Vector do's and don'ts

The following tips were put together to help you make design choices, organize your files, and submit vector art that we can license to customers. There are no hard-fast rules, but these do’s and don’ts provide some good guidelines at each stage.

Do: Avoid text unless it’s necessary to your composition, because buyers may need to select a substitute font.

Do: Keep your use of auto trace to a minimum.

Don’t: Add raster images (JPEGs) to your vector files or rasterize any elements.

Don’t: Incorporate your signature or name into the artwork.

Do: Use the right number of anchor points—not so many that a shape gets jagged and not so few that the curves look unnatural or flat.

Do: Close paths on all filled shapes.

Do: Consider using a variety of stroke weights in your image.

Tip: Check out Illustrator Learn & Support for tutorials on topics ranging from making images with shapes to using dynamic symbols.

Do: Make sure that your artboard is at least 15 MP.

Do: Label your layers.

Do: Delete hidden and empty layers.

Do: Delete unused panel items.

Do: Unlock all layers and sublayers.

Do: Make sure all your artwork is on one artboard and delete anything outside the artboard boundaries. 

Do: Upload color variations of complex artworks. This can include color variations or different arrangement of elements. See example above.

Don’t: Upload the same image with different stroke types, or background color.

Don’t: Upload the same image with different shadows, effects, or flipped images.

Do: To make sure that your gradients have maintained their integrity and there are no raster images, view your file in outline mode.

Do: To make sure your image doesn’t include any stray anchor points or badly joined lines, zoom in to 100% or closer and look around the image.

Do: Submit release forms for any reference work used or recognizable people or property even if the recognizable person is you or the property is yours.