house-standard.md

skills/artwork-template-rebuilder/references/house-standard.md

1. # Meridian Display Co. Artwork Template Standard
3. The canonical rules, reverse-engineered from the confirmed-correct **TD20** (20 ft Tension
4. Fabric Display, Straight) and **BD08** (Adjustable Backdrop Stand, 8 ft) templates.
5. `build_template.py` already encodes all of this; read this file when you need to verify a
6. rebuild by eye, handle an odd product, or explain the standard to a human.
8. ## 1. Layers (PDF OCGs): exactly four, with these names
10. | Layer | Holds |
11. |-------|-------|
12. | `Layout Area` | the solid **black** outer boundary rectangle (the artwork-with-bleed edge) |
13. | `Safe Line` | the **red dashed** safe/visual-line rectangle |
14. | `Artwork Layer` | empty; the designer drops their art here |
15. | `Help Info` | all instructional text, the spec block, and the legend |
17. These must be real Optional Content Groups so a designer can toggle them in Illustrator /
18. Acrobat. The bad vendor templates typically have **no layers at all**, and that alone is a fail.
20. ## 2. Colors (CMYK: these are print files, always CMYK, never RGB)
22. - **Black** `C0 M0 Y0 K100`: all standard text, the bold spec labels, the section headings, the solid boundary line.
23. - **Red** `C0 M100 Y100 K0`: the red dashed safe line, the final "Remove the red visual line…" warning, and any safety/stitching callout (e.g. BD08's "Please allow for 3 inch border for stitching").
24. - **Teal accent** `C78 M45 Y52 K5`: the inline emphasized terms inside Notes to Designers: `150dpi`, `CMYK`, `PMS`, `flatten`, `outline`.
26. > Honesty note for whoever maintains this: in BOTH confirmed-correct files the inline key-term
27. > highlight is this muted **teal**, not red. Only the final warning line and stitching callouts
28. > are true red. If the standard is meant to be "black + red only," that's a change from the
29. > source files, not what they actually contain, so flag it rather than silently "fixing" it.
31. ## 3. Typography
33. - Font: **Arial** (ArialMT / Arial-BoldMT). The builder uses Liberation Sans, which is
34. metric-identical to Arial. A wrong font (e.g. a vendor template set in a decorative display
35. face) is a fail.
36. - **Title:** `[SKU] - Product Name`, in Arial **Bold**, black, the largest text on the page.
37. SKU is uppercase, in square brackets, then a space-hyphen-space, then the product name.
38. Example: `[BD08] - Adjustable Backdrop Stand, 8 ft`.
39. - **Subtitle:** `Artwork Template`, in Arial regular, black, directly under the title.
40. - **Spec labels** (e.g. `Graphic Size with Bleed:`): Arial **Bold**, black. Their values are Arial regular.
41. - **Section headings** (`Notes to Designers:`, `Preferred File Formats:`, `Accepted File Formats:`):
42. Arial **Bold + underlined**, black.
43. - **Body / bullets:** Arial regular, black, with the teal key terms inline. Bullets start with `- `.
44. - **Final Notes bullet** ("Remove the red visual line and help instructions upon submitting your artwork."): Arial regular, **red**.
46. ## 4. The legend (in the Help Info block)
48. Two rows, each a label followed by a short sample line:
49. - `Bleed / Layout Edge` + a short **solid black** line
50. - `Safe Visual Line` + a short **red dashed** line
52. ## 5. Standard boilerplate text (verbatim; it lives in the script)
54. **Notes to Designers:**
55. - All graphic files must be built at `150dpi` at the overall graphic layout size.
56. - All graphic files must be created using `CMYK` mode to ensure the best color matching. If you would like a specific color matched, you MUST provide both `PMS` color and `CMYK` values or we cannot guarantee color matching.
57. - It is best to `flatten` all images and `outline` all text to ensure that nothing will be dropped out or changed during the file transfer.
58. - Graphics can be extended to the very edge but beware of the red visual line. Keep important images & text inside the red visual line. Images outside of the red visual line are subject to be trimmed off or covered by stitching.
59. - Remove the red visual line and help instructions upon submitting your artwork. *(red)*
61. **Preferred File Formats:**
62. - .PDF (Vector Format or 100% Sized, Text Outlined, Images Embedded)
63. - .JPG / .JPEG (100% Sized, 150dpi)
65. **Accepted File Formats:**
66. - .AI or .EPS (Text Outlined, Images Embedded)
67. - .PSD (100% Sized, 150dpi)
69. ## 6. Geometry model
71. - Page = artwork-with-bleed size + a thin pasteboard margin (so the black boundary is not clipped at the page edge). This matches the source templates, whose MediaBox is larger than the artwork.
72. - **Solid black rect** = artwork-with-bleed boundary.
73. - **Red dashed rect** = the safe/visual line, inset from the black boundary.
74. - Safe insets can be **non-uniform** and are **measured from the vendor file**, not guessed:
75. `scripts/measure_template.py` finds the drawn dashed safe rect and reports the visual size to pass
76. via `--visual-w/--visual-h`. TD20's are ~9in left/right and ~3in top/bottom (visual 217.72×85.43
77. inside a 235.83×91.34 bleed); the BS20 quick-set backdrop is a uniform 3in (138×114 inside 144×120). A
78. uniform `--safe-margin` is the fallback only when no safe line is drawn.
79. - The Help Info text sits in a column anchored to the top-left inside the safe line, roughly the left ~45% of the safe width, like both source templates.
81. ## 7. Quick visual pass/fail when checking a rebuild
83. 1. Four layers, named exactly as above, each independently toggleable.
84. 2. Title reads `[SKU] - Name`, bold.
85. 3. Solid black boundary visible; red dashed safe line inset inside it.
86. 4. Section headings bold + underlined; final Notes bullet red; key terms teal.
87. 5. Arial throughout. CMYK throughout.