Artwork and production

What size and format should billboard artwork be?

For our digital network: MP4 video, built to the exact pixel dimensions of the screen you have booked. Most sites are 1920 × 1080; a few are portrait at 1080 × 1920 or 1152 × 1536. Design to the pixels, not to a print size.

Getting this right saves you a day, and getting it wrong is the single most common reason a campaign misses its start date. So let us be precise.

The specification

Artwork requirements for the AD PRO LED network
ItemRequirement
File formatMP4 — every screen in the network
Landscape screens1920 × 1080 pixels (40 of 58 sites)
Portrait screens1080 × 1920, or 1152 × 1536 on some faces
Small entry-gate panels640 × 960 on the P3 gate screens
LengthUsually 10-20 seconds, looped
AudioNot used — design as if silent, because it is
ColourRGB. Avoid very dark greys, which read as black on LED
Safe areaKeep essential type away from the outer 5% of the frame

Artwork requirements for the AD PRO LED network

The four mistakes we see every week

  1. A print file, upscaled. A CMYK layout at 300 dpi is not a video. Colours shift, type softens, and the result looks tired next to the screens either side of it.
  2. A landscape file rotated for a portrait screen. Portrait wants a genuinely different composition — stacked, not turned.
  3. Type too small. The rule of thumb is roughly 25mm of letter height for every 10 metres of viewing distance. It is always more than you think.
  4. Low contrast. Mid-grey on charcoal looks sophisticated on a monitor at arm’s length and disappears entirely at forty metres in daylight.

If you do not have artwork

Most clients send us something from their own agency and we adapt it per face — which is real work, because a 40ft × 20ft landscape and a 10ft × 13ft portrait are not the same canvas. If there is nothing to adapt, our design team builds it as part of the booking. Either way, you approve before anything goes up.

Digital billboardsStatic billboardsLED caravansTransit brandingAirport brandingBrand activationSignage & fabricationPrinting & packaging

See the actual sites

Every screen has its own page with a photograph, the size, the direction it faces and the hours it runs.

Keep reading

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