Large Ad Design and Substrates

>> male speaker: There it goes, alright.
I used to mess with people-- I'd just stand in the closet
and wait and then turn it on, and just start talking to them,
they'd just get all freaked out.
Sorry, I have too much fun.
It's just the way it goes.
Alright, so large ad design and substrates.
Whenever I talk about substrates what I'm literally talking about
is the media that you print on.
What makes it so much more unique to design a
large advertisement than a little paper product is
that you'll find out that your penetration into the market,
or getting people to recognize the subject or the business
that you're trying to advertise for is a lot more significant.
With just one big graphic you can be much more effective than
passing out a hundred brochures or a thousand pamphlets
especially if you've designed that graphic well.
So whenever we talk about large advertisements
we can think about things like billboards, you see billboards
all the time right?
Whenever we drive into town they've got those cute little
"I am EIU" and Town Square Jewelers, or even as you're
on 294 driving into the city, they've got all sorts of
billboards up for just about anything, you name it,
there's all billboard up there for it.
If we start to scale those down a little bit, we can think about
the posters, posters that we would try to go purchase for our
rooms, or maybe to try and advertise some sort of a
special or something that a business has going on.
You might also see signage, you have outdoors signage that
advertises business just as they are, or indoor signage that
directs customers or traffic to where they need to go.
Whenever you go to Walmart, one of the ways that you know
where the basketballs are, hunting equipment,
is you look up overhead and you find the signs.
You can also look at window graphics and this is something
that we kind of demonstrated down the hall here if you
walk out of here after class, take a look at it and you'll
see some really big stickers on the windows out there,
that's becoming very very popular.
Whereas a lot of people want to look inside they are also
missing the fact that that's a huge huge display board
to be able to put graphics on it and to be able to advertise for
your company for your business.
And there's special means of being able to adhere those
window graphics or even the floor graphics as well if you
walk into County Market, Walmart, or any other place
and take a look at the ground and chances are that they've
got something next to the Lays potato chips telling you how
you should go buy Oscar Mayer Ball Park Franks.
Or something to that effect.
That was actually two different companies wasn't it?
Oscar Mayer and Ball Park.
I would not be very good with brand identity.
>> male speaker: [unclear dialogue]
>> male speaker: Yes, that's right!
The wiener market.
But they'll generally try to position floor graphics in
strategic locations especially within a business to try to
get you to walk around the store.
That's the whole idea.
And we can probably even pull some of these off here
on-campus, especially if you can get the administration to go
with you, or even I think some of the places that you're
working with, do you have stores or something like that right?
Like fourth street has a store and you might have a spot
that's wood floor, tile floor, or something like that
so you might try to talk to your customer into doing it.
Ultimately get this in your mindset, the graphics that
you need to design we're going to shoot for something
bigger than 13x19 inches.
And the reason that we shoot for 13x19 inches is because that
actually goes beyond the limits of our laser printer
and into the realm of the inkjet printers,
the large format printers that we have.
So I'll break each one of these down into more components
and tell you what you need to go with at each stage.
But what's most important for you to remember is the image
types and the sizes of images that you use, the font sizes
and your selection of fonts obviously.
We'll talk about the limitations of the software programs that
you'll use to design, and I'll go through all of them but what
you can expect to use for this program to lay out the large
advertisement is probably Illustrator, that's going to
be your best bet.
All those vector graphic programs make for very small
file sizes and it's really easy to manipulate text
and any other shapes or anything to that effect.
We'll also discuss viewing distance because you'll find out
that whenever you print something out on a printer over
there and if you're looking right at it, you'll be like,
"Oh my gosh that looks absolutely horrible.
It looks nasty.
It's terrible, I see jagged edges, I see big square pixels,
it's not at all what I wanted."
But my buddy Spider-Man right here, we're going to show you
how the viewing distance can actually effect the way
that your images come out.
We'll also discuss things with the display environment
and how all of this information relates back to the substrates
that we use or the media that we use and how we should finish
these pieces of art or design that we put together.
We'll also discuss the process of proofing and printing.
We've got the proofing process down pretty well, we
didn't get the printing process down well in the last project,
this process is actually going to be quite a bit different
because instead of printing out the smaller scale proofs,
which is a common thing for large scale ads,
I'm actually going to require that you
print out a large scale proof.
Because most people won't actually grasp the scope of
how large a graphic is, or how a font will actually look,
until they see it at full scale.
So, don't feel bad if we end up printing a lot of paper.
It'll be okay, I promise.
Okay, first things first, your images that you're going to
need to use, believe it or not this is actually going to look
a lot like the considerations for multi-page documents.
If you've got a photograph that you'd like to incorporate,
usually you don't throw a whole heck of a lot of photographs on
a large advertisement, it's usually one or two
singular images that speak about the message
and are as bold as they can be.
Okay, make sure that you start out with a tif image
and that it's at its highest resolution possible.
And if you need to go back and take fresh photographs
that's absolutely fine.
Grab a camera and go snap some new pictures.
But you need them at the highest resolution that you can possibly
get those photos.
That's why I also say, try to use stock photo websites
if available.
I think I've given you some of those resources.
Freepixels.net is a really good resource to get any images,
that's actually the same resource that the production
class used for a lot of the stock photos as you look at the
boards that we have around here.
Also a good recommendation are EPS or illustrator files,
vector files.
These will probably be your best bets especially for your logos.
If you have a logo for your customer, if you remember in
the very very beginning I told you to draw using illustrator,
there's a reason for that.
That is because the logo is probably going to get enlarged,
it's going to be blown up now, it may end up being as big as
a foot or two foot if they want it that big.
So that's why we went ahead and we created those vector files.
Other things that you'll probably need EPS files for are
other logos that you use outside of the business if they have a
particular brand of product that they sell a whole heck of a lot
of then you'll need to have an EPS file.
Also backgrounds, if you decide that you want to use some sort
of a stock photo background you can go to a place like
vector portal, or even brandsoftheworld.com,
and you can get vector files.
So keyword here is vector, vector, vector, vector okay,
shapes, colors.
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>> male speaker: Word of the day exactly, yes.
If you're going to find a web image,
make sure that you know the difference.
Whenever I tell people to do searches for images
or for vector images, usually what I say is do a search
for an EPS image.
EPS, encapsulated post script, that's a vector image.
I don't ever tell people to go to Google Images and search
and copy and paste that image off there, that's a no-no,
because usually those are JPEGs or PNGs and they're resolution
is too low to work with in the first place.
That's what you need to make sure that you do.
If you are going to use something make sure that
it's high quality and that it's from a stock photo website,
going back to those rules of using royalty-free.
The other thing that you should realize is that your
large advertisement is going to have a huge huge file size as
compared to any of the other documents that you've done.
Physically, they'll be upwards of two feet by six feet,
or three feet by six feet, and also document size
they may end up being as much as 10 or 20, or 30 or 40
megabytes in size, so they're going to take up
a whole heck of a lot of space with these vector files.
But ultimately it's going to give you a better result than
if you tried to design it using anything else.
Font sizes and choice.
The fonts that you want to use on a large advertisement
or a large graphic, make sure that you avoid a font
that is inherently just difficult to read.
If you can't make out what it is immediately as you look at it on
the computer screen, chances are is that somebody else as
they're walking by or driving by aren't going to understand it.
And to be honest, whenever you're in a car and you're
looking at a billboard and you're trying to figure out
what it says, you don't brake right there in the middle of
294 to stop and read the billboard.
You just fly on by it and you're just like,
"Huh, wonder what that was."
So you look for fonts that are easy to read right off the bat.
As far as colors go, I say use dark colors but the other thing
that you should probably know is that you should use high
contrast colors and what I mean by high contrast color is
if you have an extremely light background, a background
that you decide you're going to fill with yellow.
You're going to probably want to bust out a color wheel,
take a look at a color wheel, and see if you can find the
compliment to the color or the color that's high in contrast.
So if you need to try and think of a color that's high in
contrast to yellow, use a color wheel, you can also think of
sports teams as well.
So usually a lot of sports teams use complementary colors,
or colors that are across from each other.
Purple and yellow, the Vikings, the absolutely horrible Vikings
that are so horrible that even their quarterback and their
stadium collapsed on them late in the season, because, right?
Yes we understand that.
But use dark colors or high contrast colors.
If you end up using a dark background, if you use a
very dark blue or dark black background for your graphic,
make sure that you use a white font.
So you'll actually reverse the colors in that case.
The fonts that you use should be as large as possible,
and a rule for you to follow here or a rule that
they actually specify is that for every 10 feet away
the person is from viewing the graphic,
your font size should be at least 24 points.
So if you design something that's viewed to be
10 feet away, your font size should be 24.
If it's 20 feet away, 20 feet back away from it,
you should increase your font size to 48,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
But that's a good rule to follow.
Myself, I always like to go bigger, because bigger is
much more easy to see and it also takes up more space
on your large advertisement as well.
Something else that you should probably know is to use
sans-serif typefaces, whenever I say sans-serif typefaces
I'm talking about typefaces like helvetica,
or arial something that doesn't have a lot of the serifs
or something that is not difficult to read.
You know that whenever you do multi-page layout or document
headings or anything like that, usually the headings,
or the news headlines are in a sans-serif typeface.
They're big, they're blocky, and they grab people's attention
immediately, they're easy to read.
Usually your serif typefaces are for bodies or type,
bodies of text.
I don't expect there to be a whole heck of a lot of text on
these, it should be at most you know maybe 20 words
on this entire advertisement.
You should also probably use shorter line widths and whenever
I talk about shorter line widths I'm actually going to break out
of here real quick and show you what I'm discussing with that.
I'll just go into illustrator and I'll make a
quick and easy layout for some sort of a banner, 36x72.
I'll get my type tool.
Okay, alright, I know it's a little bit small so first thing
that we're going to go do is we're going to go back
and we're going to fix that, we're going to use as large
a font as possible.
And whenever I do it I usually just make a text line,
and whenever you make a text line, the difference between
a text line and a text box in illustrator is that whenever
you make a line, your text actually behaves like an
object like this, so I can scale it, scale it like that.
So it makes it easier.
So here's a text that I have up here right now, and I'll zoom in
here a little bit closer so we can take a look at it.
So we have this as a line of text that seems to be a little
bit difficult to read, lots of text on, should say one line.
Let's break it up.
So what this is actually illustrating,
is it's illustrating a long line width.
So you have multiple characters and you have multiple words
on a single line of text.
A better way to be able to do this is to actually make
your line widths shorter.
Okay, so don't put so many words,
or don't put so many letters on a single line.
So in this case, I'll break it up, there we go.
And it just so happens I didn't even practice that,
it's got a nice little stair step to it, look at that.
And then I can make that text even bigger than it is
itself right now.
It says, "This is a line of text, it seems a little bit
difficult to read lots of text on one line.
Let's break it up."
So it's broken up now and it's much much easier to read.
It also creates balance as well because what I could probably do
at this point, is because I have all the text on one side of
the graphic, I can put any logos or images on the other side
and then the important information at the bottom
for the large advertisement.
In my opinion I still think that this is probably too much text,
but it kind of depends on where it's being viewed from
or how people are going to be viewing it.
Obviously if it's going to be something that people are going
to see while they're driving by, you don't throw a whole heck of
a lot of text on it in the first place, but if it's something
that you might put where people are walking by because the
speed at which they're walking is much slower, then you can
probably throw a little bit more text on that board.
So that's what you're going to have to do whenever you sit down
with your customer, talk to them, try to figure out
what exactly is going on with the graphic that they have
or that they're looking to have designed.
Okay, so shorter line widths just makes it easier to read.
The other thing that is extremely important,
and this is for compatibility, is that you outline
or you rasterize your fonts when possible.
Outline or rasterize.
What this actually does--
I think I showed this to you before right?
Maybe when you did your logos once upon a time.
And what it actually does is it converts your text from an
editable text, a font that can be created or recreated, into an
object, and whenever it's an object then you can size it
and resize it, but you also don't have to worry about
font substitution, or losing that font whenever
it's all said and done.
So the way that this is right now the text that I have, I can
go back in here and if I made a spelling error and I wanted to
delete some of the text, let's say that I'll break off the
"Let's break it up,"
it seems to be difficult to read text on one line.
So I've got it broken up a little bit more, this is the way
that the fonts are behaving right now, because it's
still technically a font, or it's not a shape or an object,
that's where we actually have to go up to convert it.
With the text selected I go up to "Type" and "Create Outlines"
or shift, command, O.
Everybody recognize those little squares that are on the outside
of your text there, they're nodes right?
So at this point, your text is no longer font, it's an object,
so it will react and behave like an object which makes it
compatible, you don't have to worry about losing
any of the fonts or having font substitution take place
whenever you get ready to print your document.
And usually this is the last step whenever you're done with
your layout, you've made sure that you've checked the fonts,
the fonts are good, that the spelling is okay,
then you outline the fonts so that you can output it.
And the only thing that I will caution you is, as soon as you
outline your fonts then you're not going to be able to go back
and manipulate them.
So if you have a spelling error you're going to have to go back,
re-type the font, or re-type the text, size it up again,
and then outline it again.
So make sure that you use a spelling tool,
I think there's a spelling tool in illustrator isn't there?
Spelling, here we go, right there.
So edit, check spelling.
I know you're horrible at spelling, I am too, sometimes
whenever I have to sit down and write out 30 pages of notes
for my classes I always have to use a spelling tool.
So that's a helpful tool for yourself though.
Okay, so make sure that you always whenever you are ready,
you just select your type and you go to type, create outlines.
That will ensure font compatibility.
I was going to say compatipilibuddy.
Wow, where did that come from?
I have no idea.
Well I've got a few ideas.
Alright, as far as your programs are limited, I go ahead
and I list all of them but the reality is that illustrator
is going to be your preferred program.
I have done large advertisements using PhotoShop,
using InDesign, but they're so clunky, I think,
whenever it compares to Illustrator.
Whenever you create a document in PhotoShop really
there's a lot of variables, you can alter the document size,
you can actually alter the resolution,
and depending on your computer system,
you can alter how big your graphic's going to be.
With Illustrator, the biggest graphic period that you could
make is 227 inches by 227 inches okay.
We're not going to do that, that's ginormous.
That's like what 24 feet, 20 feet, something like that.
It's huge, there's, well there's reasons for it,
but no reason for us to be able to do it,
because I don't have that much media, or time, or patience.
The limitations for size for you, three feet by six feet
or 36 inches by 72 inches.
So if your customer asks, "What's the biggest I can go?"
You say, "Three feet by six feet."
And that's a standard size for a lot of banners, or anything else
that you can do, so make sure that you're aware of that.
InDesign you can go up to 216 by 216 but once again, I just think
InDesign is kind of clunky whenever it comes to
designing large advertisements.
And then of course your printers can only handle so much as well,
we have printers that can do up to 44 inches by 12 feet,
but the problem with that is that
sometimes the printers time out.
So it's 36 by 72, that's where we're putting the limitations,
we're putting the brakes on everything.
Although I will say that in a, gosh I think for last year's for
the Fall's homecoming parade I had to do some graphics for
some float and it ended up being something ridiculous
like 4 feet by 20 feet or something like that,
then I ended up having to split the graphic in half
and it was absolutely ridiculous.
I don't think I'll ever do that again, so it was ridiculous.
Oh and whenever you go up to set up your document size
in Illustrator, piece of cake.
Command N and the you just pop in your width and your height.
Think about this as well, most of the time whenever you
design stuff for your small multipage documents,
you usually do it in a portrait orientation, that is that
your height is actually bigger than your width.
The way that a lot of large advertisements are designed
is rotated, rotated 90 degrees or landscape as I call it.
Which you can switch those back and forth if you dial that in
then you can switch it to a landscape orientation,
that's the difference between landscape and portrait.
Landscape means wider,
>> male speaker: [unclear dialogue]
>> male speaker: Hamburger style!
Yes hamburger style.
Thanks Kyle.
Alright, okay, let's go into viewing distance.
I think I already said one thing about viewing distance as it
relates to font size alright, I think I said that for your
font size 24 points for every 10 feet that the
person is actually going to be viewing from it.
Always sit down and ask your customer where it's going to be
viewed from and actually what I usually do whenever
somebody wants me to have something designed for them
I'll ask them to take me to that place.
Where are you going to display it,
and then I do a couple of walk-bys.
I maybe even have people take pictures of it as well,
snap a picture just so you have some sort of a reference
to know where it is that you're going to be taking it from.
What you can use as a rule is that if it's going to be
something from far away, you can actually get away with enlarging
your images significantly more or having them output at a lower
resolution but you'll want to use the largest fonts that you
possibly can, and you'll also want to make sure that you have
as much contrast as you can possibly get.
So if you look at a lot of banners that they have outside,
a lot of the logos are huge,
they don't have a whole heck of a lot of text out there,
they have a large font, and it's usually a good contrast.
I don't see too many banners that are really close in color,
it's usually black text on white background,
or a dark background with white text popping out on it.
But if it's something that they say that they want, if they say
they need some sort of a display board that's going to go inside,
and on that display board they're going to advertise
things like prices for particular products or specials
that they have going on in the store per day.
You'll have to select images that are higher quality
and your fonts are going to be smaller in this case.
So that's the nature of the beast that you're working with.
If it's something that I'm going to look at right from about this
distance then it's only going to be about two feet by about three
feet then you'll have to adapt that, there's no space in just
writing a big five or six letter word putting it on board,
you have to adapt it to put all the information on there.
And the best example I can give you, especially whenever you're
looking at your graphics, because you may end up pulling
an image off of some sort of stock photo website or
a photograph that you've taken, you'll put it on the board
and whenever you print it out on the proof you'll look at it
and it'll look pixelated.
That's where Spider-Man comes into play here real quick.
I won't unroll him all the way.
But take a look at his thumb, I think that's his thumb
that's pointing out of there.
Real quick, real close look at it.
You see those little areas of grey and red, those contrast
areas, and if you look close at them, they're kind of jagged,
they're kind of rough.
See that?
Okay, and the odds are any photographs that you take
and you try to enlarge, if you put one really
good photograph on a banner and you try to enlarge it,
it'll probably look just about like that to the naked eye.
But the difference is you have to think about how far away are
you going to be viewing it from.
This Spider-Man poster I think is, I don't know, right around
nine feet by nine feet, and it wasn't actually intended
or designed for you to look at it up close.
It was actually intended or designed to be looked at
probably from at least right back here.
See, and as you look at it from this distance, to be honest,
how many people can really see any of that pixelation
or the boxes or anything like that?
Probably not so much right?
You can't see it because at distances, whenever you start to
increase the distance, your eye can't pick out all the details.
So that's what we need to consider,
that's why we always look at the display environment.
And whenever you print out your proofs at large scale size,
that's how you're going to know, whether or not the image
or the logo that you put on that graphic,
if it was suitable to be able to use.
And I dropped Spider-Man on the ground.
I'm going to have to get rid of that guy,
he's getting kind of old.
He's been around here like six years.
Okay so always, always, always, consider that.
That's the reason, like I said before,
you're doing large scale proofs.
Because if I had you print out a scaled down version of your
document on a sheet of tabloid paper, 11x17,
when in all actuality it was 36x72 for your graphic.
The images are going to look completely different,
the text and the fonts are going to look completely different.
That's why we print them out at full scale,
just so you have the opportunity to see what it looks like.
Somebody is doing something upstairs.
Alright, whenever you are working with these as well,
the question of indoors and outdoors has, actually
a lot of these questions have to deal with not only
how you design it, but also with the substrates that
you use, the substrates are the media we're going to print on.
So if it's indoors or outdoors, if it's something that's going
to be indoors, you want to make sure that it's a brightly
colored, some sort of a sign that doesn't really blend into
it's environment so much.
Something that it actually stands out and that it shows up.
Whereas outdoors, that may not be necessary.
If you've got a little bit of color on there that's not
naturally inside of that environment,
then you'll be in good shape.
I'll actually talk about the implications of media here
in a second.
If it's in direct sunlight or if it's in shaded area,
the consideration for that actually goes to what kind of
ink we use to print it on.
And we've actually got printers that will print two kinds of ink
on any kind of media that we have in the lab here.
You might want to remember this real quick, we've got what we
call a dye based ink and that's the two HP printers
that we have over there.
The dye based ink is really good for reproducing really bright
and really vibrant colors.
The only downside to using the dye based ink is that whenever
you try to take it outside, try to put it outside,
as soon as it gets wet, it's going to start running
and it's going to be ruined.
So we have to protect that graphic.
Also if that dye based ink is in direct sunlight, or if it's
underneath fluorescent lights, what will actually happen to it
is it'll bleach out in a matter of days.
It will actually, your blacks will look more yellow.
I had one group they didn't consider if their graphic was
going in direct sunlight and this was something they did for
Wea Ink whenever they were over there next to Family Video.
And it was facing right toward the south one of their main
windows and they put the vinyl graphic on the window and it was
red, really beautiful and vibrant red and black
and within two weeks just from being in the sun it was
completely bleached out orange, the entire graphic.
That's why you have to figure that information out.
Fluorescent lights will knock out the color on any of the
prints from that HP printer and so will direct sunlight.
If you have something though that's going to be in a shaded
area or underneath your tungsten light bulbs, regular,
maybe even some business light bulbs,
then you'll be okay with a dye-based ink.
The other printer that we have back there,
the Epson printer, the gray one, and that's usually the one
that we use for fine art, is actually a pigment ink.
And that pigment ink is freaking durable, I kid you not,
you could print a banner with that pigmented ink and set it
outside for about three months and the color will hold up
and it will stand up for that period of time.
Actually as you walk into the building you'll see a banner
that's hung on the outside of the rail that says,
"Applied Engineering and Technology,"
all that good stuff, that was actually printed
with the Epson printer and that's not even laminated.
So it's going to be out there for three months and it's going
to hold up to the sun, the wet, to the wind, all that good stuff
and it's going to be well-protected.
So make sure that you figure that out,
the display environment.
Is it sunlight, shaded, if it's going to be wet,
if it's going to be dry.
Also the period of time as well, that it's going to be out there.
Because if it's going to be something that they're going to
use in the short term, it's cheaper to actually print with
a dye ink as opposed to a pigmented ink,
because the longevity isn't there.
You also need to think about if it's a high traffic,
or a low traffic area.
That is if there's going to be a lot of people going through the
area because obviously any design you're going to put up
there you want it to pop, you want it to grasp a lot
of people's attention.
If it's low traffic, you might think about putting together
some sort of a design that might actually draw or attract people,
grasp their eyes or their attention to look up and see,
"Oh, what's that?
What's that in the back corner?"
I've had people do that before.
They had an area of their shop that they, I don't remember
exactly what it was, but the students had figured out that by
using some sort of a brightly colored advertisement that
kind of looked like a Batman "Pow" or "Bam,"
you know, like the old comic books or something like that.
They put it up over the top and it was actually
attractive to people and they would be filtered
or drawn back into that area to look.
But ultimately the display environment it's going to have
an effect on how you put together your design but also
once again, your ink type we discussed the two ink types.
The dye is going to be for short term applications
and probably indoor applications.
Short term and indoor, whereas the pigment will be for
long term and outdoor, you can use that as a means.
And that is something that you actually have to plan, so make
sure that you ask your customer if it's going to be something
that's going to be short term or long term, things like that.
And then we'll also talk about substrates
and finishing techniques on these next two slides.
And actually you saw me wheel my two media carts over here
so I'll pop those out so that you can see them.
And I've actually, I'll let you get this down, I think
I've actually got a board over here that Molly put together,
but it's kind of roughed up a little bit.
Let's take a look.
Alright, like I started everything out with the
presentation, doing large signage and large advertisements
is a different beast than doing the smaller printed documents,
because usually anything that you get through the mail
or that you hand out it's going to be paper based.
So it's going to be on some kind of paper.
Obviously, we can print on paper with the Inkjet printers but a
huge and growing market actually deals with some of these other
different medias, or different substrates that you can use.
Usually you choose these medias for their durability
and based on their application.
The very first media that you will probably be drawn
to use will probably be like a heavy paper,
and I've got some heavy paper.
Let me grab a couple of these real quick.
I'll grab this and this right here.
If you want to go ahead, you can feel the edges
of that real quick.
The heavy paper that I'm actually bringing around
right now, it's two different kinds.
One's a gloss and one's sort of a matte finish.
Whenever you use heavy paper, you're probably thinking indoor
applications for signs that'll probably go up on the wall.
You're also probably thinking of something that--these
have pretty decent longevity to them as well.
And what you may also use heavy paper for is if you've
got a graphic that you need to mount on foam core.
We've got the capabilities of being able to mount
each of these graphics on foam core.
Foam core--I'll bust out a sheet of foam core real quick
for you to look at.
So these are the kinds of heavy paper.
Generally, we won't have to laminate these kinds of paper
as well.
Whenever you mount a graphic on foam core,
usually it's some sort of a display board like that--
we put an adhesive on it.
I think everybody's seen foam core before, haven't you?
But if it's usually some sort of a board or something that
somebody wants to set on a trifold,
that's what we get the foam core for.
We mount the graphic to it permanently and then that way
whenever they're done with it, instead of having to roll it up
or scratch it, you can just grab the board and carry it
any place that they need to do it with.
So it's a portable material is what it comes down to.
We've also got quite a number of plastic substrates as well.
Gosh, I don't even know where to start with the
plastic substrates.
Let me actually--let me pull out one or two of these that
you may already be familiar with.
Alright, the one I'm holding in my right hand--hello,
and it looks like the core is kind of falling out of
that one, real quick--the one that I'm bringing around
and I'm holding in my right hand is actually
pretty familiar isn't it?
Here, feel that one.
What's that feel like right there?
[unclear dialogue]
Wallpaper, or it's a banner material.
A lot of people, whenever they have banners made,
obviously they'll probably just put one color of letters
on there or one color of numbers.
But the banner material will be your best bet, especially if
they want something that's going to be hung outside
and they want to hang it for some sort of an event...
[unclear dialogue]
Yup, the one that I'm holding in my right hand--
that's a banner material.
You'll feel it, it actually feels like a fabric,
that it's woven.
The one in my left hand--if I were to go back and show that
again--that's actually a different kind of media.
They call it a display film as a matter of fact and the purpose
of display film is if you have some sort of a portable display
that's retractable--and I don't have a full one in here,
but actually the ones that I have down in the hallway,
I'm going to go and actually steal one of those real quick
because I printed them, so I can do what I want right?
Alright, kind of looks like a sail.
But if you look at it, all that is is that's just a plastic film
that we've printed on and we've laminated it
and it just rolls up into the box just like that.
So there, nice and easy.
You see them used at a lot of trade shows, you might also
see them used at some fairs, but it's a really quick
advertisement and it's a lot easier then having to carry
around a rigid board and your graphic isn't as scratched up
if you have to carry it back and forth.
[unclear dialogue], yeah?
>> female audience member: How much does something like
that usually cost?
>> male speaker: For this, I can...
>> female audience member: [unclear dialogue]
>> male speaker: Oh, if you were going to go
to get one of these done professionally,
you're looking at like $300 because they want
to charge you for the printing and everything else.
I figured out that we could get the boxes for right around
75 bucks and then the graphics that you print on it run right
around 60, so it's 130, 150 by the time you get the labor in
and if they really needed one of these, I mean I've got a couple
on the shelf that we could give them because it's a part of
the lab fees, part of the student project, so that's
something that you might try to advertise to them as well.
I'll just kind of set this off to the side back here.
Other kinds of plastic substrates that are used--
those two that I just showed you, more portable displays.
Let's grab some of this real quick here
and, yeah, I can grab some of this as well.
Look at these two that I'm bringing around to you.
These are still plastic, but what's different about them is
they've got an adhesive on the back side of it.
And the adhesive you typically use to mount to some sort of
window or you can also use it to mount as a floor graphic
as well.
And if you look down the hallway at the ones that we have,
the one on the bottom is probably closer to the one
that I'm holding in my left hand.
It looks just like a sheet of paper except it's got the
adhesive on the back side of it and the one that I'm holding
right here that's got a texture to it, that's a perforated
window film, and you would put it on your window.
It allows a little bit of light in, but you can also put the
graphic on it as well to be able to advertise, so if they've got
a big storefront and they still want some light to come through
that window but they want to use it to advertise a special event
or something else that they've got going on,
the perforated window film would be perfect for that as well.
Some other things that we have going on here,
we can print on fabric if they prefer that.
Gosh, those guys are really loud.
Where is my fabric, here we go.
And if you feel that, it's just like any other kind of fabric.
Fabric is usually selected for indoor applications.
So if they need some sort of a draping banner, or anything like
that that they don't want to be like the vinyl banner
that I was showing you that would go outside, this would
probably be an appropriate selection right here.
What else do we have?
I don't have any of this currently,
but we do have the capability to mount to metal.
There are actually metallic substrates that you can print
directly on, but those are super, super expensive.
We also use rigid substrates as well.
If you end up getting any sort of an internship at a place that
does billboards or large advertising or anything
like that, you'll see them print on these things.
What we'll actually probably do is we'll have the opportunity
to print our graphics, we can mount them,
we can put graphics in them.
We can install them like that, but as far as
doing anything special or directly onto the substrate,
that's not going to happen.
The other substrate that we'll use--and I won't take this
around to everybody--but for our proofs, we're not going to print
on any of these substrates because the heavy paper runs
right around $1 per square foot, the fabrics right around
$1.25 per square foot.
The perforated window film I think is somewhere in the
neighborhood of $4 per square foot, which that doesn't sound
like much but then whenever you have to go buy it, that
perforated window film is $480 for a roll of it, whereas the
bond paper, which is actually what we'll use to be able
to print our proofs on, I can pick up a roll of this for
right around $20, so it's not going to kill me if you decide
to print out one, maybe even two proofs on the bond paper.
Actually it's going to be required of you to try it out.
So those are the substrates that you can expect.
Let me go through real quick.
Your heavy paper, those will be for your indoor applications
and you can mount the heavy paper to things like foam core
or a board so that it can be transported easily.
Your plastic substrates include things like your banners,
like your portable displays or your pop displays as they call
them or your window films or your floor graphics.
And your plastic substrates can be indoor or outdoor, okay.
Because they are plastic, they're not like paper.
They're going to get wet.
Fabric is typically indoor applications where you want
something that's a little bit more intimate than paper
and a little bit more durable, but you don't want to use
something that's got a plastic feel to it.
Adhesive back substrates--or plastic, I'm sorry--these will
generally be for indoor and outdoor applications
and of course you've got metal and rigid substrates as well.
As far as finishing these graphics go,
your large advertisements are not going to be done as soon as
they come out of the printer.
There's going to be a little bit of excess media on there
that's got to be trimmed off first thing.
So we've got to trim it, we've got to crop it down to size.
Then if you have anything that's paper, like on a heavy paper,
that you want to be transported back and forth,
we'll have to mount it.
Mount it to a sheet of foam core, and I've got the adhesives
and everything to be able to do that, and I know a lot of
people that use spray adhesive that's absolutely
kind of a fricking mess.
We've actually gotten adhesive that we just roll right onto
the board and then you just roll the graphic right onto it.
It's pretty amazing.
Laminating will also have to be done for some of the graphics,
specifically any kind of graphics that are going to be in
an environment where it's going to be scratched or if
it's going to be a window film that's going to go outside.
The purpose of laminating a graphic is to make it more
scratch-resistant, scratch-durable
and we also use it as a weather-proofing as well.
This graphic that we have right here is actually a plastic film,
but because it's getting rolled up and down so many times
and people probably run there fingers across it,
it can scratch the print pretty quickly, so we put a laminate
over the top of it--or an over laminate--and it protects it.
It puts into a lot better shape.
Your window graphics as well, or your floor graphics, because
they're going outside or because they're going in an element
where they can be scratched or beat up by the elements,
we put a laminate over the top of those to make sure
that they're better protected.
We might also put a laminate over the top of our graphics
that are mounted to boards, so you'll need to make sure that
you ask your customer if this is something that's going
to be frequently used, frequently played with,
moved back and forth.
If it's something that they're never going to touch--they're
just going to put it up there and leave it for the next 10
years-- I usually don't worry about laminating it,
but if it's something that goes back and forth to shows
like that, you'll want to laminate it.
If it's a board, a rigid board, usually we laminate those.
Banners we usually don't laminate, okay.
We don't touch banners because the media by itself
is durable enough.
And even though plastic substrate is waterproof,
we still may go ahead and laminate those as well.
And the laminate we actually use--here we go.
This is actually one of them that I've got right here.
Go ahead, feel it real quick, you'll notice
it's actually sticky.
It's like a big clear sticker actually.
The reason is I got sick of burning my fingers all the time
with our regular laminator.
That's part of the reason that we have this--well they call it
pressure-sensitive, so it's just like a big clear sticker
that goes over the top of your graphic.
But the other thing that you have to realize is that if you
put any sort of a plastic media through a laminator,
at 400 degrees, it's going to melt.
It's going to make a big stink, kind of like.
>> male audience member: [unclear dialogue]
>> male speaker: Excellent.
You know what, I appreciate that, thanks.
But with some of the plastic medias that we have, like the
one for the organizational professional development
or any of the window films, if I tried to run those through a
laminator at 400 degrees to get it to adhere to it,
then it would melt and my entire graphic would be ruined.
So what we actually have is we have the pressure-sensitive
laminate, which is like a big clear sticker, there's no heat
so you don't have to worry about burning yourself either.
It's a little bit more work, but the results are ultimately
the same as what you would get for anything else.
The only thing that we'll do--and that's for a special
kind of a, the only thing that you'll use grommeting for,
which you've probably seen those little gold things
in the corners.
Grommeting is only used for doing the larger banners,
so any banners that you have to hang outside, you've got to
run a rope or a bungee cord through it, you've actually
got the capabilities to be able to grommet the graphics
that you get for your customer right here in this lab.
Kind of interesting, kind of fun as well.
So actually all of these right up top here, any graphic that
you get we will have the capability of doing any of
these, so if your customer asks well what can you do with this
graphic, you can tell them if they want a banner that you can
put grommets in it and you can hang it outside for them.
If they say that they want some sort of a display board,
you can say 'well, we can mount it, we can laminate it
and we can bring it in here, we can trim it down to size
for you, we can install it as well'.
So make sure that you let them know what it is that you can
and can't do.
As far as the proofing and the printing process goes,
the kind of proofs that your customer is going to get
is going to be a content proof.
So it's going to be printed on a different kind of media than
what it's going to be produced on.
It's going to be printed on cheap bond paper,
and whenever they look at it what they'll be doing is
they'll review the text, the typography, the layout,
the images--make sure that it's all accurate.
What they'll also probably do because we're going to print
them out at full size, is they will probably also review the
size specifications and whenever you go to your customer I'll
give you a tape measure and you can go in there and you
can measure the spot of how big you need the graphic to be in.
I've had people screw up before--they've got their
dimensions wrong and it's pretty obvious too because it was
actually after they took the proof there or they told me like
'oh yeah, we took the proof and they said that
it looked really good', then printed the final version
and they went to install it and it was four inches too big.
And I was like 'oh, well if you would've taken your proofs
there, trimmed your proofs down and put it up in the location
that it was supposed to go, it would've fit,
so I had them caught in a lie and it was hilarious.
So that's what you can expect.
You'll print one proof--and this goes for everybody--
everybody gets to print one proof at full size at least.
And the proofs you print will be your PDF files,
so after you're done making your Illustrator document,
you'll make a PDF file and you'll use the Inkjet printer
to print your proofs.
If you need further revisions after your Inkjet printer
and your customer says 'hey, I don't think you need to
print out a second full scale proof,' then we can use the
laser printer to print the smaller proofs out
that are scaled down.
A lot of times whenever you actually output these larger
documents, the Inkjet printers, they require what we call RIP,
or raster image processor.
It's actually a specific piece of software that they use to
handle the output of these documents, and
they're specifically designed for these large graphics.
We have one that Dr. Liu works with called Flexo Proof
or something like that and we've also used one called ONYX
as well, but I don't think we'll need it for this assignment.
I think we should be okay just printing directly out of
Acrobat, so we'll be in good shape there.
Some other things that you'll need to do as part of your
project, whenever you are finished with it--I've already
shown you the one thing--that is, you'll need to outline your
fonts, and then you'll also need to make sure that you
package everything and whereas InDesign had that
nice little package tool, Illustrator doesn't have it.
So you'll have to go through and do all that good stuff manually.
And whenever you package something manually in
Illustrator, it's not as tough as it really sounds.
All it really requires you to do is just get all your resources
and put them into a folder.
That's it.
So in this case I've already got a banner that's kind of
started up here.
I can go ahead and put a background color on here
as well.
I'l use yellow--that's high contrast.
Let's see if I can--oh, what about this, I'll put this guy
on here, maybe he'll be my logo or something like that.
There we go.
[unclear dialogue].
Alright, here we go.
Another vector object.
Oh my gosh, I don't have time for this.
Here we go.
Shift that to the back--aw, stop.
I was only kidding.
Alright, here we go, make my text a little bit smaller.
There we go.
So we'll say that I've got my graphic and I've got my text on
here as a layout, and this is really all that I require
so we need to manually package everything up.
So the first thing I'll do is I'll go ahead and save the
Illustrator document.
I'll create a folder, 'package', 'large ad'.
Okay, create it and I'll save my Illustrator document there.
Okay, that's a piece of cake--we'll save it.
And just like all of your InDesign documents whenever you
save those, you also included the fonts, the images that you
used, PDF files that you used--that all goes in
one nice little folder.
You'll do the same thing for your large advertisement.
If this ever gets done, I'll show you.
Alright, here we go.
Here's a graphic that I used--its an EPS file.
I'll go ahead and save this to the folder that I've made
on the desktop, so I've got my resource right here.
That's a resource I used that's included in the package.
And the reason that we always put those resources in
there--let's say you have a problem with an image or a font
later on and you need to go back and gain access to it--put
everything in one folder so that you can have access to it.
Then the other thing that I need to put in that folder is
the font that I used.
I already outlined this font but I actually remember from earlier
that the font that I used was myriad pro, and to be able to
export the font inside of that folder--if you open up your font
book, which is located on the dock bar, and I slide up
to myriad pro right here and you go to export font--
you can export it right there.
And I'll call it myriad.
So what I've got so far, do I have, I've got
the font that I used, I've got the Illustrator document,
I've got the logo that I used.
Last thing I need is my PDF file, and whenever I go to
export my PDF file--sorry, not export, save as--just save it as
PDF file and then I just put my marks and bleeds on there.
Then I'll be in good shape.
I think a lot of people try to make that out to be harder than
what it actually is, but it's not really too difficult.
All you really do is just put all of the resources that
you used for your document into one file.
That way you can gain or have access to them later on.
And the PDF file will obviously be the one that you
print out of.
I think that actually sums up that.
Let's actually take a look at two documents--
hand these out to you real quick.
First one's going to be the specifications for your
large advertisement.
Second one's the specifications for your
marketing project presentations.
There's two sheets here-- one says project six,
one says project seven.
[unclear dialogue].
Alright, so as far as the large ad goes, you're going to go
back, tell your customer that--or ask them--what do
they need as far as the large advertisement goes.
Do they need some sort of a board, do they need
some sort of a banner, window or floor graphic
or do they need a poster created?
After you ask them, figure out how big it needs to be.
You can take the tape measure, go through, measure it out,
figure out what it is that you need to do for them to meet
the specifications.
Hopefully, we've got enough text, you've got enough graphics
to be able to work with.
We've been working pretty consistently with those.
And after you've got all that information, you've got to come
back and put together a design, and it shouldn't take too long
for the design.
I had one person who came in here last semester,
they got all their specifications,
design and proof printed in a single day.
It was kind of surreal, but it turns out that's all
their customer really wanted.
They just wanted a big banner with the company's name on it
and the phone number, that was it.
I thought that was kind of easy, kind of cake.
You'll put that design together, you'll have to print it out
and you've got to do a content proof, okay.
The one thing I'll warn you about the content proofs is that
they take a little bit of time to do it, and if everybody just
kind of doesn't get done until like Friday and everybody wants
to print on Friday, it's going to be a disaster jamboree.
I mean I've got three printers that I can print proofs out on
but it's going to take forever to be able to do that, so if you
could maybe then get your work done for Wednesday or even come
in during an open lab on Thursday, that would probably
make everybody's like a little bit easier to get
those content proofs knocked out of the way.
The content proofs you'll take to your customer
and you'll want to show it to them at full scale,
at full size because that's what they need to see, they need to
understand 'holy cow, 3 feet by 6 feet, that's kind of big'.
And you'll find out a lot about your design
and about your environment if you print it out at full scale.
You'll mark it up and then you'll come back
and you'll put together a final version.
That final version that you create is actually going to be
printed on the actual media, so make sure that you are clear
with your customer where the design's going, how long that
design's going to be up for and the applications of that design.
Yeah, Nate?
>> Nate: [unclear dialogue].
>> male speaker: No, you're just each
designing your own one-- it doesn't take that long.
Yeah it's fine.
And you'll take it back to them and you'll have to install it.
If it's a banner usually you just zip-tie it into place,
if it's a board, you'll just give it to them and--
I'm trying to think--if it's one of these pop displays,
you'll just give them the bag that it comes in.
But the evaluation looks like the exact same evaluation that
I've done for the website and for your multipage document
because it is, I've just modified a few of the things.
So the first place you'll have to start out is to gather
specifications, put together a rough sketch, package it
and then you'll have to print it out and have all
that information on there at the bottom.
So I won't spend a lot of time going through this part,
unless you've got specific questions or anything,
like Nate was just asking right there.
Any other questions on the large ad?
This is a tight schedule actually.
Your proofs have got to be done by Friday.
I can't really adjust that too much.
I'll do what I can to help you out and make sure that the paper
and the ink is all available, which it should be--
I've already got everything open and I don't presume
we'll have problems like we did with the laser printer.
So if there's no questions on this, let's take a look at
project seven real quick which is actually the presentations
for the entire project itself.
People have asked me before how do I expect the layout of these
presentations to go--some sort of a structure for the website,
I'm sorry, for the presentation.
This is what I'm looking for.
Whenever you introduce yourself,
make sure that everybody's up there.
[unclear dialogue] majors, minors, etcetera,
etcetera--maybe even future plans.
That's fine, I can live with that.
And then I want you to introduce your business owner
and business--If they want to come in
and listen to the presentation, that's absolutely fine.
I encourage them to come in because there's no better
feedback than to have them sit right here in the classroom
and listen.
If not, some pictures of your business owner would probably
help out as well.
I'm a big, big advocate of using as many visual aides as you can.
If you put lots and lots of text of every single word
that you're going to say on the presentation, I'll cry.
So will Emily, right?
You want to give some background information on the business
owner, the business itself, the industry sector that it's in.
So if they're in merchandising, or if they're in retail,
food service, things like that, you'll probably want
to give some information.
You'll say well here are their nearest competitors
or close competitors.
The industry itself is a $20 billion industry,
etcetera, etcetera.
So you'll need to probably find some sort of a
statistical background on that.
Give some indication of the scope of the business that
you were actually working on.
Then you'll need to talk about the items for your customer.
These will probably be the same.
Everybody will probably tell 'well, we had to do a website,
a large ad and a multipage document', okay,
but they'll probably be different in their own aspects
because everybody might've taken their own approach
to designing the items or toward planning,
how to create those items themselves.
So describe the whole plan, the whole planning stage of putting
it together for your customer.
Then whenever you're working through there,
talk about the design phase.
How did you take pictures, how did you create content?
What tools did you use for layout,
what tools did you use for proofing?
And what did you do during the proofing process?
What did you expect whenever you met with your customer?
Limitations, expectations, all of that good stuff.
I'm looking for honest feedback here.
If you say the proofing was absolutely horrible because your
customer had no idea what they were looking at or they had
no concept of design, go ahead and say that because
other people probably share the same experience.
Then you'll need to talk about the production phase.
You'll need to talk about the equipment that we use.
You'll also need to talk about processes you used to be able
to produce that product as well.
Specific equipment names are actually listed on the equipment
that we've used so you can get those, and I think all of the
processes--I think I've named in the previous presentations.
You'll need to talk about delivery and installation,
which there may be a whole lot going on with the delivery
and installation.
If it's a window graphic, that's a pretty intense installation.
If it's a multipage document, you give them a box
and then you walk away--that's effectively how it works.
A website, you might also talk about some of the troubles that
you had trying to find hosting or sitting down to
meet with a customer and some of the different plans
you discussed as well.
Other things that you'll probably
need to do--documentation.
Always, always take pictures--like lots and lots
of pictures--and bring in your proofs if you
still have your proofs.
You can print out extra copies of your proofs if you want.
Also, talk about how you delivered the files and then,
you know, present the products that you produced.
How this usually works best is that sometimes people show the
physical models of what they actually created, which that's
okay, especially if it's like a brochure or something like that.
Maybe print out like five or six copies, throw them out
each at a table.
That way people can kind of thumb through it
and see what it is that you actually created.
If it's for something like a website,
the website will probably work better if you just show all
three of four of the websites that you did individually
and then your final websites.
That way they can see the incorporation of elements
and you can discuss that as well in your presentation.
Same thing holds for your large advertisement.
You'll save those large ads as photos, you'll put all your
photos up there and you'll show the final one and you can talk
about the progression--how you met with your customer
and they said they wanted to pull information
from this one, this one, this one and this one
to make your final design shows cohesion in the process.
Final part of it is feedback and group contributions.
I want to know what your owner has felt about it.
I've already got some of your owner's feedback automatically,
but that was just a rubric that I typically use
for grading purposes.
I would like some more in-depth feedback from your owner
and then you can incorporate it if you want it to be
really interesting.
If your owner couldn't meet with you and you just wanted to
take a quick video of them as they talk about your project
and include that, hey that's interesting.
I totally encourage that.
Also, your group member feedback, how you felt about
the project, if it went well.
Go ahead and be honest, tell us why it didn't go well
or tell us why it went well.
Tell us how you think it's going to help you or how this project
was absolutely horrible and you think that you'll probably
never use it again.
I can take a few shots, you can take a few shots, too.
Your group members can take a few shots.
Just don't make anybody cry because that's really mean.
Alright, presentations-- 20-25 minutes,
ballpark for the length, okay.
And by the time that you throw all of this in here,
it's not too difficult to do.
If you go over a little bit but the content, I feel, is super
good and there's not a lot of unnatural pauses or points where
the PowerPoint presentation just befuddles us and nothing's going
right, then I'll be okay with it if it goes over a little bit
and the content is really good.
There will also be a Q & A session afterwards, so make sure
that you allow some time for that as well and make sure that
you're also using appropriate terminology from the coursework.
Terminology goes beyond saying I used
this specific tool in PhotoShop or Illustrator, or beyond
the names of the equipment.
It also talks about principles, rules of design.
If you have done something in a previous class that you applied
to the project in this class, go ahead
and bring that information in because that's good.
If you say, 'well, whenever I first heard about this project I
thought about a project we did dealing with brand management
and I tried to incorporate that whenever we were developing the
logo and every product that we created for our customer',
go ahead and share that information.
That's really good to share.
In your evaluation, we look at the quality of the presentation,
okay--the terminology, the concepts, the documentation.
I look for a lot of pictures, a lot of video,
a lot of media that's relevant to your presentation.
And also any hard copies that you want to bring in will work
as well.
Professional attire, okay, so don't show up in
a Blackhawks shirt.
No, but seriously, ladies should probably wear something
business-professional, gentlemen as well.
Button up your shirts, tuck in your shirts, if you wear ties
as well, that would probably help out, too.
Proper grammar and transition, time limits,
your group member evaluations.
I'll give you an evaluation as well, and actually your
classmates will be evaluating you as a presenting group.
Just make sure that I'm not way, way off because I look at what
your classmates say and I take those very seriously.
And then your Q & A session, how well you're able to answer
some of those questions.
And I will literally ask you anything during
that Q & A session.
Anything, almost anything.
So what you'll need to turn in upon your completion of this is
you'll have project evaluation and group member evaluation
sheets, and actually what those are are going to be links
that I'll give to you for you to fill out, okay.
Kind of like you've done for the website project.
You'll still get it for these last two projects, your
multipage and your large ad and as well as your final project,
okay, because I'm always looking for evaluation feedback.
What's up, Ashley?
>> Ashley: [unclear dialogue].
>> male speaker: The presentations are
going to take place the last week of class, so if I
look at iCal real quick--so the 25th and the 27th.
And what we usually have is we have three presentations on
Monday and two presentations on Wednesday and then Friday you
just hand-submit your, you submit your evaluations and I
also make that the day that you burn all of your work to a CD
and give to your customer so that they have that
for future work.
Any other questions?
You'll notice that the only time I've got allocated is two weeks
for the large ad, but it requires the least amount of
time because everybody's usually able to rip through it
pretty quick.
Yeah?
>> female audience member: [unclear dialogue].
>> male speaker: No, you'll have a final exam
as well--what's that?
>> female audience member: [unclear dialogue].
>> male speaker: Yeah, just like the midterm.
What's that?
>> male audience member: [unclear dialogue].
>> male speaker: Probably, yes.
Anything else?
Come on, you can't tell me that those exams have been hard.
Alright.