By: Kelly Clarke

Exhibit managers often need to have a wide range of knowledge. The graphic design portion of producing an exhibit can be daunting, especially when there are so many other things to do. I am going to explain a few terms that can make or break the success of an trade show exhibit or display. If you have any questions or anything to add, please comment below. Here we go…

Dots Per Inch

Dots Per Inch is often abbreviated as dpi, and the number tells you the resolution of the image. ‘Resolution’ means the detail you are able to see in an image. Right now, you are looking at 72 dpi. All computer screens are that resolution. These ‘dots’ are actually pixels on your screen. In print it may be a dot of ink. DPI gives an indication of how much detail a document can have. Hand held documents, such as magazines, are printed at 300dpi. Most large scale graphics used in trade shows are printed at 100dpi. That means that the images need to be 100dpi at 100% the print size. Generally, pictures from the web simply will not work. Hi-resolution images, at 300dpi or higher, work great for trade show graphics, because they can be resized to be larger.

Finding An Image’s Size

On a PC, right click on an image file and choose the last item on the menu that pops up – Properties. There are two tabs on the top. Choose Summary, and then click the Advanced button. The top two fields show the images height and width in pixels.

On a Mac, control – click and choose Get Info. This will show you the width and height in pixels.

An image that is 900 pixels wide can be safely used up to 9 inches wide for a graphic with 100dpi requirements. If the graphic requirements were 300dpi, it could only be three inches, because there needs to be 300 pixels per inch to be clear.

Color Fidelity

Color will always vary. This is a very hard fact that printers and designers must learn early. It is near impossible to consistently output the exact same color, especially when dealing with different substrates and outputs. But having knowledge about how color is used in production and output can help you have more consistent colors.

File Format

Graphics and images are all assigned a color profile as soon as the document is created. It can be PMS, CMYK, or RGB. RGB stands for Red, Green, and Blue. These are the colors used in your television and computer monitor. RGB is used to produce graphics for the web, and digital output. However, there are a few cases where RGB is used in printing. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. Generally, these are the four ink colors used to create all the colors you see in printed material. PMS stands for Pantone Matching System. This is a system created to help printers and manufacturers to produce color consistently. Many companies have PMS specifications for their logos and branding. But with PMS, every color is assigned a number, and gradients can turn out unexpectedly. PMS works best for a large swatch of color in a graphic.

The file you are building should start in the format that it will be produced in. Changing the format later on will definitely alter how the final color looks.

The Printer

Using different printers can result in varying colors. Using the same printer at varying times can even alter color, because so much can affect the output – humidity, temperature, machine calibration. Providing a sample of past works can allow them to color match.