Before Print: The Checklist for Billboard Artwork

A mistake in billboard artwork costs one click while it is still on screen. Once it is printed, it costs a whole booking period. The poster then hangs by the road for ten or eleven days, with the price sitting on a sheet join or a headline nobody can read from a car.

Most of these mistakes can be caught beforehand. We run the six checks below on every German 18-sheet billboard (Großfläche) design before the file leaves the agency. None of them takes longer than half a minute.

1. Is it the file the printer expects?

A German 18-sheet billboard measures 356 cm × 252 cm. The print file is almost never built at full size, though. It is built at a smaller scale that the printer enlarges. The booking service crossvertise, for example, asks for an artwork size of 600 mm × 426 mm at no less than 240 dpi, exported as PDF/X-3:2002 in CMYK with the ISO-Coated v2 colour space.

Other printers name other sizes, other resolutions and a different bleed. That is not a contradiction. It just means the spec sheet of the printer that actually prints the job is what counts, not the template from the last project.

30-second test: Open the PDF and look at the page size and output intent in the document properties. If either differs from the spec sheet, the file is not finished.

2. Does anything important sit on a cut edge?

A billboard poster does not go up in one piece. It is pasted from several parts, and wherever two parts meet there is a cut edge. Out on the street, that edge never lines up as precisely as it does in the file. The crossvertise guide puts it bluntly: no text elements or key product content on the cut edges.

You cannot see these edges in the layout. That is why a price, a face or a logo often ends up on one by pure chance, simply because there was room at that spot.

30-second test: Lay the sheet split from your printer’s spec sheet over the artwork as lines. Anything a line touches moves aside.

3. Does the message land in two seconds?

According to crossvertise, people look at a poster for two seconds on average. The same guide recommends cutting the copy down to five to seven words and showing the product large, at around 40 % of the poster area.

These are guidelines, not laws. But they explain why artwork with a headline, a subline, three benefits and a price flash fails by the road. Nobody reads four layers of text in two seconds.

30-second test: Count the words on the artwork, leaving out the logo and mandatory small print. If you are well above seven, cut before the printer does.

4. Does it carry over the real distance?

Most passers-by see a billboard from about 50 metres, crossvertise says. Its guide suggests a simple test: print the artwork on A3, put it on a wall and look at it from about five metres. Then ask three questions. What does it mean? What is being shown? Who is behind it?

On screen, the same test is even faster. Our rule of thumb from practice: whatever is still readable at phone size will also carry by the road. For single lines of copy you can use our readability check.

30-second test: Shrink the artwork to phone size and show it to someone who has not seen it. If they can answer the three questions, the artwork is done.

5. Does it work next to the road?

A print file shows the artwork on a white background. The billboard, however, stands in front of a DIY store, on an arterial road or next to a second board with another design. Artwork in grey and green looks calm in the layout. In front of a grey wall with a hedge, it disappears.

This check is missing from almost every checklist, because the print file alone cannot answer it. You need the artwork in its real surroundings.

30-second test: Place the artwork on a photo of a real billboard and look at the whole image, not just the board. Does the poster catch your eye first? If not, it needs more contrast with its surroundings.

6. Is there enough time before the booking period?

Even the best artwork is useless if it reaches the poster warehouse too late. crossvertise plans with roughly a month of lead time: the warehouse needs the print data about 10 to 15 days before they go up, and printing takes about five working days. The service calls its artwork deadline a fixed date that cannot be moved.

Then there are spare posters for weather, vandalism and pasting errors. crossvertise recommends printing about 20 % more than the number of boards booked. Forget that in the print run and a damaged poster leaves you with an empty board.

30-second test: Count backwards from the first day of the booking period: warehouse date, five working days of printing, one approval round. If the result lies before today, now is the moment to call the media owner.

Why none of this needs a mock-up

Checks 1, 2 and 6 are manual work with a spec sheet and a calendar. No tool changes that. You can find the sizes of common formats in our format database, including a template to download.

Checks 3 to 5 need the artwork on a real surface, and in several variants. With a Photoshop mock-up, every variant means a new file. In a live simulation you place the artwork on the surface, swap the headline and see the result instantly. The export goes straight into approval. That turns the checklist into one round instead of three.

Sources

• Welches Format hat eine Großfläche? — crossvertise
• Was ist eine Großfläche? — crossvertise
• Wie lege ich das Motiv für eine Großfläche an? — crossvertise
• Wie gestalte ich mein Plakat-Motiv? — crossvertise
• Wieviel Vorlaufzeit sollte ich bei Plakatwerbung berücksichtigen? — crossvertise
• Was ist der Unterlagenschluss? — crossvertise
• Wozu werden Ersatzplakate benötigt? — crossvertise