Art and Computer Related Working Language

Concept Art: Hand drawn, roughly scaled, copied from plans, or cut & pasted art with loose dimensions. To get the ball rolling and everyone visualizing the end product.

Production Art: Mild conversions or tweaks to adjust given files to print formats

Creative Art: Creating, implementing, branding, or otherwise building from a rough concept to final art file.

Vectored Art: creation tends to be less expensive than Rasterized art creation.

Digital Mockup: Rendering of concept art to display close to actual dimensions.

Digital Pre-Flight: Final Mockup used for printing and installation instructions. Signed approval of all notes, specs, directions, and dims means production is scheduled and client to be notified of soonest ship date.

10% Rule: Conversion of art and measurements to 10%. Moving a decimal point is safest method of scaling down elevations. A 0.10” (1/10th” scale) conversion means art should be 1500dpi. A 0.50” conversion (1/2” scale) would need art at 300dpi. Especially useful in rendering multiple panels or full walls.

Print Ready: Art files specifically designed and specified for large format printing.

DPI: Dots per Inch and standard for printing output. The difference between 300-DPI and 150-DPI digital printing, standing 5-10 feet away is visually identical. The viewer would need to be less than 12 inches away to see a difference in quality.

@ Actual Size: At actual size. Computer renders art at actual size of project so printing is real-time and accurate for direct application.

Font: Lettering styles and formats either purchased or provided. Some styles are more appropriate for large format printing.

Vectorized File: Can be indefinitely scaled up and down without loss of resolution. Great with printing large format Fonts, Icons, Animated Images, Stripes and Tiled/Crisp patterns. Difficult with mist, ghosts, fades.

Rasterized File: Will pixelate as image increases in scale. Actual size (Width x Height) of a saved image is critical; the larger, the more ideal conversion to large format printing. For example iPhone 5 image saved at 8mb will result in a 150dpi print of 21” x 16”. Tends to have higher price points and more realistic resolution because pixels allow for softer images like mists, ghosts, fades.