Product Creation Services | Virtual Products - Image Assets, Fonts and Guidelines
Overview
This article provides guidelines for the image assets and information that we request as part of our Virtuals product creation service.
For information on what Virtual products are and whether they are suitable for your needs, please see this article
Please note that this article is supplementary to the Virtual Products - Production Spreadsheet article so please ensure you review both articles together.
There are slightly different requirements depending on the type of Virtual product that is being created, we will deal with the two most common types of Virtual in this article which are:
Artwork Only
If you simply have a piece of design artwork that you wish to apply to one or more Blank products and the customer purchases this "as seen" then Artwork only products are what you require.
Products of this type are commonly referred to in the print industry as Print on Demand
Example of a Star wars branded print on demand T-Shirt. The garment colours are automatically pulled through from the Fulfiller's Blank Product.
Refer to the Blank product that you are designing your Virtual product for and create artwork to match the print specification of the Blank. Using this approach gives you the most reliable results.
Personalised Predesign products
If your intention is to combine a piece of design artwork with some form of text or image personalisation that the customer provides, then it's a Personalised Predesign products that you require.
Example of a Star wars branded personalised predesign cushion. The customer is able to add their own custom text and select its colour.
What kind of options do I have with the setup of my personlised predesign products?
If you are new to personalised products it's understandable that you may be unsure as to what you are able to do with them. You may have seen product setups on our demo site Product Personalisation Apps that you may wish to emulate, or perhaps on a marketplace or website out in the wild?
The one bit of advice we would give after many years working with and advising clients on their products would be to think simple. Whilst there is a temptation to include lots of features on a single product, it may be overkill and actually create a confusing user experience for your customers.
Ultimately you want as few barriers as possible between the customer and them adding to cart. Let your design or artwork do the heavy lifting and include personalisation to add the icing to the cake.
If you have any queries about what is possible or the best product setup for your particular needs, please raise any questions with our staff in the Zoho desk ticket for the production job and they will be happy to give you the benefit of our experience.
One thing worth considering if you are designing artwork specifically to incorporate text personalisation, is our knowledge base article with handy tips on things to avoid and bear in mind: https://support.custom-gateway.com/portal/en/kb/articles/tips-for-setting-personalised-text
Here are some example questions to ask yourself about your Virtual products which will help you in completing our production spreadsheet and providing us with instruction of the setup you want.
Text
- How many text fields are required and where should they be positioned?
- Should the text fields be single line or multi-line text fields?
- What's the maximum number of characters that should be available to the user for each text field?
- What's the maximum number of lines if the text field is multi-line
- Does the text input need to be synchronised between multiple text fields?
- What font should be used for each text field?
- Should the user be able to select from a range of fonts?
- What is the default colour user for each text field?
- Should the user be able to select from a range of colours?
- Is the text size fixed or should it use auto-fit or a range of presets
If you have no specific font requirements, we recommend the use of Google fonts as they are thoroughly tested to be websafe.
Fonts can be a complicated element of product setup as text behaviour (partricuarly alignment, character and line spacing) is governed
by the metrics within the font file itself which are outside the control of our platform.
We have a detailed article on font compatibility which highlights areas to be aware of:
Images
- How many unique pieces of artwork do you require on the Virtual product?
- Is the design fixed or should the user be able to select from various options in a gallery?
- Can the user upload their own image? If yes, is that image masked?
When uploading files to your One Driver folder, please include all necessary assets eg: artwork files, gallery images, font files, mask files.
Example predesigned product
This example features a gallery of images that allow the user to select their design. On the following screen they also have the ability to input their personalised text and choose from a selection of four fonts. The text has a limit of 12 characters and is set to auto-resize.
The assets that we would need to be provided with to produce this product are the image files for the gallery and also the font files to install to our platform so that they can be set against the product. That is unless the fonts have already been installed either a) to our Public font group or b) your company font group on a previous occasion. We would also need to know that a single text input field was required with a character limit of 12, its location and that the text should automatically resize to fit the given area.
Important note: If you are planning to apply design artwork to multiple print areas of the Blank Product eg: Front, Back
Please make sure that the individual artwork files are identified accordingly.
Please also make sure that you detail the personalisation necessary for each print area in the spreadsheet. For instance, if tthere is a different font required for each side of the product we will need each of those font files. We will also need to know whether each input should be unique or whether you would like the text input to be synchronised to both areas for example.
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