Designing for Newsprint

So, 2 weeks ago, a client asked me to design an ad for the newspaper. And of course, I thought, no problem! I've designing graphics for many years now, however this was my first news print design. For those of you who have never come across this, believe me, it is not as easy as it seems. Below are things to take into considerations:

• Newsprint is dark, therefore whatever you design, plan on your white areas being gray.
• Most newspapers will require that you embed the fonts for your designs and that they are Post Script fonts, not True Type which is the most common.
• Your design has to be at least 200dpi

Here are a couple of little tricks to help with the design. Create your image with a gray background. Probably something around #cccccc would be a good color. So basically, all your whites will actually be gray.

When I set up the document, I set it at 300dpi. I rather have to scale it down, then have to scale it up and distort. Always start big and scale down if necessary.

The fonts, this was the trickiest part yet. All my fonts were true type, so I had to scour the web for post script fonts. Here is where I found them: http://www.myfonts.com/

This of course is for a black and white ad. If you are creating a color ad, remember to set your document to CMYK. Otherwise, the print company will usually not accept it or your colors will be completely off.

Hope this helps!

If you have any ideas, questions or topics, email me and I will gladly post information on it!

sol@soldesigns.net

Sol