As a non-technical manager of a print based business, I am often confounded by the complexity of preparing images, photos, graphics, vectors, illustrations and all of the other various sources of artwork that goes onto printed clothes and gifts. Illustrators and designers can spend hours discussing the minutest details about the tiny differences between two extremely similar colour profiles, or the suitability of one file format over another. Then what do we regularly ask our customers to do, in the face of all this complexity? We ask them, our good customers, to prepare and upload their own graphics for us, to reduce the time input required and to facilitate an immediate purchase.

If you are going to get personalised clothes or gifts printed, there are a few good and simple guidelines to follow to ensure the best possible experience, and make sure you get the gift you want for your friends or family. The first, and the reason for more than a few thrown away mugs over the years, is to make sure that your image is not too heavy on the colour. If you have a lot of heavy colouring on the image, perhaps from a child's drawing made with liberal doses of a felt tip pen, it can look extremely heavy when printed directly from a scan or photo. Let your printer know, and they should be able to manage the colour for you.

Secondly, and I know it sounds a little obvious, but make sure your image is suitable for the shape of item that it is going to be printed on to. Long images won't look great if they are selected for a round clock face. Tall images won't fit on to mugs particularly well. There is a great range of image editing software out there, and while our gang in the studio use some of the more commercial packages I am a fan of open source, and use Gimp and F-Spot for most of my own graphics needs.

Thirdly, think about the colours you are choosing. Of course, you may be getting shirts printed for a fun night out, and the plan may indeed be for the group to look as outrageous as possible. If, on the other hand, you are buying a gift for someone, it might be advisable to avoid pink text on a red top. Likewise, if you are printing a photo onto an item of clothing, it is always worth considering the dominant colour on the picture before selecting the colour of garment! Not that my style gives me too much scope for comment here.

These might be a useful starter for ten when thinking about images being used for printing, and how to make sure what you get printed looks as attractive as possible. If you would like any more tips, or would like to get an image to me to pass under the nose of one of our designers for a quick opinion, visit http://www.imprint51.com