Case Study · Out-of-Home & Print Production

Airline Videos Live — 14×48 ft Billboard, Los Angeles

A freeway-scale board for a live aviation channel, built to OUTFRONT's print spec — a low-res title redrawn as vector, an RGB blue rebuilt so it printed royal instead of purple, and a press package that went straight to the printer.

The finished board, installed. Every element on it existed before I was hired; the job was making them work together at 48 feet wide and making the file survive the press.

Client

Airline Videos Live (Los Angeles)

My Role

Layout, vector redraw, color correction & print production

Scope

14×48 ft bulletin, OUTFRONT LA spec

Tools

Illustrator · Photoshop · Acrobat Pro

Overview

A billboard is the least forgiving print job there is. It's read in about three seconds by someone driving past it, it's printed at a scale where every weakness in a file is magnified, and there is no second chance once the vinyl is on the structure.

Airline Videos Live runs a live YouTube channel filming aircraft on approach into LAX. The host had booked a 14×48-foot bulletin with OUTFRONT and came to me with the pieces already decided: the headline, his photo, the YouTube mark, a QR code, and the channel logo. He needed a designer who could finalize the layout and hand the printer a file that would actually hold up.

The brief was simple and specific: fill the board. No wasted blue, nothing timid, everything legible from the road.

Layout

Filling 48 feet without crowding it

I built two layout templates on OUTFRONT's Los Angeles template and let the client react to real options rather than a single comp. From there the work was proportion and discipline: the headline takes the left half at a size that reads from a moving car, the host anchors the center, and the logo lockup closes the right edge so the eye travels left to right exactly once.

Every proof carried the printer's guides — an orange cut line with trim marks at the corners and a blue dotted safety line inside it. When the client asked whether the top of his hat would be cut off, the answer was on the proof: I nudged the photo down so the hat sat at the safety line rather than trusting the margin to be forgiving.

The production proof. Headline, QR code, and logo held inside the safety line; the blue field runs to full bleed past the cut so no unprinted vinyl shows at the panel edge.

Production Problem 01

A title that couldn't be enlarged

The Watch These Planes title only existed as a raster image. Even reduced, it fell short of the printer's resolution requirement at billboard scale — and there was no source text or font file to rebuild it from.

So I redrew it as vector: every letterform and swoosh traced by hand as clean paths, not auto-traced, so it scales to any size without a resolution ceiling. The client got the vector file as a standalone asset too, which means the next banner, shirt, or board starts from a real logo instead of a screenshot.

Why redraw instead of upscale: an upscaled raster looks acceptable on a monitor and soft on a 48-foot face. Vector removes the question entirely — the printer's RIP renders the edges at whatever resolution the press runs.

Production Problem 02

The blue that printed purple

The client's brand blue was a bright screen RGB (#0032B2). Converted to CMYK for the press, it picked up too much magenta and read noticeably purple on the proof — the client spotted it immediately.

I rebuilt the color as a true royal blue in CMYK with the magenta pulled back, so it prints clean and saturated rather than drifting violet. I also told the client what to expect before he saw it: on screen the corrected blue can look slightly less electric than the original, because monitors display blues that ink physically can't reproduce. The proof was built to look right on vinyl, not on a laptop.

14 × 48 ft

OUTFRONT Los Angeles bulletin, built on the printer's own template

CMYK

U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2, with bleed and alignment to the printer's guides

Full package

Production file, fonts, and linked images zipped for the printer's prepress team

Revision

A printer's request, turned around the same hour

After the file was delivered, OUTFRONT's proof came back with one ask: make the host a little larger to fill the space. I scaled the photo, confirmed it still met resolution at the new size, set the tip of the hat right at the safety line, and dropped an updated package and proof into the same shared folder the printer already had — about half an hour after the request came in.

In Place

On the approach path into LAX

The board went up beneath the landing approach into LAX — which gives the headline an unfair advantage. The planes it's telling you to watch fly right past it.

The Airline Videos Live billboard above a Los Angeles street, with an airliner on final approach passing to its right — Watch these planes — with one on final approach beside the board.

Street-level view of the Airline Videos Live billboard above a row of storefronts, palm trees, and traffic in Los Angeles — From street level. At this distance the headline, host, and logo still read in a single glance.

Outcome

Up, approved, and extended

The printer approved the files and the board went up in Los Angeles. The client was happy enough with the result to extend the placement through the end of the year.

“Thank you for your help on this project! Excellent job!”

— Kevin Ray, Airline Videos Live

Why this matters for hire: the design decisions on a billboard are few and large, but the production decisions are many and small — resolution at scale, a color that survives conversion, a margin that survives trim. This project shows both halves, and it shows the result standing on a real structure.

Have a board, banner, or sign going to press?

Layout, vector cleanup, print-true color, and a production package your printer can run without a phone call.

Start a project →
← Back to all work