Top tips when designing for large format

With years of experience designing and printing large format artwork, our team have put together our top tips for designing for large format print:

Layout

• Carefully plan your hierarchy of information – what do you want your audience to see first? Think about the message you want to convey and decide which is the most important information to put first.

• If you are designing for roller banners or exhibition stands, it is best not to include important content too low down on the design, as this isn’t in the consumer’s eye line.

• If you are designing for an exhibition where there is more than one joining panel, try to avoid having text crossing the two panels.

Scaling

• To keep your file size smaller and prevent your computer slowing when processing large files, it is often a good idea to design at 25% of the finished size.

• To give you an idea of how your artwork will look when printed, you can view it on screen at actual size (100%). If you have designed artwork at 25%, view the final artwork at 400%. Please note this is not an exact representation of image quality as this will differ between on screen and print.

Images

• Artwork should include high-resolution images and vector logos in .eps or .pdf format, that will scale up without losing resolution.

• Ensure images are a high resolution of at least 300dpi.

Fonts

• To avoid any font issues when printing, it is advisable to convert all text to outlines. This ensures that the design will still print as you expect, even if we don’t have the font you have used. Outlined fonts aren’t editable so it is best to keep two versions – one with outlined fonts and one without.

Colour matching

• Set up your files and colour swatches in CMYK. All artwork is converted to CMYK before printing, which can result in colour differences if files are set up as RGB.

Bleed

• Templates for large format will differ depending on what you are designing for, but ensure you have a minimum bleed of 5mm around the edge of your artwork.

Please email justask@justdigital.co.uk or phone 01480 825000