Hi everyone ! Hope you are well
I require some advice about something - I am required to design 3 x billboards . I’ve asked the printing company for a scale and any other specs but I’m not understanding (I’ve never made artwork for billboards)
Can someone please let me know how I’d go about setting up a document in either photoshop or in design?
The size of the billboards are
-10000mm x2000mm
-12740mmx2750mm
-11300mmx2420mm
The printer said that I should size it down 20% , artwork in 300dpi and that I should use the above sizes
Please may I have some advice in the sizing down part ?
Size it down [by] 20% or rather size it down to 20%?
Simply do the document setup smaller right from the start and mention the drawing scale (e.g. 1:5) when sending it to the printer. Some Tools like Affinity Designer have a feature for documents with drawing scale, but it is not necessary.
I strongly recommend doing your homework for what is important from a design perspective when designing billboards and demand/buy a contract proof from your printer.
They most likely want you to design them at 20% of the target size and 300 DPI. Once printed, their DPI will drop to 60 (20% of 300), which should be OK, since such large-format billboards are usually viewed from a distance at which a low DPI isn’t a problem.
In this case, the sizes and DPI of the files should be as follows:
As @Joe said, they’re asking you to create the artwork at 20% of the final size, not reduce it by 20%.
This requires some arithmetic, which @Jakub_Trybowski did for you. Make the billboards the sizes he indicated at 300 dpi (ppi).
The billboard company will resize them to their full size, decreasing the dpi (ppi) to the lower resolution needed for billboards.
You didn’t mention bleeds. Are the billboards printed or digital (electronic)? Digital billboards don’t need bleeds; printed billboards do. If you’re not familiar with bleeds, we can explain. Did they mention bleed sizes? Did they provide you with a template showing bleed sizes?