10 Steps to Setting Up Banner Artwork Using Adobe Illustrator

Having a good quality roller banner printed starts with creating good quality artwork. One of the best design packages to use when creating your roller banner artwork is Adobe Illustrator. Below is a brief guide on making banners using Adobe Illustrator and how to set up Illustrator ready for you to create your design.

Step 1: Opening a New File

Click File, then New.

This will bring up a little box where you can input the dimensions of your chosen Roller Banner 

Step 2:

You should now see a little box pop up where you can input the dimensions of your chosen Roller Banner. The below dimensions are based on our popular 850mm Budget Roller Banner Stand, however please see our Roller Banner page for a collection of stands & sizes.

Step 3: Understanding What the Visible Area is

The visible area is the total space that will actually be seen when the product is assembled.

This is different to the print area as there will parts that are printed that will not be seen.

It is therefore very important to make sure all the required information is within the visible area.

The visible panel of a roller banner will vary depending on which type and width option you have decided on.

We offer a large range of width options on this particular product, so once you have chosen the one that best suits your needs that dimension will be your visible width.

For Economy & Budget Banners, the visible height will be 2000mm, however this increases to 2150mm for our Premium Banners.

The Printed area however is the actual size your artwork needs to be supplied at.

In most cases this will mean adding 6mm to each dimension to cover the 3mm bleed, however as Roller Banners are large format products bleed is calculated slightly differently.

Roller Banners only require bleed on the bottom edge of the design and instead on it being 3mm it need to be 100mm.

This extra-large bleed section at the bottom is what will be what attached into the stand’s mechanism and as long as the design is continued down into this space that will mean no visible end to the design or unprinted borders.

Step 4: Entering the Correct Size

Artwork size\ print size for roller banners should always be Width (mm) x (Height (mm) + 100mm)

You can leave the bleed set to 0mm as you have include the extra 100mm with the artboard size

Step 5: Other Start -up Settings

Make sure the resolution setting is set to High or 300dpi and the colour mode is set to CMYK

Then hit ‘Create’

Step 6: Ensuring Rulers are Visible

You should now see your blank canvas, we highly advise to add rulers to your artwork, so you can see the guidelines of the bleed and more accurately arrange your design. To do this; Click on view, scroll down to rulers, and select show rulers.

Step 7: Creating the Bleed Guideline

Click and hold on the top ruler, and pull down over your canvas (you can drop the ruler anywhere at this point) scroll up to your X / Y references, and in the Y option, put 2000mm. This now marks the cut-off point of your artwork. Anything beneath this ruler will remain unseen in the stand.

Step 8: Begin your Design

You are now set up and ready to go! Go ahead and add /create your design

Step 9: Saving your Design in Correct Format

a: Once you have completed your design, click File, Save As.

We always recommend saving your illustrator file first, and then again as a high-quality PDF.

You should see a pop-up box, which allows you to amend your file name / format.

For the Illustrator file (.ai) you need only amend the file name and then save

Once this has saved click File, Save As again but this time change the format in the drop-down menu to Adobe PDF.

b: Click save, you will now see a 2nd box appear, in which has a number of different saving options. The default option at the top is usually [Illustrator Default] this needs to be changed to [High Quality Print]

Abode Illustrator will then remember these setting for next time you save a PDF

Step 10: Supplying your Artwork

Now that your artwork is now saved in the correct format you are ready to place your order and upload your print-ready PDF

Other options for suppling your artwork would be to email us or send via WeTransfer