What should a magazine ad look like?

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What should a magazine ad look like?
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dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 10:01 am Post subject:

Rest assured that supplying your artwork as a PDF is the simplest and most easily acceptable form of presenting high quality artwork.
There are (seemingly always) concerns about colour management of photographs, but hopefully the plain vanilla (technically its probably sRGB) profile that your camera will have attached to your photos is likely to give reasonable (and consistent) results.

The point is that a PDF transfers your document in a form that is accessible, complete, compact and makes no assumptions whatsoever about the future use of the file - the layout artist's software, platform, etc, let alone the imagesetter resolution or platemaking and printing.
PDF stands for Portable Document Format.
It is one of the cornerstones of the pre-press industry.
Its very acceptable.

Helen_A wrote:

But most publications want ads as Tifs now (jpegs at a push with the pantone numbers!)

I'm afraid that I find this comment frankly a bit bizarre on several levels.

gil
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 08 Jun 2005
Posts: 18415

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 10:38 am Post subject:

dougal wrote:

Helen_A wrote:

But most publications want ads as Tifs now (jpegs at a push with the pantone numbers!)

I'm afraid that I find this comment frankly a bit bizarre on several levels.

I can see the point of specifying a pantone number where the business placing the ad has a logo that requires a specific colour used elsewhere and integral to the brand (e.g. the Heinz blue-green or Post Office red).
You will not get the same result if the artwork is scanned as RGB (or CMYB in old technology) and then printed as full(4)-colour. The pantone colour would have to be used instead / as well as. Which is one reason why 5- and 6-colour presses were developed : the four process colours (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) + one or more special (pantone) colours. Or metallics, varnish etc.

Barefoot Andrew
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 21 Mar 2007
Posts: 22780
Location: In the 17th century

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 2:35 pm Post subject:

Hi Sally,

Only just seen this... hope it all worked out for you!

Just to echo a few thoughts from Dougal and others: PDF is the definitive way of supplying material for print, but you must: (a) embed any fonts you're using, (b) ensure that bitmap artwork is at 300ppi, (c) include bleed if your advert goes to the page edge.

Should a panic like this occur again, and I'm around, I'l lay it out in Quark Xpress (6.5) and prepare the PDF for you.
A.

Barefoot Andrew
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 21 Mar 2007
Posts: 22780
Location: In the 17th century

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 2:42 pm Post subject:

With regard to colours, if your graphics are in RGB format, they will convert to to CMYK for you. You might not get exactly the same colours but unless you have very precise colour requirements an approximation is perfectly acceptable - particularly if the image has many subtle tonal graduations (e.g. a photo of something; this helps to "hide" the shift in colours when going from RGB to CMYK).

You can convert any graphics yourself from RGB to CMYK, but unless you really know what you're doing you'll get no better results than if they did it for you.

Pantone: a colour magazine will mostly likely be four-process (i.e. CMYK) only, and only the poshest of publications would use additional spot colours. Thus any publication asking for contributors or advertisers to use spot colours (or even know about them) would be most unusual IMHO.
A.

Helen_A

Joined: 26 Jan 2005
Posts: 1548
Location: MK, Bucks.

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 3:21 pm Post subject:

Hmmm - well I suggested tiff and pantone with jpeg as those are the commonly requested formats used in the magazines that I (from time to time, lol) advertise in (which are major publishing groups in the main - dennis, emap, etc...) They will take a pdf at a push, but you will be charged an additional fee (usually about 25% of the ad cost, with a minimum of �50

which on a �175 60mm x 60mm ad is a complete killer! )

There are exceptions, but they tend to be the smaller extremely esoteric publications with tiny runs. Or Private Eye (who'll still take hand done artwork for ads if you smile sweetly

)

Hm - actually Sally, have you thought about using the Private Eye classifieds? You'd fit in beautifully in the run up to christmas stuff

Helen_A

sally_in_wales
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 06 Mar 2005
Posts: 20809
Location: sunny wales

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 4:01 pm Post subject:
Thats a thought Helen, I'll look into that Havent heard a peep back from them, so suppose I'll have to wait and see if I have an advert as well as an article.Do places like WHSmiths stock Bushcraft magazines or am I going to have to really hunt for it?

mochyn

Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 24585
Location: mid-Wales

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 4:05 pm Post subject:

sally_in_wales wrote:

Do places like WHSmiths stock Bushcraft magazines or am I going to have to really hunt for it?

Ouch.

n

Joined: 07 Jun 2005
Posts: 211
Location: Lothian

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 4:11 pm Post subject:
Won't they send you a copy "for your records"...? I would have thought that if the article references your site as in "the author is Sally of SallyPointer.com then that will bring you hits first time, and the second magazine will remind people that they saw you in the previous issue which means you get two lots of exposure (!) for your work. Good luck with it! n

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 5:46 pm Post subject:

Helen_A wrote:

which on a �175 60mm x 60mm ad is a complete killer! )

There are exceptions, but they tend to be the smaller extremely esoteric publications with tiny runs. ...

Sorry but that is plain wrong.

Quote:

Emap Advertising employs a digital workflow for all advertisements in all of their magazines and only accepts advertising material in a PDF pass4Press format. PDF is currently the most �open� and recent of the available formats and is constructed from a postscript file. A Portable Document Format has been made available to the public by Adobe and the industry standard recognised by the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA) is known as pass4press.

https://www.emapadvertising.com/magazines/production.asp

Barefoot Andrew
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 21 Mar 2007
Posts: 22780
Location: In the 17th century

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 6:02 pm Post subject:

dougal wrote:

Sorry but that is plain wrong.

I thought so too, but wasn't sure enough to pass comment. I'd certainly take my business elsewhere if it were true.
A.

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 6:13 pm Post subject:

Just been trying to find something from Dennis - who seem to have everything listed by individual magazine.

For example

Quote:

...
A Unique Advertising Opportunity
Auto Express is a winning formula. ...

Copy requirements
Hi�res composite PDF 360dpi.

Display Rates

https://www.dennis.co.uk/Auto_Express/IE_index.html

franco

Joined: 05 Nov 2004
Posts: 113
Location: Bolton, Lancashire

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 6:57 pm Post subject:
I advertise in The Sunday Times and they will only accept EPS format, luckily my designer can convert to it but if he couldn't we would have to send it off for conversion. Franco

Helen_A

Joined: 26 Jan 2005
Posts: 1548
Location: MK, Bucks.

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 7:02 pm Post subject:
I'm happy to be wrong - it just isn't what is on the rate cards I have here, lol... Sunday Times is a complete pita. Given up on them because the ad never looked the same there as it did here Green parent tend to have that issue as well Helen_A who is making notes to collar ad people when the november issue ring arounds come next week...

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Fri Aug 10, 07 7:55 pm Post subject:

franco wrote:

I advertise in The Sunday Times and they will only accept EPS format, luckily my designer can convert to it but if he couldn't we would have to send it off for conversion.

Encapsulated PostScript is a precursor of PDF.
Its basically a postscript program to generate the image in the imagesetter rip, a postscript printer (or in principle on a mac screen - OS X uses a form of Display PostScript, which is why any OS X program can 'print' a PDF.) "Encapsulated" with the PostScript is a (lowres) bitmap image for preview purposes.

Its not a major hassle to downgrade a pdf to be an EPS.
Here's a �25 windows program that exists specifically to do it.
https://www.pdf-convert.com/convert/PDF-to-EPS.html

EPS is/was the way to save vector artwork from (Adobe) Illustrator for incorporation in page layouts in the early "desktop publishing" programs. (EPS soon gained the ability to handle bitmaps.)
Most pro (postscript) graphics programs have a 'Save as EPS' option.
EPS has been around for 20 years or more, it ain't special.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encapsulated_PostScript

Anyway, PDF has vastly outstripped EPS.
PDF normally includes fonts - EPS doesn't include fonts (leading to

Courier being accidentally used rather too often...)

For anyone interested in just what PDF can do, here's a 2003 paper from Adobe that explains some things (specifically about pdf/x1a) : https://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pdfs/pdfx.pdf
PDF/X is a subset of PDF (ie a cut-down, restricted pdf) aimed specifically at pre-press industry content transfers. There are different X subsets for different tasks - here's a pdf/x faq: https://www.pdfxreport.com/faq.html

Acrobat is the pukka way of generating pdfs. If you are going to pay for a pro service, its what ought to be being used.

Barefoot Andrew
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 21 Mar 2007
Posts: 22780
Location: In the 17th century

Posted: Sat Aug 11, 07 7:55 am Post subject:

dougal wrote:

Acrobat is the pukka way of generating pdfs. If you are going to pay for a pro service, its what ought to be being used.

True - but Quark Xpress 6.5's native/built-in PDF export does an acceptable job.
A.

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