Hi, this is Anne for Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to tell you how to figure
scale ratio when you're making an InDesign document for a billboard or a really large
sign.
Obviously, billboards are so huge and InDesign cannot have a document that is that size.
So your InDesign document will be much smaller, but what size should you make it?
We'll cover that in this lesson.
Alright, let's get started.
So step one is to call the printer and ask for specs or find them online.
I downloaded this document from a billboard company in my area, just as an example.
So after you get your spec sheet or get specs from the printer, you'll want to find the
scale ratio.
Right here it says their bulletins are set up at a half inch to every foot.
So one half inch on your document equals one foot on the billboard at 300 ppi.
So this is our scale ratio of one half inch to one foot.
So I've made this little document to show you exactly how it works.
We're going to be taking a huge Billboard and making just a small version in InDesign.
I'm going to just copy our scale ratio and bring it into Illustrator.
Illustrator just makes it easy for me.
So I'm just going to paste it in.
Alright, so step two is to make sure that both of these numbers are using the same units.
Right now they're not – one is in inches, and one is in feet.
So I'm going to change this to all inches.
So we'll just make a copy of this.
And I'm going to change one foot to 12 inches because there are 12 inches in a foot.
Now these two statements are exactly the same, but the bottom one is in inches.
Everything is in inches.
Sorry for all you metric folks out there, but it's really the same idea.
If you've got, you know, one centimeter equals a meter, you need both of these to be centimeters
or both of them to be meters.
All right, so step three is to find out what the full size of the billboard is, and this
will be on your spec sheet.
Our billboard is 14 feet by 48 feet.
So I've already got my Illustrator document set up.
And you absolutely do not need an Illustrator document.
This is just to show you easily what I'm talking about.
So our billboard is 14 feet by 48 feet.
And because we're using inches down here, we also need to change this to inches.
So how many inches are in 14 feet?
That would be 14 times 12.
And that is 168 inches and...same thing, 48 feet in inches, how many is that?
That would be 48 times 12.
So 576 inches, so now we don't need our 48 feet anymore, and we don't need our 14 feet.
We've got how many inches the billboard is on the short side and how many inches on the
long side.
Step four is to find out how long our short sides should be in our document.
So on the billboard it's 168.
So our document will be a half inch for every 12 inches.
So I'm just going to put a half inch here, and then we'll put 12 inches here.
So we're going to have a half inch in our document for every 12 inches on the billboard.
And now I just put the other numbers in the same place.
We'll put an equals sign over here.
And to make it a little easier, I'm going to add 'document' on the top and 'billboard'
on the bottom.
I'm going to make this a decimal instead.
So .5, and then our billboard on the short side is 168 inches.
So I'm going to pull that over here.
So when you're setting up your little equation, you'll have the document stuff on the top
over here, which is this half inch, and then the billboard on the bottom, which is the
12 inch.
So you have your half inch on your document to the 12 inches on the billboard.
And then you've got the small side of your document, and the small side of your billboard
right over here.
So now all we have to do is cross multiply.
We've got .5 x 168.
That's 84.
So I'm going to put 84 inches equals 12 x ?. So now we can just divide that out what
x 12 is 84?
And the answer is 7.
So in your InDesign document, the short side right here, will be 7 inches.
Now we'll do the same with the long side.
We'll have the document info on top and the billboard on the bottom.
I'm just going to drag this because it will be the same.
We've got a half inch on our document to 12 inches on the Billboard.
We've got our equals sign and we will also not know the long side of our document, this
side here.
But we do know the long side of the billboard which is 576.
Okay, so now we just cross multiply that .5 x 576.
It's 288.
And then we've got 12 x ?. So 12 x what = 288 and that is 24.
All right, so your document in this case would be 24 inches by 7 inches.
Okay, so let's take a look at that spec sheet again.
And it does mention that is your live image area.
You will need to include a six inch bleed on all four sides.
So we need to find out how much the six inch bleed should be in our document.
Let's just call this 'bleed.'
We've got the same thing here.
I'll just copy all of this and pull it down.
We've got a half inch on our document equals 12 inches on the bill.
Now they want six inch bleed.
And so we need to find out what that'll be on our document.
So we go ahead and cross multiply .5 x 6.
That is 3, = 12 x what?
So 12 x what = 3?
And the answer is .25.
All right, so we have our short sign, our long side and our bleed.
So let's go to InDesign and set up this document.
Okay, we'll create new.
We're working in inches, so I'm going to go ahead and change this to inches.
Our width will be 24 and our height will be 7.
So width is 24, height is 7.
And then for bleed, we're going to have .25 inches.
All four sides should be .25, and then we'll Create.
So now if you have photographs or anything like that, make sure they go all the way out
to that bleed area.
They will get chopped off a little bit, but that's OK.
Just make sure there's no text that is very close to the edge.
And that is scale ratio for building a billboard in InDesign.
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Thank you!!!