The proofs I ordered for my advertising artwork arrived a couple of days ago and to be honest I’m a little disappointed with the results. When I printed them full size on a colour printer they both came out exactly as I had hoped for with nice crisp text and great, vivid images on a really dark background. The photographs I ordered from SnapMad are a different matter entirely. They have a slight red cast to them and the text is a little too fine to read. They certainly don’t have the impact that I had expected.
So, what have I learned from this?
Essentially what I am seeing here is a difference between a photographic and printing process. The photo lab is able to print at significantly higher resolution hence the reason why the text is so fine. This can be addressed by emphasising the text, e.g. setting it to bold or making the lineweight slightly heavier.
This won’t resolve the issue that I now have 50 copies of the larger image that I can’t really use but there is another lesson learned. So all is not lost, particularly as I don’t have a hard deadline to meet for this one.
I think the really disappointing issue is the colour cast. Particularly as I paid extra for the lab to colour correct the images. I’m convinced that this is not coming from me either, but rather from the lab itself. Why? Because…
- I’m using a calibrated monitor
- The colour cast is showing up on white text against a pure black background, i.e. a pure black and white image
- I’ve also seen this before from this lab.
The answer – go somewhere else in future for this type of material.
Nevertheless, I still believe that a photograph is the way to go for low volume marketing material. With a photo you get…
- Glossy image on good quality, heavy paper
- It is a very distinctive look
- The photo will always stand out when pinned to a noticeboard full of paper adverts
- It’s cheap – these cost me a whole £0.23 for a 6″x8″ print with no P&P for orders over £1
Putting all that aside, between the prints and the photographs I’m actually really happy about the proofs, certainly from a design aspect. I am going to make a very minor modification and that is to remove the full stops from the slogan. I’m also thinking of removing the italics to emphasise a couple of the words. I’m beginning to think that this doesn’t really add anything to the advert but rather detracts from it slightly.
It would be interesting to hear what you think too.
Best regards,
Gavin
