The client brings a file. The file is 72 dpi because that's how it was saved from a PowerPoint presentation, and it has exactly the same dimensions as the laptop screen it was made on. We're supposed to print a roll-up two meters tall from that. No, it can't be done. And no, you can't 'just fix it up in Photoshop', because you can't make something out of nothing - you can only smear what you already have over a larger surface.
A roll-up has one particular trait: it stands close to people. You see a billboard poster from fifty meters away, from a car, so the print quality can be mediocre and nobody will notice. A roll-up stands at the entrance to a booth, the visitor walks up to half a meter away, sometimes takes a photo next to it. Every pixel, every smudge from the wrong resolution, every JPEG compression artifact - it's all painfully visible.
What a display system actually is, and why it has its own rules
A roll-up is a cassette with a spring or gravity mechanism that rolls up artwork printed on vinyl, blockout, or textile material. The artwork is glued to a bar at the bottom and to a bracket at the top, on the pole. When you release the lock, the spring rolls the banner back into the cassette by itself. It's a mechanical device, so it has tolerances - the artwork has to land in a specific place on the material, otherwise it either won't roll up evenly or the edges will end up wrinkled.
Display systems are a broader category - besides the classic roll-up (sometimes called a banner stand), there are modular walls (pop-up displays), LED-lit light boxes, X-banner and L-banner systems, and tension fabric displays stretched over frames. Each one has different file requirements because the material and mounting method differ. A fabric wall stretched over a frame needs a different safety margin than vinyl glued to a bar inside a roll-up cassette - because fabric stretches, and vinyl doesn't.
Sizes - and why 'standard roll-up' is a bit of a myth
The most popular roll-up is 85 cm wide and 200 cm tall, but that's not some rigid standard the way A4 is for office paper. Cassette manufacturers vary by a few centimeters in either direction, so before you start designing, check the exact dimensions of the cassette you're ordering - or let us do it for you, since we keep dimension tables for every model we offer. Popular widths are 60, 85, 100, 120 and 150 cm, with heights typically 200 cm, less often 220 or 240.
Don't design 'by eye' based on the model name: Two roll-ups with the same commercial name from different manufacturers can have cassettes differing by 1-2 cm in width. With full-bleed artwork close to the edge, that 1 cm is the difference between a clean result and a cropped logo.
Resolution - why 300 dpi is a false standard in large format
Let's bust one myth right away. In offset printing, for a flyer or business card, 300 dpi is a sensible standard, because you're viewing the print up close and want maximum sharpness. In large format, the same rule would kill your project - a file for an 85×200 cm roll-up at 300 dpi would be several gigabytes in size, something no computer handles comfortably, and nobody would even see the difference, because the viewer stands a meter away from the poster, not a centimeter.
The practical rule for large-format printing: 100-150 dpi at actual size is enough for materials viewed from a meter or more away, like roll-ups, display walls, or banners. If you're designing artwork for a billboard viewed from dozens of meters away, you can go as low as 30-50 dpi. The key phrase is 'at actual size' - meaning the file is set up in the software at 85×200 cm, not 8.5×20 cm later scaled up four times. Scaling within the design software versus scaling by enlarging a finished raster image are two different things, and only the first one actually works.
I once received a file at 300 dpi for a 150×200 cm format - twenty gigabytes, the software crashed on every edit attempt, and the client couldn't tell the difference from the 120 dpi version we ended up printing anyway. More dpi doesn't automatically mean better - it just means more data to process.
Photos from the internet, PowerPoint, and phones - the scale of the problem
A photo downloaded from Google is typically around 1000-2000 pixels in size. For an 85×200 cm roll-up at 100 dpi, you need an image roughly 3350×7870 pixels. The difference is massive - that Google photo would need to be enlarged several times over, which means blur, pixelation, and the effect we jokingly call 'internet mosaic' in the industry. A photo from a good phone, like an iPhone 14 with a 48-megapixel sensor, gives you a file around 8000×6000 pixels - enough for a sizeable format, provided the shot was sharp and well lit.
Bleed, safe distances, and the cassette zone - roll-up geometry
This is where a roll-up differs fundamentally from a flyer. On a flyer, bleed exists to mask imperfections from guillotine cutting. With a roll-up, there's no cutting after printing in that sense - the banner is trimmed to the size of the ordered material, but what matters most here is something else entirely: the mounting zone attached to the cassette bars.
Typically, the top 3-5 cm and bottom 5-8 cm of the roll-up artwork are glued or mechanically clamped to the bar - this part is partially hidden or rolled inside the mechanism. If you place important text, a logo, or a person's face from a photo there, you risk it being visually cut off or rolled into the cassette and not visible at all. Practical rule: no key elements (logos, calls to action, phone numbers) within a 6 cm strip from the top and 8 cm from the bottom of the artwork.
The gross format of the file (the one you design in) should match exactly the print material dimensions given by the cassette manufacturer - no additional external bleed, since nothing gets trimmed from a larger sheet here. But within that format, we apply a safety margin: 3-5 cm from the left and right edges for text and logos, so nothing falls out of view due to imperfect material tension in the cassette.
A concrete example: an 85×200 cm roll-up. You design the file at 85×200 cm (no additional external bleed). Top mounting zone: 5 cm from the top - no text, no logo. Bottom mounting zone in the cassette: 7 cm from the bottom - no key elements. Side safety margin: 3 cm on each side for text. The effective 'safe zone' for content is therefore an area of roughly 79×188 cm in the central part of the artwork.
Colors - why a roll-up will never look exactly like it does on screen
Solvent or latex large-format printing works in CMYK, but not identical to the CMYK you know from offset printing on coated paper. Vinyl has a different texture, reflects light differently, and absorbs ink differently than paper. Saturated colors, especially deep navy blues, reds and blacks, can turn out noticeably different from what you see on the monitor - a monitor emits light, the material reflects it, it's a physically different way of perceiving color, and no calibration can fully compensate for that.
If a company has a clearly defined Pantone brand color, it's worth mentioning when ordering - a good print shop can match the formula to the specific material, though in large-format printing, Pantone accuracy tends to be harder to achieve than in offset, since wide-format machines use a different set of base inks. A black background on a roll-up is a separate topic altogether - a deep, solid black on blockout vinyl looks different than on fabric, which can show slight light bleed-through under strong lighting from behind the stand.
The most common mistakes we see in production
A file in RGB instead of CMYK is the classic one - a design made in PowerPoint or Canva saves in RGB by default, colors look vivid on screen, and after conversion to CMYK, some of the saturation disappears because CMYK has a narrower color gamut than a screen. That's not a print shop error - that's just the physics of pigments.
Text placed too close to the edge is the second classic mistake, especially a phone number or website address dropped right at the very bottom of the artwork, exactly where the mounting mechanism will cover it. We've seen a roll-up where the call to action 'Call us: ...' sat in a two-centimeter strip from the bottom - the phone number nearly disappeared entirely under the cassette bar.
Another mistake: designing at A4 size and 'scaling proportionally' through large-format printing software without recalculating resolution. The software will indeed enlarge the file to the requested format, but the effective resolution drops proportionally - from 300 dpi at A4, scaling up to 85×200 cm might leave you with 15-20 dpi, meaning the poster ends up looking like a photo taken through a wet window.
And a last, less obvious one: ignoring contrast under booth lighting. Trade show stands are often lit with spotlights, sometimes fairly dim. Artwork with a light background and light text, which looks elegant on an office monitor, can simply blend together under poor lighting on the show floor. That's not a technical file error, but it's worth considering at the design stage, not after the fact.
File format and how to send it to us
A PDF with embedded fonts and images, at actual size or at a 1:10 scale with the scale clearly stated in the order description - that's our preferred format. If you're designing at a reduced scale (which makes sense for large formats, since software sometimes chokes when working on an 850×2000 mm file at true size), state it clearly in your email: 'file at 1:10 scale, target format 85×200 cm'. Misunderstandings on this point have already cost more than one print shop an entire run printed at the wrong scale.
We also accept TIFF or high-quality JPEG, but without text layers it's harder to fix something during prepress if we spot an error. A PDF lets us check whether text is truly text (vector, sharp regardless of scale) or a raster pasted in from a screenshot - which happens more often than you'd think.
Before sending your roll-up file to print, check that
- The file format matches the cassette dimensions exactly (verified with the manufacturer, not from memory)
- Resolution is 100-150 dpi at actual size, not calculated from a reduced scale without correction
- The top 5 cm and bottom 7-8 cm of the artwork are free of text, logos, and other key elements
- There's a safety margin of at least 3 cm on the sides for text
- Colors are in CMYK, not RGB
- Fonts are embedded or converted to vector outlines (curves)
- Photos are at adequate resolution - not pulled from Google at 1000 pixels
- The file is saved as PDF with the scale clearly described, if the design was made at a reduced size
How this works in practice on our production floor
Before we send a file to the solvent plotter, we make a so-called proof - a test print at a smaller scale or a 1:1 section of a critical area, if the client has doubts about color. For larger orders, several roll-ups for an entire event, this really pays off, because correcting an entire printed batch afterward means not just material cost but time - and at trade shows, time is often the one resource you can't buy more of.
The material matters just as much as the file itself. Blockout vinyl doesn't show light through, rolls up well, and resists minor creasing - it's the standard choice for reusable roll-ups. Fabric (polyester) gives a matte, more premium look, but is more prone to creasing during transport, and it's worth warning the client about that so they're not surprised when they unpack the cassette after a trip in the trunk of a car.
Display systems aren't just roll-ups: If you're planning a larger trade show stand, it's worth thinking about the whole system together - a modular wall, a roll-up, maybe LED floor stands too. Consistent colors and shared base files (the same vector logo, the same CMYK palette) make our job easier and shorten the turnaround time for the whole set.
Roll-ups and display systems forgive less than they seem to at first glance - the viewer's close distance and the mechanical mounting of the artwork inside the cassette are two factors that simply don't exist with a flat flyer. A good file is one that accounts for both of these facts from the very first sketch, not after the fact during corrections.
roll-up large format printing display system artwork preparation trade shows banner CMYK resolution