- Bought between 50 and 99 items
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
Sleightofhand said
Amiga,I have worked in the industry within the UK for over ten years and the printers I deal with have never requested coraldraw…Illustrator is accepted but never requested.
I always create my artwork in InDesign and either supply a ‘packaged file’ or hi res PDF , with no problems at all. As long as the artwork is good and set correctly there shouldn’t be a problem.
i am no expert in supplying PSD files for print but I do believe that the latest photoshop holds vector capabilities to some extent. Maybe some of our Photoshop wizards can clarify?
I guess artwork requirements comes down to the individual printers.
I also agree with: As a general rule of thumb – “Signage” is any kind of sign or advertisement that’s larger than a flyer/poster.
As this can include pop up banners and large format printing.
Sleight
Sleight, it varies depending on the printer company who you deal with. I’ve been working with printers since 1995 in various locations in the UK and dealt with award winning factories all the way down to your high street vendors. Printers are a strange breed and some are very fussy (some very arrogant and narrow-minded) when working with large scale jobs and a lot of the older firms are still stuck in their ways. In saying that, Corel was much bigger than Adobe and Corel Draw, along with QuarkXpress were the industry standard programs for a number of printers for decades. Some still require and work with these applications over Adobe alternatives, whereas some printers prefer Illustrator and some even accept workarounds. When working with different printers – be prepared to for change and always contact your printer of choice before you begin a large scale job to make sure you’re both on the same wave length from day one.
The main reason designers and printers generally don’t use Photoshop and InDesign for large scale print jobs is due to Illustrator and Draw being the most popular application for the job at hand, as vector based applications suit most signage needs, once you step beyond paper and begin to work with other materials for finished products.
If people reading are interested more in designing and creating signage and are setup as a registered business, there are signage groups and membership forums out there who allow companies and freelancers to register and share industry tips and methods, once they do a background check. They will all give you tips and advice on how to get started on large scale and signage jobs, working with vehicle wraps, where to buy wireframes, wholesaler contacts for vinyl and recommended in-house printers and cutters, along with workshop profiles and member galleries for inspiration.
Good luck to all who submit. My fingers are crossed that this section takes off over time.
- Bought between 50 and 99 items
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
I’ve worked for a signage company in the past. The industry standard applications are Corel Draw and Adobe Illustrator. When someone (a client) says ‘signage’ it often refers to shop fronts (signs displayed inside and outside buildings/premises – actual shop signs above the shop doors and A-frames, which are boards outside to display in-store promotions), vinyl decals (promotional window offers displays and fleet graphics), vehicle wraps (which are designs that are ‘wrapped’ around the entire car/van/truck*), billboards (various sizes from bus shelters, to motorways) to standard company displays in-house that cover company promotions to health & safety.
- When designing for vehicles, signage designers work with vehicle wireframes, which are pre-made line drawings of each vehicle build that’s ever been manufactured. Therefore, it’s recommended that when designing for vehicles, it’s a bespoke order, as each vehicle is manufactured in different size, build and structure and care has to be undertaken when applying the designs in vinyl format for each individual spec job. The wireframes are provided by companies on disc and can be costly as they include thousands of vehicle types. Using such wireframes in a design that’s to be included on a marketplace such as Graphic River might infringe a few of the limitations that you’re allowed to use when creating designs with their wireframes. It might be worth checking on the usage before submitting designs with the frames included, or to build your own accurate frames for some of the more popular vehicle builds, but will take a lot of time.
Most signage companies and printers who deal with wraps and vinyl orders work in .EPS format and vectors. Almost all companies that I’ve come in contact with hardly touch Photoshop, so PSD format isn’t advised.
I’d like to see the signage section take off, but in regards to vehicle wraps and any kind of vehicle graphics, it might cause real life compatibility issues and may prove more problematic than what it’s worth, as the price of vehicle graphics vary between £150-£500, including parts and labour, on average in a lot of areas in the UK. The prices of such templates would need to be considered as most of what clients pay for in the final invoice is not the actual vehicle wrap design (as it’s mostly common in a complete identity package) but for parts and labour of the vinyl to be made and displayed on their vehicles.
Always good to see a new section on here. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops. Good luck to all those brave enough to test the waters.
- Bought between 50 and 99 items
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
Those are some of the things I’m referring to yeah. Here’s a good example of what I think is lacking on FlashDen…
Move your mouse over the flash banners
O2 (Arsenal) http://www.tangozebra.com/adgallery_preview.phtml?ad_id=11019
McCain http://www.tangozebra.com/adgallery_preview.phtml?ad_id=11844
Orange http://www.tangozebra.com/adgallery_preview.phtml?ad_id=10192
Those are three commercial ‘ideas’ that some devs could look to for inspiration.
The key points are that the actions and transitions are visually simple and information rich.
Basically, a thread to encourage commercial creativity that has a unique, but polished method of presenting information, or promoting a product.
- Bought between 50 and 99 items
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
Nice reply flashjunkie. Those two sites will open a few peoples eyes. The o2 Arsenal banner is great. That kind of feature would be great on FD, even if its generally for your own site. It’s a new way of presenting info and promotions. The only file I could find that use a similar kind of presentation are these…
http://www.flashden.net/item/drop-down-information-panel/253 http://www.flashden.net/item/news-v2/6073 http://www.flashden.net/item/expanding-full-screen-news-viewer/6855
They might encourage people to try something similar and experiment with modern ways to present ‘permission’ based info and ads while not disturbing the viewer and giving them the choice to view more.
I would do it myself, but 1) I’m a designer not a developer 2) I’d rather buy stock and modify it. 
- Bought between 50 and 99 items
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
If it’s so simple – let’s see you create one at a professional standard and I’ll buy it.
Feel free to link up all the free legal templates of expandable web banners below 
- Bought between 50 and 99 items
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
I’m surprised not to see anything like this (or maybe it’s hiding!)
What developers should look towards making are standard web banners that extend the banner upon mouse roll-over. I’m sure you’ve all seen at least one of these banners – they are very popular within major branding banners such as movie/game/retailer/sport advertising.
For those that haven’t seen them, they incorporate a hidden ad when you roll your mouse over the banner to reveal a video clip, music, or a promotional swf.
If you guys want to do something that a lot of people need that will sell, instead of doing another 1231298312 flash gallery look into other flash uses such as stuff that hasn’t been published on here yet.
Let’s see some more originality! Let’s see some modern and unique ways to use flash in online advertising!
- Bought between 50 and 99 items
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
It’s cool and someone will buy it. The main reason I think it hasn’t sold any so far is due to you getting free legal versions of this elsewhere. Not to mention the number of PHP plugins that offer more social bookmarking links, also for free download.
- Bought between 50 and 99 items
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
That’s true and people should know how to link up XML images without the use of a guide – but that’s life – not everyone knows how to do these things. Considering developers are trying to promote their files to people who use blogs, php etc etc, they should at least take into consideration the users who may be wanting to buy from them and to provide them the best possible guide on how to implement them into the most commonly used areas. The more knowledge the authors have on their buyers needs and how to supply them with standard questions and information it will increase sales and reduce administration time spent replying to people asking the same questions.
This is why it would be a good idea for authors to supply the answers to commonly asked questions.
If you don’t think it’s a good idea, don’t post. If you do, by all means add something worthy to it. This thread is to help developers who don’t know how to embed their own file and answer commonly asked questions by their potential buyers.
- Bought between 50 and 99 items
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
Yeah…but if you take a look around you’ll find people asking how to embed them into blogs, php and social networking sites and the majority of flashden authors are unable to provide such codes because they don’t know how to embed their own files – and thereby lose a lot of downloads.
If developers ask themselves why people would like to download their files and how they would use them, they will be able to open up a lot more doors to people who don’t download their files because they don’t get the support they need.
If you don’t see the logic in users and authors knowing such codes and including them in their download help files then you have totally missed the point of this post.
- Bought between 50 and 99 items
- Has been a member for 4-5 years
Social networking sites allow embedding if developed for such and codes that can be used to embed. A large number of people want to embed flash found on FlashDen into blogs like WordPress and PHP files. A lot of flash devs here don’t know how their file can be embedded into WP and PHP forums etc.
With the help of dxc381 here’s a typical image viewer code that is for a flash file that uses XML image data, which can be embedded in blogs and php:
<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="enter height in numbers here" align="middle" data="http://www.mydomain.com/blog/your.swf" width="enter width in numbers here">
<param name="movie" value="http://www.mydomain.com/blog/your.swf" />
<param name="flashvars" value="file=images.xml&linktarget=_parent" /></object>
The /image/ folders and xml/js need to be placed in the same folder so the swf can read them. The flashvars need to link up to the xml data source. The above ‘images.xml’ is an example name you’ll find xml files contained with flash viewer downloads. The ‘&linktarget=_parent’ code allows loaded images to open in a new window once clicked. The code above can be edited to suit the file you’re working with.
A typical media player embed code for blogs and PHP can be posted below that loads both images and sound files.
I’m not a flash developer but a lot of people (including flashden developers) are unable to supply codes to embed into blogs, php and such like. Hopefully more devs will take into consideration in future of how people may wish to use your file and by including sample codes like those above. It will encourage more people to download your file and reduce in some of your FAQs.
