Studio Talk… Questions Answered

Ok, so we’re not rocket scientists, but we do know a thing or two about design and marketing and would love to help you with any questions… ask about java (and I don’t mean coffee), colours, print, or if you’re stuck on a marketing project ask us about that.

Q: What is a Pantone colour and do I need one for my logo?

We often use the Pantone Formula Guide when producing company branding and stationery. The Pantone Formula Guide is a book of 1,677 colour swatches in fan format. This allows us to ensure precise colour reproduction when producing printed material.

We would recommend choosing branding colours from the PMS (Pantone Matching System), to ensure your branding is consistent from your logo to printed stationery, signage and more.

That said, you don’t need to use the Pantone colours as the majority of print (brochures, business cards etc) is produced using the CMYK process. A method of printing using four inks – cyan, magenta, yellow and black, so you could choose to use a CMYK colour breakdown instead.

Q: What is the file size limit on sending emails?

Some services set their limit at 25MB however a file of this size will be difficult to send, or may not even send at all. Also remember that encoding can add megabytes to the actual email size. Generally a file of approximately 10MB is a safe size to send, if sending files over 10MB try using www.wetransfer.com

We Transfer is a free facility that allows you to send up to 2 gigabytes.

Q: I am taking my own product photo’s but when I print them they don’t look great, what settings should I use?

Good question, when taking photo’s to use for printing or promoting your business it is always best to use your camera on the highest setting.

Remember, you can always make a photo smaller, but you can’t make them bigger without decreasing the quality. We always ask for 300 dots per inch (dpi) or pixels per inch (ppi) which is print quality. Always make sure your printer is also set to print on the highest quality setting.

If using your photo’s on social media and on your website your images would need to be 72 dpi/ppi which is low quality making your file and page upload much faster, 72dpi is also known as screen resolution. Your photo size can be decreased in most photo software packages.

Don’t forget…

You can always make larger photo’s smaller, but you can’t make smaller photo’s larger without decreasing the quality.

Q: Is there a way that I can post links to my website on Twitter without using all the characters?

There is a way to get round the 140 character limit on twitter when pasting in long URL’s (website links, or to be precise Unique Reference Locator’s). Simply make your link shorter using www.tiny.cc which also leaves you enough characters for what you want to say.

Simply paste your long URL in and it converts it for you. You can also make it a custom URL as we have.
So from: http://www.wilsondesignhouse.com/about-us
To this: http://tiny.cc/aboutus

A Tiny URL is also perfect for shortening Facebook links, YouTube addresses, Ebay auction pages, sharing Amazon pages and posting on blogs etc.