The display company you are ordering from should have specs on how to lay them out. If they don't have them on a website, give them a call.

Edit: Sorry, I forgot to say welcome to the forum!! It's early.

welcome to the forum.

Your best bet is to contact the printer who will be producing the piece and asking them, because specifications vary from shop to shop.

See what kind of files they need, whether they print in CMYK format or RGB, and what resolution they want the files supplied at. That's a good place to start.

JINX

ssh, don't tell, but that's how I pretend to be smart... I just repeat everything OTHER people say.

Ahh, the truth comes out!

Thanks Folks!

You got these dimensions right? For a booth 'back drop'?
"23.39 inches X 33.11 inches."

Be very sure you ask the printer what resolution he wants your images to be and watch out for original vs final size resolutions in your work.

Something this small would be laid out at 100% or actual print size. Photoshop and Illustrator are far more common these days in wide format than Freehand. Ask the printer.

Don't forget your bleeds!

I think the dimensions are correct but that I will dbl check on. Thanks again everyone for the help! It got me going in the right direction.

naughty then :P

Ok guys I must be having a real bad "blonde moment"... No offense to my fellow blondies.:-) I just am not sure where to begin. I contacted the printer and they gave me the specs, here they are as follows ( file can be sent as a tiff, jpeg, pdf, psd, eps, cdr or ai for PC. It should be 200 dpi at size and can have an over bleed if they want the colour to go out to the edge. It make no difference if you send it in RBG or CMYK.). Ok... I get that but what I am unsure of is what size to create the graphic/s. I have never created something like this before and maybe it's over my head but I'm not going down without a good fight. Can someone please explain to me the best way to start this. Would I create the graphic/s the size of the actual banner which is 36"(914mm) X 78.74"(2000mm) this seems awfully big to create in actual size or would I just make the graphic and they(printer) size it to fit the banner? Does this make sense??? Can someone walk me through the steps? Thanks in advance for your help!

Just FYI, in wide format, 36x79 is relatively tiny.

Yes create it at actual size. It looks like they don't allow Quark which is good because Quark has a 48" artboard limit so you would have to do it at half scale at 400dpi.

If you do work in scale, make sure you are in the same scale in both dimensions. Don't just 'create a graphic' and expect it to fit if you don't do the math. A printer will look at you funny if you tell him to change the aspect ratio of a design to fit a banner.

I'm going to assume you are using Illustrator (that's what I would use if Q and InD aren't a native option. I always send native files for large format unless I know specifally what .eps or .pdf settings the printer wants - especially if any sort of transparency is involved).

Set up your artboard at 38" x 80"
Set up a rectangle centered on your artboard that is 36" x 78.74". Make it on a layer all by itself. Select the rectangle and Go to Filter>Create>Crop Marks. Adjust some guides to align with that rectangle. Now put another set of guides 1/2" outside that rectangle all around. These outer guides mark your bleed area. Select the rectangle and give it No Stroke and No Fill. Lock the layer. Be sure it stays as the bottommost layer or your crops may be on the image area.

Proceed with your design bearing in mind that whatever is in the 1/2 inch border will be cut off.

Place your images. DO NOT embed them. Images can be .tif or.eps. I prefer .tif because I can see what I'm doing. In Illy, large .eps images tend to pixelate in preview and when printed to a non-postscript desktop printer.

Be sure any images you place will be 200dpi AT FINAL SIZE. If you are placing an 8"w x 10"h image across the full 36", the original scan has to be done at 900dpi to be 200 at final. (This is where you'll find out why I laugh at stock sites that claim to have High Resolution images. LOL!)

Use PMS spot colors. Make sure any colors you use are in the swatch palette. Delete any colors from the palette you don't use.

If you have stuff that falls off the artboard, consider using a mask. You may have to if you can't see the crop marks you made

Be sure to save an editable copy then outline all your fonts to avoid PC/Mac kerning issues.

Print a hard copy and call out your dimensions and PMS colors on it. Tell them the file is at 100% and to trim to crops.

Send the file as a .ai along with all your linked images.

Good luck.

Wow thank you for the steps I'm sure that took a few minutes to write and explain. I really appreciate all the help! You rock!!