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When will my order arrive?

From the time of proof approval, your job will be in your hands after the production time required to print (indicated above) plus the time required for shipping. More details..

* You can select shipping options and calculate costs in your shopping cart.

Product Options Explained
Paper/Material:
We offer Ink jet prints on matte or glossy finish paper or adhesive-backed vinyl with a satin laminate. When selecting the paper type that’s right for your project, there are a few things you need to consider:
Glossy or Matte? Depends on where your poster will be displayed.
When choosing a matte or glossy finish on your paper (or laminate) the primary concern is the lighting where your event or presentation will take place.
If there is bright, direct lighting (e.g. spotlights), a glossy finish may cause unwanted reflections that can make your images difficult to see. Not good!
However, if the overhead lighting is diffuse (e.g. fluorescent fixtures), a glossy finish will work fine and make your visuals pop (this works particularly well with product shots where you want the imagery to stand out).
Therefore, if you’re not sure what the lighting environment will be like where you’re presenting, itâ’s safest to choose a matte or satin (semi-gloss) finish for your paper and/or lamination.
When would I use Adhesive Vinyl?
Adhesive vinyl prints sometimes referred to by the generic term “Scotch Prints”, which actually refers to the trade name of a commonly used adhesive-vinyl material made by 3M® are great for covering large surfaces with a graphic mural. Common applications for adhesive vinyl include in-store/restaurant wall coverings, construction barricade graphics, floor graphics, vehicle wraps and exterior window displays. While each ink jet print has a maximum size of 60” x 120”, larger images can be tiled over multiple panels to create enormous murals.
Our adhesive vinyl prints come with a satin-finish lamination which is perfect for all kinds of ambient lighting and adds protection against UV fading, surface damage, and excessive moisture.
For big installations (e.g. multi-panel murals), it is recommended that you use a professional installer, as this can be a very tricky job. Surfaces need to be perfectly clean and smooth prior to installation and similar to hanging wallpaper, aligning giant sticky sheets that need to appear seamless is not a pretty do it yourself project.
Mounting:
We offer a solid set of basic mounting options that cover pretty much any relevant application for a mounted poster.
Do I need to mount my poster?
It depends upon how you will use your poster. If you’re printing a long thin flow chart that you will be using once and pinning to a bulletin board, a raw unfinished print is fine.
You need to mount a poster when it needs to be rigid (e.g. a lobby easel or table top).
If you’re creating a small banner that you need to roll, ship to a tradeshow in a tube and then stick onto a pop-up display using velcro, you need to use 2-sided lamination (encapsulation) but not mounting (it’s really hard to roll gator board into a shipping tube) I know, I’ve tried.
What mounting material should I choose for my posters? The type of mounting substrate you select depends upon three inter-related factors; size, usage and of course, budget.
Illustration Board (basically heavy duty smooth cardboard) can be used for
posters up to 30” x 40” Illustration board is the thinnest and least expensive option. It is also the least durable and can damage easily in shipping or if dropped on a corner.
1/4” Foam Core is the best compromise between all three factors, but it is not recommended for posters larger than 30” x 40”, as it tends to bow like a giant corn chip (not desirable, unless of course you’re doing a sales pitch to Frito-Lay) and your corners will still dent if dropped.
3/16” Gator Board is the least expensive, yet most durable, choice for mounting posters larger than 30” x 40”. Gator board is rigid and durable and good for situations where you will use your poster multiple times.
1/2” gator board or 3mm Sintra are the most durable and elegant choices when you start getting really big (we mount up to 60” x 96”). However, they do add weight to shipping and the budget.
Both foam core and gator board come in black or white color options. Depending upon the nature of your design, (does it have a black or very dark background bleed?), a black-colored mounting substrate can offer an elegant touch).
Lamination:
We offer two kinds of lamination: 1-Sided (overlamination) and 2-Sided (encapsulation).
Should I laminate my poster? *
If you are only going to use your posters once or twice, you probably don’t need to laminate your posters. Remember, however, that ink jet prints are not waterproof, so if Bill from accounting trips while carrying a Diet Coke®, your poster will quickly become an attractive watercolor abstract, more akin to a Kandinsky than the comparative productivity bar chart it was intended to be.
1-sided lamination is available only in addition to mounting when you need to protect the poster’s surface and 2-sided lamination is used as an alternative to mounting when you need your poster to be both rollable and durable. Both kinds of lamination are available in glossy, luster or dull (consider your room lighting when you choose a finish see Glossy or Matte? above).
What kind of proof do I need?
*PDF soft proofs are good for ensuring that all the required content (fonts, logos, images, etc.) is present and that the relative positioning of all the elements in the poster is correct. However, PDF proofs cannot completely accurately predict a color match. If your project is not color critical, you should be ok with a PDF proof.
A 25% Swatch section of the full size image works well for color critical situations, such as corporate/product ID, flesh tones, or fine-art reproduction. A swatch section is an accurate predictor of color and shows how crisp your images will look at full-size, because is it is indeed a piece of a full-sized reproduction. This is a good way to proof in most situations.
A Full size raw proof is best when you’re going to be reproducing many multiples of the same image (e.g. 50 sets of 1 poster). In this case, nothing beats a raw (unfinished) full-sized proof. This gives you an actual sample of the complete image at 100% blow-up size, the large-format equivalent to a press proof.
Process:
Ink Jet posters are printed by precisely spraying a combination of CMYK inks directly onto a variety of papers and other substrates, including adhesive backed vinyl.
Still have questions? Call and ask for Dan our large format expert.