Preparing Text and Materials for Graphic Designers
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Proper preparation of text, images, permissions, etc., can help graphic designers work more efficiently to produce high-quality products for you. Here is some advice from some graphic designers in the Communicators Forum to help the design process go smoothly.
1. When preparing text, graphics, and photos for publication, please keep these general guidelines in mind:
- Your publication will most likely be produced on a Macintosh computer. Please consult your graphic designer for assistance to ensure that they will be able to translate your file. Be sure to add file extensions if necessary (.doc, .jpg, etc.).
- Before submitting your copy, make sure everyone who needs to review it has approved it. Fact-check and edit the copy for content, style, and clarity. Proofread your text carefully for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Also, please make sure that any Web addresses you have included are accurate. It saves time to get “clean” copy.
- Try to provide all of the information you want to include in the publication, i.e. title or headline, captions for photos or illustrations, access info (addresses, phone numbers), etc.
- Avoid typing in all caps.
- Only use one space after periods and colons.
- Try to keep tabs, extra spaces, bold face, and italic characters to a minimum to avoid having to strip them out during the design phase. You can mark up your hard copy to indicate where you would like to create emphasis.
- Do not add your own graphics within the text.
- Do not put text in “text boxes.”
- Clearly identify the hierarchy of headings (heading 1, heading 2, heading 3, etc.) either on the hard copy or by using the style palette in your word processing software.
- Don’t use carriage returns (also called hard returns) except at the end of a paragraph or headline. Use soft returns (shift+enter) to break up sentences or headings if needed.
2. When giving copy to your graphic designer, please provide the following:
- Print out of the text (hard copy).
- Electronic text provided on disk or via e-mail.
- Copy of any original documents if the piece is based on other people’s writings and permission agreements. You are responsible for obtaining permission of copyrighted materials. We will not publish any publication with copyrighted materials without proof of permission.
3. Graphics and photos must be high resolution for print (300 dpi at 100% of final printed size). If you don’t have a high-resolution file, provide a print, negative, or transparency of the image that can be scanned. Web graphics (in most cases) are not adequate for print.
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