Poster Design

Graphic design question

[stefansavva]

Does anyone have any experience of designing large outdoor posters such as billboards? A client has enquired about the possibility of producing large posters about 2 metre by 4 metre and wondered how to go about this. Would I create a file in Illustrator/Quark to the exact size dimensions or would I scale it up? Any information on line would be much appreciated.
Many thanks.

[limbo]

Would I create a file in Illustrator/Quark and scale it up?

Exactly. (you'll probably need photoshop for image manipulation)

I worked with someone a few years back on some artwork for the side of a London bus. We had to:

*Use scalable vector graphics (for logos, text and areas of flat colour).
*Use high resultion images (1200DPI) that will show very little loss as the image size is scaled.

For more expert adivice and to be sure of your specifications you could contact the estimator/artworker at your local print firm - they are always happy to hand out advice and quotes.

Ta

Limbo

[Leosghost]

Standard stuff ..have to do it all the time as a very large part of my illustration work is production of decors for carnival rides and billboards , circuses etc ..
Limbo's gonna "hate" me for this ( well maybe too strong aword ; )...the easiest and quickest way to do all this fast grafic work is in paintshop pro ...And you can read the price tag without the need for a cardiac "crash" team standing by ...
What you do have to watch for is that the image info is perceived differently when the size goes up ...lots of designs which look real good on the monitor just won't work when they are the size of a house ...
What you could describe as "the psychology of icons "is also changed when the sizes go up ..

[HelenDev]

Hi Leosghost,

Slightly off topic (sorry) but, as you seem familiar with Paint Shop Pro, would you say it is any good as a web graphics program. ie would it give me the control that I get from programs like Fireworks?

I might be in the market for some new image editing software soon and have already done the whole cardiac-arrest thing at other products!

[Leosghost]

I run a lot of image programs ..Photoshop , Fireworks , Corel , Flash , Bryce , Poser ,Illustrator you name it I've probably got it in here somewhere ..Paintshop Pro I love ..it's lighter on cpu than Photoshop and does about 70% of what photoshop does at around 5% of the cost ..and it does some stuff that Photoshop still didn't include ...plus all the better plugins like eyecandy run on it ...

And you can let the rest of the family play with it without sending them to caltech first...

Photoshop contains things that frankly unless you work in print media you are never gonna use ...

<handing the thread back ...you really shouldn't encourage me!>

[stefansavva]

Thanks a lot for the advice

[JayNocera]

I recently did a billboard design. The best answer is to contact the company that will actually be producing it and have them send you the specs for the file. The specs I received had me create the billboard at a very small scale and a reasonable sized resolution. Apparently, the large billboards along highways are poor resolution, but they're so big, and your driving so fast that you don't notice it.