Billboard design: The road side kind. Which program to do the work in?

aplnubaplnub
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
I am doing a billboard design for my company. However, I am not sure what program would be best to do the design in. I have a meeting with the BB company this week but I want to have a working model when I go in. I don't think this is something for photoshop but I could be wrong. Should I be doing something this large in Illustrator? And yes, this will be the first one and man, what power.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    amoryaamorya Posts: 1,103member
    inDesign
  • Reply 2 of 8
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    Yes, I'd go for Illustrator and/or Indesign. We're doing some billboards and that's what we're using, mainly Indesign (which is why Rosetta is causing so much trouble). If you're using photos, you still need to use high-res ones.
  • Reply 3 of 8
    aplnubaplnub Posts: 2,605member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin


    Yes, I'd go for Illustrator and/or Indesign. We're doing some billboards and that's what we're using, mainly Indesign (which is why Rosetta is causing so much trouble). If you're using photos, you still need to use high-res ones.





    Can you give me any tips? Do you consider 8 megapixel photo's high res? What kind of dpi are you using?
  • Reply 4 of 8
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    You'll want to use Quark or InDesign. In addition to providing very good control over things like bleed, dimensions, etc, they have good layout tools and will make it easy to alter the text on your billboard during the last stage or for any revisions.



    You can do the artwork in Illustrator and Photoshop, and should shoot for a raster resolution between 100 and 150 dpi. With Illustrator, you'd be using vectors so there's not fundamentally much difference in working on a business card or a billboard.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,326moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by aplnub


    Can you give me any tips? Do you consider 8 megapixel photo's high res? What kind of dpi are you using?



    The output depends on the ppi. Billboards can get away with much less ppi because they are further away. The average for billboards is 10ppi. If the billboard size is roughly 50 feet x 15 feet then that equates to:



    50 feet x 12 inches x 10 ppi = 6000 pixels wide

    15 feet x 12 inches x 10 ppi = 1800 pixels high

    This is 10.8 million pixels total.



    http://www.acclaimimages.com/resourc...on_basics.html



    My brother who is a graphic designer in a print company uses a 12MPixel SLR for billboards but I'm using an 8MPixel. It's unlikely the images will take up the whole billboard and you can usually interpolate them slightly higher.



    An 8MPixel camera is over 3000x2000 so it should do the job fine.
  • Reply 6 of 8
    aplnubaplnub Posts: 2,605member
    Thanks guys! I have my meeting tomorrow to nail down the sizes (yes, we hope to do more than one now) and you are correct, my photo will not take up the entire board, far from it.



    I thougth about Illustrator since it is vector based but hey, if that is all I have to do 6000 x 1800 (roughly), then I think PS imported into a InDesign file would do fine.



    I will report back my findings.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    aplnubaplnub Posts: 2,605member
    They only except PS files. It turns out 10 ppi is really close. Good call!



    I like to pull everything into InDesign for one page layouts because bleeds are easier to see.
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