"My Logo Is Only 400 Pixels" — Does It Matter?

14 August 2026

We get asked this a lot, usually apologetically: "the only logo file we have is about 400 pixels — is that going to be a problem?"

Usually, no. And the reason is worth spelling out, because the honest answer changes what you should actually worry about.

The arithmetic

The print area on a golf ball is 22 mm round. That's 0.87 of an inch.

At 300 dpi — the number people quote as "print quality" — 0.87 inches needs about 260 pixels. That's it. That's the whole requirement.

So a 400-pixel logo isn't marginal for a golf ball. It's printing at roughly 460 dpi, comfortably above the threshold. The same file that would look soft and pixelated blown up on a pull-up banner is being asked to fill a circle the size of a 5c piece, and it has pixels to spare.

The instinct that "low resolution = bad print" comes from large-format work. At golf-ball scale, resolution is rarely the thing that goes wrong.

What actually goes wrong

Here's what genuinely causes trouble, roughly in order of how often it comes up.

1. It isn't 400 pixels of logo

The file is 400 pixels wide, but it's a screenshot of a web page, or a slide, and the logo occupies 120 pixels somewhere in the middle. Crop to just the logo and you're down to 120 pixels for a 22 mm print — about 140 dpi, and now it genuinely is soft.

The check: crop the file down to only the logo, then look at that number. That's your real resolution.

2. JPEG compression around the edges

JPEG throws away data to save space, and it does its worst damage exactly where you least want it: at high-contrast edges — which is the entire outline of a logo. Zoom in on a JPEG logo and you'll see a faint grey mottling in the white around the letters.

You can ignore that on screen. On a printed ball, that halo prints. It reads as a smudgy grey shadow around what should be a clean edge.

The check: zoom to 400% on a white area next to your logo. If it isn't clean white, the artefacts are there.

3. A white box instead of transparency

Very common, and it doesn't matter at all until it does. A logo saved on a solid white background prints its background too. On a white ball, nobody notices. On a yellow ball — which plenty of golf-day orders choose — your logo arrives sitting inside a white rectangle.

The check: open the file over a coloured background. If you see a rectangle, it's not transparent.

4. Hairline strokes

A 1-pixel outline in a 400-pixel file becomes 0.055 mm on the ball. Ink doesn't hold a line that thin — it breaks up, or vanishes. This is the same problem that catches out club crests with fine keylines.

5. Screen colours that don't exist in ink

Neon greens, electric cyans and pure glowing oranges are easy for a backlit screen and impossible for any printing process. They'll come out as the nearest achievable colour, which can read slightly duller than the version you've been looking at on your monitor.

What to send instead, if you have the choice

• Vector (EPS or SVG) — no resolution at all in the traditional sense, so it scales to 22 mm with perfect edges. Always the best answer for a logo.
• PNG with transparency — no compression artefacts, no white box. The best raster option.
• A large JPEG — workable. Send the biggest, least-compressed version that exists.
• Whatever you've actually got — genuinely. We'd rather see the real file and tell you honestly than have you not order because you assumed it was too small.

Nothing gets printed unseen

The safety net is the proof. Once you order, our art team prepares your design in the 22 mm area and sends it back for approval. If the file has a white box, a compression halo, or strokes too fine to hold, that's where it surfaces — and we'll tell you what would fix it before anything goes on a ball.

More on the process on our printing information page, or see real jobs we've printed — including some fairly detailed line artwork that made the trip down to 22 mm intact.

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