Common Mistakes Made When Ordering USB Sticks
Printed USB memory sticks remain one of the most popular promotional giveaways, with millions being handed out every year in the UK alone. Whilst the majority of companies do plan ahead, there will always be the case where time is short (sometimes even just hours to deadline when we receive the order), and with this in mind, avoiding these common mistakes will help greatly with getting your order printed and dispatched with no delays.
Poor Artwork
Garbage in garbage out is a phrase more synonymous with the computer industry but it’s equally appropriate when it comes to printing anything – if the artwork you supply is poor then the final printed product will be poor. We’re good and we have some fantastic state of the art printing equipment but even we can’t get a good print from an image grabbed from your website or cut and pasted from a Microsoft Office document.
Before you place your order it really helps if you could make sure you can get high quality vector artwork files in any of the following formats; .eps. .ai, .pdf, .cad or .swf.
Vector Files
We know that it can be hard to source high quality images, but sadly saving a .jpg or .gif file as a vector file won’t help – all you do is create a low quality image that will result in a low quality print.
Pantone References
If you need an exact representation of the colours in your logo then we’ll need you to supply the Pantone reference numbers for each colour. Without these the only option we have is to ‘best match’ the colours, which may not please your brand ambassador!
Please note that if you’re using our digital print service then the colours will always be ‘best match’ because that’s how digital printers work. If this is likely to be an issue, we can silk screen print the individual pantone colours for you - but we can’t do this on any of our Rush Services, so will delay the order slightly.
Lack of Availability
Please be available - once you have committed to an order for printed USB sticks there are several stages that your order will go through, and at each stage you (or a colleague) will need to be available. This is so you can sign off the proof, sign off any data that is being loaded onto the sticks, and finally to make payment. If you or another member of your team can’t be reached, it may delay things and you could miss your preferred delivery date.
Accessible Delivery Address
Please think about where your USB sticks are going to be delivered to. We ship 99% of our orders with UPS on a next day overnight service, but if you live in certain Post Codes this actually means two days. If for example you live in the Highlands or Islands or other remote parts of the UK then allow an extra day for delivery. Equally, make sure you double check the address you supply for delivery, offer a contact phone number and please make sure someone is going to be in on the delivery date to receive the printed USB sticks. If you need delivery on a Saturday then please let us know because our standard deliveries are Mon-Fri.
At USB2U we’re happy to oblige and turn around orders in whatever timeframe is needed, and we’re fortunate enough to be able to print (and engrave) in-house from our own stock. We also use our own design and print team to manage the whole process – keeping everything under one roof makes life that much easier, and of course we have full control over the quality of the sticks, the printing and any data-loading that might be needed.