make the design look more complete.
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#4. Review your design on all styles available for the product.
Examine all the style options for the product you are designing, and ensure your image fits and looks good on each of them. For example, for a phone case, you can view the ‘Device Type’ under the ‘Style Options’ menu and see how your design fits on each one.
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#5. Do not ignore the message about your image coming out blurry or pixelated.
No one wants their designs to appear blurry, which is why we recommend using the highest resolution possible for your images and designs – preferably 300 dpi or higher. If you don’t have a high-resolution image, you can try using the size image you have, but do not ignore the warning that your image size is too small, as you wouldn’t want your design to appear pixelated or unclear to your customers.
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