…You need to make sure your design works as a product. Without getting all philosophical on you we want to stress the importance of getting the Artwork for PVC banner just right.
If you’re planning an event and you want an eye-catching banner to get the word out, then you need to think carefully about your design. An outdoor banner is a reflection of your business; if your banner looks second rate the time, effort and quality of your work can all be called into question.
To help you out we’ve put our heads together and come up with some top tips to keep in mind when designing your banner.
Better Printing’s Top Tips on Setting up the Artwork for Your PVC Banner:
Keep it simple:
Remember this is a banner and not your chance to pen your very own 1000 page literary masterpiece. Any text has to be read easily and from a distance, so keep it short snappy and straight to the point.
Think left to right:
Creating a unique looking banner is all good and well but if no one can read it, you’ve wasted your time and money. We’re used to reading left to right, bottom to top so you should choose the placement of text on your banner with this in mind.
300 (dpi) is your lucky number:
Any images you want to include on your banner must be high resolution. The lower the resolution of your pictures the worse the reproduction: low res images are often be pixelated, blurred and of poor quality when reproduced in print. Your images should be 300dpi at the very least and saved as CMYK.
Size does matter:
If your banner is 6ft by 20ft chances are your computer doesn’t have the memory to support a design of that scale. That’s why most people scale down when using a design program such a photoshop. If you are scaling down, it’s best to design at 50% or 25% the size of the actual banner and in inches rather than feet; so 6ft becomes 91cm/ 45cm and 20ft becomes 3m/1.5m. However its important you remember that your banner once printed will just be a bigger version of the design on your screen. So if your design looks cramped on screen it unfortunately won’t magically look better in reality.
Oh and without trying to state the obvious, be sure to tell us if your design is true to scale or by how much you’ve scaled it down.
Hems and eyelets: What You Need to Know.
First of what are eyelets? Eyelets* are the little metal rings set around the edge of your banner that allow it to be easily fixed to a building, fence or wall. If one of these eyelets is ripped out your banner can sag and look messy. That’s why we turn over the outer 2 inches of the banner to create a double thickness hem and protect the eyelets from ripping.
What does this mean for your design?
The eyelets are set approximately 2 inches away from the edge of the banner. So to ensure that nothing is cut off during the hemming process you need to design your banner with a 5inch bleed and keep anything critical like text or images out of this area.
*If your printer starts talking about grommets or even metal rings don’t panic, different printers may use different terms but they all refer to the same thing.
If you can remember all this then you’re probably on to a winner, either that or you’ve definitely done this design thing before.
Just remember at Better Printing, we’re always here to help. So if you need any advice or guidance on providing artwork for your product, just contact our friendly and helpful staff today on 02380 878 037 or email: info@BetterPrinting.co.uk
