Advice for making art prints/merch?

Posted 14 days, 3 hours ago by corvidology

hello! seeking advice regarding making art prints and merch in general. I am going to be vending at my first convention this fall! I am so excited, but so so very unprepared.

i wanted to make art prints. what's the best size to work at digitally to make them universally sized correctly so I can print them at different sizes without worrying about warping them? what sizes are art prints typically? ie I work at a large size and need to make smaller prints.

also, what's some general advice regarding vending at conventions? what do you find sells the best? what's one thing you wish you knew before doing a con that you'd recommend?

Pepperly

https://howtobeaconartist.tumblr.com/ Alll sorts of resources here.

I live in the US and I personally see 11x17, 8x11 (rarely), and postcard 4x6/5x7 prints for posters and things. You want AT LEAST 300dpi and +.25 on each side of whatever your target paper is. There is nothing wrong with doing an 11.5x17.5 image and resizing to just a postcard print; it'll still be very clear. You want that wiggle room for cropping/alternates, and also overprinting.

Everything else is "find out your target size" and if it's small, do 600dpi (it's way better to scale down than scale up) with a little bit of crop/wiggle room. Charms, buttons, and other small printables will almost always have a template file if you're getting them printed wherever. You can also find templates for basically any printable size image, really, with safe zones / crop marks that will help with the above cropping, too.

corvidology

Pepperly

tysm for the link! I will definitely look over that when I have the time.

Thanks for the advice as well!