Printed PP bags: preparing artwork for a woven bag

To put your brand on printed PP bags, prepare a simple, bold design drawn at the real size of the bag: a few solid colours, large type and strong contrast with the fabric. Woven polypropylene is a coarse surface on which fine detail and small text do not survive. Send the file with the bag size and the quantity, and check the confirmed version before you approve it.

Why a printed bag earns its cost

Print adds a cost, so it should work for you. A printed bag is packaging and advertisement at once: it travels from the filling line to the wholesaler, the shop and the buyer’s storeroom with your name on it. It also tells one product or grade from another in a warehouse, with no label to fall off.

Key definitions

• Artwork (print file): the finished design, in a file the printer can work from.
• Print area: the part of the flat bag that can carry print, normally clear of the sewn bottom, the top and the side edges.
• Ground colour: the colour of the fabric behind the print.
• Registration: how accurately the colours of a design line up with one another when each is printed in turn.
• Proof: the version of the design that a supplier returns for your approval before production.

What buyers usually put on a bag

Al-Sharq Plastic Manufacturing Company, an Egyptian maker of polypropylene (PP) woven bags, lists six things buyers usually print on its printed bag page:

Element on the bag	What to supply	Common mistake
Brand name and logo	A vector drawing, with its colours named	A logo copied from a website or a photo, blurred at bag size
Product name and grade	The exact wording in each language	Grades told apart only by small text
Net weight	The figure and its unit	A figure too small to find at a glance
Producer’s name, address and contact details	The exact text	Small, light type that fills in on the weave
Handling and storage marks	Simple, solid symbols	Detailed pictograms reduced to a blot
Text in more than one language	Each language checked by a native reader	Arabic letters separated or reversed in a file opened elsewhere

What must appear, and in which language, depends on the product and the market: check the labelling rules of the country where the goods are sold before you settle the wording. Give the brand the most room, then the product name and grade, then the net weight.

How the woven surface affects a design

What follows is general knowledge, not a description of any one factory’s equipment. The fabric is woven from flat tapes on circular looms, as the factory page shows, so the ground has a visible texture that breaks up anything finer than itself. Each colour is normally printed separately, and the fabric can shift slightly between colours. Four rules follow:

• Bold shapes, large type. Solid logos, thick strokes and heavy letterforms hold. Hairlines and small, light text break up or fill in.
• Few solid colours. Photographs, gradients and soft shadows rely on fine dots that a coarse weave does not hold.
• Strong contrast. Dark print on a light ground reads from a distance. Pale ink on white fabric disappears.
• Room between colours. Where two colours must meet exactly, a small error in registration shows.

White or coloured fabric as the ground

The fabric is the background of the design, so choose it before the print colours. Al-Sharq supplies printed bags on white or coloured fabric. White fabric is the standard: it shows a printed brand clearly and leaves the widest choice of print colours. Coloured fabric can match a brand colour or mark a grade, but it can change how an ink looks on top of it, so keep to print colours that contrast strongly with it.

Coloured stripes are not print. Coloured tapes are loaded on the loom and woven in, so the stripes are part of the fabric and run the length of the bag. Leave them out of the print file, specify them with the fabric and keep text and logos clear of them.

Preparing and sending artwork, step by step

1. Fix the bag first. Settle the flat width and length and the fabric colour: the print area and the ground follow from them.
2. Collect the wording. Write out every line in each language, exactly as it should appear on the bag.
3. Draw at full size. Work on an outline of the flat bag, clear of the bottom seam, the top and the side edges. A filled bag is round, so put the brand in the middle of the face.
4. Make a clean file. Supply a vector file, typically a PDF from a drawing program, not a photo or a screenshot. Convert all text to outlines, and name each colour by a reference from a colour-matching system or a physical sample, not by how it looks on a screen.
5. Proofread on paper. Print the design at full size and step back several paces: what you cannot read is too small. Have each language read by someone who knows it, and check every figure.
6. Send it, then check what comes back. Compare the confirmed version with your file line by line before you approve it, and keep the approved file for repeat orders.

What to send Al-Sharq

Send Al-Sharq the artwork with the bag size and the quantity, and Al-Sharq confirms it with you. A quotation needs six details, listed on the products page: size, contents and weight per bag, fabric colour, print, quantity and destination.

How many colours can be printed, whether both faces of the bag can carry print and which file formats are preferred are for the supplier to say. Ask in the same message, through the contact page.