I was tied up most of last week with one of my big distractions from IT work, Marketing. I don’t mind because I enjoy firing up Photoshop and Illustrator and letting my creative side go wild.

We needed a new set of banners for use at trade shows and exhibitions. These were designed in Illustrator at half-size (422.5mm x 1050mm) and still created some huge files that could only really be transferred using CD or FTP. Converting a 800MB file down to a 1MB PDF isn’t an easy proposition and often took some time to process leading to much twiddling of thumbs.

Simply locating or creating suitable images with a high enough resolution that can be printed 2m high is a task in itself and some of the banners even consisted of gradients so you can imagine the time involved in rendering these images. Actually, I employed a little cheat and designed the banners at a fraction of the size (10.5″ high) then when everyone was happy sat down and re-created them at the agreed size.

To add to the complications, many of the banners needed to go through rigorous approval processes because the brand owners of particular products are extremely protective of their products and very sensitive as to how they are used. PDF’s can fly left and right several dozen times per day as wording, graphics and even pantone colours are carefully scrutinized.

However, the majority of the banners have now arrived on site and the feedback is positive which is great.