Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today we're going to talk about how to
create a billboard in InDesign and also using Photoshop.
We'll have three parts.
First, we'll talk about document setup.
You really need to call your printer and get specs, and then we'll talk about converting
those specs to a document size that you can use.
Next, we'll go over actual creation of the billboard.
I've used a few resources that I found online, and you can download those.
They should be in the description.
And then finally, I'll tell you how to export your document so that your printer, again,
can use it.
So let's get started.
I'm here in InDesign, and the first thing you should really do is call your outdoor
board company.
The specs that my company gave me was 12 foot 3 inches by 24 foot 6 inches.
Now they allow an InDesign file to be one inch to one foot, so for every 12 feet we'll
have 12 inches.
But when you have these inches at the end, you cannot just do 12.3 by 24.6 inches, because
that would be three tenths of a foot instead of three twelfths of a foot.
So if we do this, it'll actually end up being
12.25 because three inches is one quarter of 12 by 24.5, because six inches is half
of a foot.
So this is what our new document should be: 12.25 inches by 24.5.
So I'm going to create that new document now.
I will do CMD N for a new document and we'll do inches here and I'll change this to 12.25
by 24.5 inches.
The orientation... obviously I have these switched, so I'll just
do this orientation.
We'll just have the one page, and I'll go ahead and create the document.
So this is the size that we are going to submit to the outdoor board company.
Now I'm going to use a photo with this, and when you're using a photo for a billboard,
it needs to be a very nice high res photo.
So set your camera about as high as it'll go.
You can also create vector artwork, and that will always be scalable.
But you'll want to do that in Illustrator probably.
And then another spec that the outdoor company told me...I actually did have to create an
outdoor board.
So these are the actual specs they gave me.
They need a one-fourth foot safe area, so a one-quarter inch, safe area.
So if I draw a little box here, this is a half inch.
I probably won't even come that close.
And by safe area, I mean, no text or important stuff should be going off the edge.
Another thing they mentioned that there should be no bleed on this document.
So whatever goes off the edge, they will be able to get it lined up perfectly.
You don't have to worry about bleeds.
Now this might be different depending on your company.
Alright, so let's go ahead and create this billboard.
Now I've actually got a couple of resources that I downloaded and you can also download.
They're free to use online, and those links are in the description so you can check those
out.
But I'm going to go ahead and bring up the Pexels picture that I'm going to use for this
billboard and just pull it onto my Photoshop icon.
Now, we will want to have the specs the same as what they are in the InDesign file, but
I just basically do not want to shrink this picture.
I want it to be 300 DPI at the 12 inches by 24 inches size.
So our actual size is 24.5 by 12.25.
I'm going to hit C to get my crop marks up and up here in Ratio, I'm going to hit 24.25
by 12.25.
Okay, and obviously I did this again wrong.
Now I need a little space for my word.
So I'm going to pull this up like this.
And I think I'll pull this in just a little bit and move it over so that
that sandwich fills up most of my area up there.
And now hit Return.
All right, and then as you can see, we do have a little space over here to fill.
So I'm going to just hit my M tool, that is your Marquee Tool, highlight this part of
it, and then do CMD T. That will give me a Transform option, and I can just pull this
out over here.
So now I have enough space to have some text here.
Now hit CMD D to deselect.
I'll probably add my text in InDesign since I feel I have a little more control over it
there.
So I'm going to create a new layer here to make this a little bit darker.
So I'm going to have white text on here, and I want it to be able to show up.
So I want to fill this with black.
So I'm going to hit D to get a black fill and a white background color.
And I'll hit OPT Delete to fill this layer with the foreground color, OPT Delete.
All right, now I'm going to add a mask and I'll grab my gradient tool by hitting G.
I'm just going to pull it in about like this.
We'll see what that does.
Maybe a little more.
Okay, so this is about what we want.
I'm going to click on the black part and get my Eraser tool.
I'm going to hold CTRL and OPT to resize that.
I don't want very much hardness.
So I'm just going to delete this.
That looks pretty good.
And now I'll knock this layer down to about 50%.
This burger or whatever it is, does not have the greatest color right now.
So I'm going to go ahead and kind of change the color here.
We'll make sure to click on that layer, and then we'll use an adjustment layer.
And we'll go with hue and saturation.
And I think now we can just bump that saturation up...just make it a little more appealing.
And I think I'll make this a little bit darker now, and maybe I can erase a little bit more
out here, so it looks a little more natural.
Alright, I think I'm happy with this.
So I'm going to save it.
I'll save it in two ways.
I'll save it as a Photoshop file to keep all my layers and all of the hue and saturation
stuff intact, and also save it as a JPEG.
All right, and that's the one we're going to be using in InDesign.
So now we'll hit CMD Tab to open InDesign back up.
And now we can place this - CMD D - and we'll find the most recent JPEG.
I'm going to make it exactly the size of my canvas.
All right, it's looking pretty great.
Now all we need to do is add text and our logo.
The text we decided on was Local Harvest International Flavor.
So I just typed that.
Tt's really really small because it's such a big document.
So I'm going to hit CMD A, and we'll change this to about 100 up here in the text.
Oh, Flavor... just get rid of that.
All right, I'm going to select all and make this paper.
And now I'm going to change my font to maybe Montserrat.
That's one of my favorites.
And it's free out there on Google fonts if you want to download it.
With billboards, you really want to stick to seven words or less if possible, and now
sometimes you really cannot do that.
But for the most part, that is the general rule for billboards.
And I think we'll change the word 'flavor' to be something just a little more interesting.
And so for the font, I'm going to choose Pacifico.
And we'll make this really big.
We'll make it about 250.
I don't really like the way this looks.
Maybe we'll choose something else.
Maybe we'll choose Grand Hotel.
Okay, that one's fine.
And I'll make it a lot bigger.
Maybe we can make it 300 maybe 350.
All right, and now I want this to be a little bit slanted.
It's too up and down.
I realize that Grand Hotel's a little bit played out as a font, but it's a simple, easy
font, and everyone can download it for free.
Let's get in here in the skew which is also known as False Italic and make it about 20.
All right, that looks pretty good.
I'm going to highlight the entire word.
And we'll OPT and up arrow so that we can move this up.
And we can also do that faster over there in the Character Palette.
So I'm going to get a nice little tail going on here.
And I'll do that with the Pen tool, the P tool if you hit that on your keyboard.
And now we'll change the stroke to be about the same.
I'm just hitting the up arrow once I get in there,
about the same as the thickness of those letters.
And we'll do the joins and the caps circle.
I'm going to zoom in a little bit, kind of fix this, pull it over some, and maybe reduce
the size a little.
I'm a little thick here.
And then I'll redraw this with the Pencil tool starting here, and going right up there
like that.
And hopefully there's a Smooth tool under there.
Yes, there is.
I'm used to Illustrator but InDesign does have some of the same tools, so that's helpful.
We'll just go over the edge of this and smooth it all out, so it kind of looks a little better
and then CMD- and see what we have.
Okay, I'm pretty happy with that.
And now all we really need to do is add a logo.
So to do that, I'm going to bring in another file that I downloaded.
So I'll pull this onto my Illustrator icon, and I'm going to
copy just the top part of it with my Group Selection tool.
So copy that, CMD Tab, and paste right into InDesign.
I'm holding Shift and OPT to resize from the center.
I'm going to put it right over here.
We can maybe move this up a little bit.
So I'm not sure this is showing up very well, but I'll hit W to see what it's really going
to look like.
It does look pretty good on that background.
So we'll just leave it the colors that it is.
So now our billboard is pretty much done.
And all we need to do is export it and get it off to our printer.
So I'm going to go to File>Export.
And for a printer, I always go to Adobe PDF
for print.
We'll put this right in our billboard file, so I'll just call it Billboard.
And I'll go to Save, and here is where we can change some of the options.
With the specs that he gave me, I'm just going to choose Press Quality.
We could also do High Quality Print and I don't think we'd be able to tell the difference
when this is up there on the billboard.
If you have bleeds, your marks and bleeds are here and you would want to set them up
at whatever specs that you are given.
But most of the time with billboards, I've noticed that they don't need bleeds, so Press
Quality is all you need to do.
And then export.
Then we'll go and we'll open it up...
CMD O. And then down here you can see the actual size which is 24.5 by 12.25.
And that's it.
The billboard's done and ready to be sent to the printer.
Now if you have any questions or comments, please leave those in the comment section
below.
And if you like this video, please click on the 'Like' button.
And that's my video tutorial for this week, and I'll see you next Thursday with another
one.
Thank you!!!