Pcb 101 Graphic Design Update

During my time working for the Bare Board Group, one of my major projects was to update the graphic images and photographs used in one of their major presentations. The company itself was a multi-million dollar printed circuit board manufacturer that hired me on as an intern in order to create banners for their Facebook page, update graphical works, edit photographs, and work on holiday imagery for the company over the course of about six months. The project in question for this article was one of their presentations going over the basics of the pcb creation process.

Before

Pcb 101 Before: https://www.slideshare.net/ddurossjr/pcb-101

Take some time to look over the presentation. In particular, the imagery used in the presentation. For the graphic images, they were originally created in MS Paint and there are some issues to note. First the color of the graphical images were using a Chromatic color scale which, while not bad, were not the most appealing to the eye. The main issue was that for products created with plastic and metal, there needs to be a sheen from lighting unless they were created to be non reflective.

Second, the graphical images were not aligned properly, making the image not seem quite right. For example, in slide four when the dry film lamination is meant to be applied the lamination is too far to the left rather than lining up with the copper clad FR4. This in turn makes the image appear to be more like a trio of boxes rather than a singular uniform object.

Finally, the imagery used for the photographic images needed to be updated in order to account for equipment changes, reducing overwhelming color issues, and blurry photographs. For example in slide eleven of the original presentation, there is a noticeable blur in the ascended image which needed to be reduced as possible before it was placed into the updated presentation.

After

Pcb 101 After: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1K_AvNh7BDFxadtBVfAH0UxzLlxTsksZcThcdN-4CaOA/edit?usp=sharing

One issue to note before continuing on, this project was originally a power point presentation created in Microsoft PowerPoint that was meant to be shared and used by the Bare Board Group. As such when the pptx document was uploaded to Google Slides, there are noticeable alignment issues as the slides were originally taller in power point than in Slides. In addition, one major change is the expansion of the PowerPoint itself. This was to account for each step in the process and thus needed new slides and information to be added. For these new slides, photographs were edited and added into the presentation.

I first started clearing the issues by completely recreating the graphic images with the use of Adobe Illustrator. Images for the graphics were enlarged to give viewers a better look at the visual process. A metallic color scheme was also used for the imagery. Lighting was also taken into account for the imagery mainly to help improve the image. While working with solid colors could be done for the imagery, the images would seem off in some way or give off that feeling. Adding in lighting via a gradient color pallet would help fix that issue.

During the recreation process, I made sure the graphic images were aligned properly and kept to relatively the same spot in the presentation itself. This would help ensure a visual transformation of the product for each step of the manufacturing process. The alignment helped to keep the printed circuit board maintain a uniform look throughout the process.

Finally, the photographs were edited and outright changed for the presentation itself. My focus for these images was to reduce the blurriness and balance colors in the imagery. This was mainly to keep a crisp image for the photographs used in the presentation. For the editing tool I used, I used Adobe Photoshop.