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Guide to supplying source material

Chefs, cabinet makers, fashion designers, builders and jewellers all have something in common—they take raw materials and make them into something new. A graphic designer’s raw materials typically include text and photographs (in addition to more abstract elements like colours and shapes).

Talk with your designer and work out who is going to supply which material for your project. For example: you might choose to provide the text and let Starkis Design handle copy-editing and photography.

Once you’ve worked out what you need to supply—the next question is how? What technical issues do you need to be aware of? How can you best prepare, format and deliver this material in order to streamline the process and maximise the quality of the final product?

The following information has some tips to help you. Remember too: your designer is there to help. Even if ‘Techno’ isn’t your middle name, don’t be afraid to ask what you think is a silly question—your designer has most likely heard the question before, and will be grateful for your effort to supply high-quality material.

Important: Before approving the use of any material you need to be absolutely certain that its use will not infringe copyright. Copyright law protects literary and artistic works from unauthorised use. If you are unsure how copyright issues may affect you, discuss them with a legal adviser or contact IP Australia. (www.IPAustralia.gov.au)

Written copy

If you are supplying the written copy (text) for a project, this is best supplied electronically as a computer file: either on disk, or sent via email. It’s not a bad idea to supply a hard (printed) copy on paper as well.

Things to remember when typing written copy are:

Avoid typing headings in ALL-CAPS. (It is a simple matter for the designer to change from sentence-case to upper-case if that is part of the design, but the reverse is not always true.)
Do not use multiple tabs or spaces to layout text. (Use paragraph indents if necessary.)
Do not use tabs or returns within sentences and paragraphs to control how text wraps onto a new line.
Where numbered and bulleted lists are used, type the number or bullet followed by a single tab (no spaces), or use the inbuilt list feature of your word processing program.

Keep in mind that most of the design and layout decisions are best left to the designer. There is no need to spend many hours experimenting with different typefaces and styles.

Whenever possible, submit final approved text (rather than draft text), to avoid unnecessary changes later on. Once the designer has produced the design and layout, alterations can add to the time and cost of a project. Be aware that adding or deleting words and paragraphs can sometimes upset the flow of text throughout an entire document, which could be costly to fix—especially in a larger publication where images or diagrams need to appear next to related parts of the text.

Electronic formats

For page layout, Starkis Design uses Adobe InDesign. Chances are, you don’t run the same software on your system. For this reason, it is common to supply text as Microsoft Word documents, RTF (Rich Text Format) files, or text-only files.

Microsoft Word documents are generally a good option which we support.

Text-only files can be read by just about anyone, and are easily created from word processing programs such as Microsoft Word. Formatting will be lost once you save a document to text-only, which is not typically a problem given that you’re paying the designer to setup the styles and formatting anyway, but it does mean that you’ll also need to provide them with formatted hard copy.

If you deliver your text via the Internet, don’t copy and paste the text directly into an email message, as this can cause line breaks which upset the proper flow of text. Instead, you should include the file as an attachment to your email message.

Regardless of which file format you use, the designer needs to be able to clearly identify the level of each heading in the heading hierarchy. If the visible distinction between headings is self evident (in the Word file or hard copy), this may be adequate. Otherwise, a useful technique is to actually tag each heading in the document itself, for example: <H1>Heading, where <H1> is used to identify every level 1 heading, <H2> for every level 2 heading, and so on. The designer can do a ‘find and replace’ to remove the tags later on. This method works well, provided the tags are applied consistently and don’t appear elsewhere in the body text.

When supplying text electronically remember to:

give your text files descriptive logical names such as: chapter1.doc
keep an original copy of the native word processing file on your hard drive.

Hard Copy

Any hard copy you supply should ideally show:

the name of the electronic file that contains the text
the relative size or hierarchy of headings and subheadings
type style requirements such as bold, italicised or underlined words
the location of photos, tables, graphs, etc. in relation to the text.

Where necessary, you can write instructions to the designer on the hard copy. To indicate specific pagination requirements for example, you might write “Begin section on right hand page”. If a number of different people have contributed text for the project, and the layout and style of hard copy is inconsistent, labelling headings to indicate their hierarchy (e.g. “Head 1”, “Head 2”) can avoid possible confusion. You can indicate the location of any additional photos, tables, and graphs by writing instructions such as “Insert Graph 1” adjacent to the relevant position in the text (ensuring that the attached item is correspondingly labelled—see section titled “Data for tables and graphs”.) When writing on the hard copy, it’s always a good idea to use a coloured pen (such as red) so that your instructions stand out from the printed text.

Tables

Electronic formats

Tables are commonly supplied within the body of a word processing document (e.g. Microsoft Word file). They may also be supplied separately in a spreadsheet file (e.g. Microsoft Excel file).

Saving tables in text-only format can be an acceptable option for simple tables where all the words in each cell fit onto a single line, but may not be suitable for more complex tables as this can often result in unmanageable broken-up text, requiring the designer to go to extreme lengths to reorganise the information as it was intended.

When supplying tables electronically remember to:

give your files descriptive logical names such as: tables1-10.xls
keep an original copy of the native file/s containing the table/s on your hard drive.

Hard Copy

Any hard copy you supply should ideally show:

the name of the electronic file that contains the table
any label, caption or other notes which accompany the table
type style requirements such as bold, italicised or underlined words.

Graphs and charts

Electronic formats

Within any professionally designed publication, the appearance of graphs, charts and other diagrams should complement the overall style established by the designer. For this reason, graphs and charts are best supplied in an electronic format which allows the designer to alter their appearance without compromising the data. This can be best achieved if the file provided to the designer includes the original data in spreadsheet form. The designer can then use this data to recreate the graphs using professional design software.

Common formats for supplying editable graphs and charts are Microsoft Word/Graph and Microsoft Excel.

Even if the appearance of supplied graphs and charts is to remain largely unchanged, the designer will usually still need to edit the files in professional design software to produce the artwork and colour separations necessary for professionally printed work.

When supplying data electronically remember to:

give your files descriptive logical names such as: graphs1-10.xls
keep an original copy of the native file/s containing the graph/s on your hard drive.

Hard Copy

Any hard copy you supply should ideally show:

the name of the electronic file that contains the graph data
what type of graph is required. (e.g. pie, column, bar, etc.)
any labels, captions or other notes which accompany the graph.

Logos, photographs, illustrations, and artwork

If you need to supply your designer with graphic elements such as logos, photographs and illustrations, you may wish to first discuss any potential technical issues with your designer. If, for example, you have some photos that you would like to use, the designer will be able to advise if the quality is high enough to reproduce well, and at what size.

Electronic formats

Digital graphics files generally fall into two major categories: raster images and vector graphics.

Raster images are sometimes called bitmap images. They are made up of many small squares called pixels. Photographs are stored on computer as raster images, as are some illustrations, logos and other graphics. When raster images are enlarged too much, the jagged appearance of the pixels becomes noticeable. The size at which they can be effectively used depends on the size of the image, the resolution of the image measured in pixels per inch (PPI), and the type and quality of final output required. The greater the size and resolution of a raster image (or the more pixels the image has), the more disk space the file uses to store. Examples of common raster formats are TIFF, EPS, GIF, JPEG, PICT and BMP. (Note: Some file types can store both raster and vector information.) Adobe Photoshop is commonly used by design professionals for handling raster image files.

Vector graphics contain objects comprising points, lines and curves that are defined mathematically. Unlike raster images, you can enlarge vector graphics successfully without any loss of quality, and without increasing the file size. Logos are often created as vector graphics. EPS is the most common vector format used in professional publishing. Popular vector based illustration software includes: Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand, and Corel Draw. Adobe Acrobat PDF files can also incorporate vector graphics.

If you plan to supply a graphic as a raster image, you will need to ensure that it is a sufficient size and resolution to reproduce well. As a very general guide for high quality print output, line-art images containing only black and white (no grey) should be between 1200 and 3600 PPI (pixels per inch) at output size, while continuous tone images (greyscale and colour) need to be around 300 PPI. The best file formats to use for high quality output are TIFF and EPS. If you need to transport the files via a slow Internet connection or on low capacity disks and file size is a problem, you can save a copy of the image as a JPEG with the compression set to maximum quality. This will dramatically reduce the file size with little or no noticeable loss of quality.

If you have the option of supplying logos or other images as vector graphics this is the best option. We prefer EPS, PDF, or native Illustrator files.

Hard Copy

If the original material is in the form of a print, transparency, illustration or some other physical format, it is often best to supply this and let the designer have the work professionally scanned or photographed.

Photographs supplied as positive transparencies (slides) will potentially yield the best results when professionally scanned, although good quality photographic prints are also acceptable. Depending on the type of scanner used, your designer may prefer prints. Unless you are hand delivering your photos, ensure that they are securely and protectively packaged with a stiff board to prevent folding. Include a record of the number of negatives or photographs with the package, so that the design studio can confirm the safe receipt and dispatch of all photos. It is also possible to have duplicate negatives and transparencies made if you wish to insure against the unlikely event of damage occurring during delivery or scanning.

Original illustrations should likewise be treated with caution. If you are delivering valuable works, consider insuring them against the unlikely event of loss or damage. If the works are unsuitable for being wrapped around a drum scanner then you may wish to discuss with your designer having the work photographed instead.

In previous years, companies would often keep ‘bromide’ hard copies of logos and various artwork. Bromide was, at one time, used predominantly in prepress production, however since then electronic media has generally made bromide redundant. Today, companies should seek to have high quality EPS versions of their logo that they are free to distribute, rather than request hard copy logo sheets.