Know your resolution…

Now I am not an expert designer. To be honest, I hardly ever do any design outside of motion graphics like After Effects and Premier Pro – my true passion.  However, I do know some basic print standards that everyone should know.  Now this isn’t directed toward any specific industry but we will cover a few, Offset Printing, Grand Format Digital Printing, and Screen Printing.   These basic standards are not the defacto rules, but will help you in your design whether you’re using our PrintFX module or a full blown design software.

First and foremost you have to know the media you’re designing for. If you’re designing for a web site, then the design will be totally different than if it’s for grand format.  Not only the resolution for your images, logos, and any other raster but your design itself, check out the 7 word rule post.

Which bring me to another point: what is considered a raster graphic .  Well, let’s see what the all knowing Wikipedia says aboutraster graphics. In my terms, a raster graphic is image with pixels – squares of color that determine the image.  The important thing you have to remember is the resolution of the graphic, image, logo is going to determine whether those pixels show.

For example, images made for the web need to be at 72 dots per inch (dpi).  This mean the image has 72 square blocks with color per inch.  Check out the zoomed in illustration at the top of the page.  When designing for offset printing you need your images at 300 dpi for good resolution. A lower resolution image will leave visible pixellization within the graphics.  First impressions are the key, and low resolution is almost as bad as typos.  In today’s age people notice when something’s crap, especially when it comes to potential clients.

One more side note: when working with logos, almost all logos should be vector.  I have added a link, cause that another post in its self.  The great thing about vector graphics is that because the image is created using points and a lot of geometry, you can scale them up and down limitless.

In the proverbial nut shell, this following is a basic outline for each print industry.  But remember you need to know the size of the graphic that being printed. The rest of this can change, it’s not a set of rules, but a guide.

Offset printing-

300 dpi at full size for offset graphics.  If you are creating a business card or a brochure look for 2 to 5 mb picture.  This is pretty straight forward, and for what I tell doesn’t change very much in the offset print industry.

Digital printing-

100 dpi at full size will be good, but this is one of those industry that’s a little fragmented.  You really have to be in the industry to understand why, but think of it like this: When you look at a medium image inside of a store (something around 3 foot by 5 foot), you’re viewing from a couple of feet away.  When you creating a billboard that 14 foot by 48 foot, then you’re viewing it from hundreds of feet away.  Therefore, the resolution for that graphics can be created at 50 dpi or even 35 dpi.  This is because your eyes can’t spot the pixels, and really is industry standard.  So know what your creating.

This is one of the reasons we have created the Print-Fx module. We help you determine the print resolution for our digital and screen printed products.  How? well that’s a lot of math and you would fall asleep, trust me, I do in development meetings all the time when our brainy guys start explaining it.  What you need to know when using the PrintFx module and uploading images and files we have built in a image resolution detector that determines if the image is high enough resolution for that specific print.   Keep in mind if you’re creating something big look for big photo.

Print to Inspire…..Inspire to Create!