Are you baffled by file formats and jargon?

Every industry has it’s own terminology. Here are some of the most commonly used terms from the design industry and a summary of their meanings.

• COLOUR:

CMYK of four colour process
The full spectrum of colour is produced from the four process printing inks Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. Each colour is represented by varying the size and density of miniscule dots in these four inks.

Spot or Pantone colours
Much like a tin of paint, colour is mixed to industry standard shades.

DPI
Dots per inch. Images should be supplied as high resolution ie 300dpi or above for printing purposes.

• IMAGES AND FILE FORMATS:

RGB
Red, green, blue are the colours that make up images on computer monitors and TVs. These colours cannot be used to print from and must be converted to CMYK but are appropriate for web design.

EPS (encapsulated postscript) .eps
These logos and images are generally high resolution and should be used to print from.

TIF or TIFF(Tag Images File Format) .tiff
Ideal for transferring graphics files such as logos without losing quality during resizing

JPEG .jpg
Most images are supplied in jpeg format. Logos should not be supplied as jpegs, if they are they will not have a transparent background and will print in a white box.

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format).gif
Gifs are used for electronic formats such as web design. Gifs are suitable for sharp-edged line art (such as logos) but have a limited number of colors and are usually low res. Therefore they should not be used for print commercially from.

PNG (Portable Network Graphics).png
PNGs were designed for use on the internet as a replacement for Gifs. PNGs can hold transparencies so a logo can be reproduced with a transparent background and dropped onto a block of colour. However they are not supported from some browsers. PNGs are low res and should not be used to print from.