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Making NADA ads for Norwegian magazines

This page describes briefly how to proceed to produce magazine ads that are acceptable in NADAexpress.

As explained elsewhere, NADAexpress preflights all ads prior to distribution. Ads with prohibitive errors cannot be distributed, while ads that get warnings will be distributed if the creator/sender finds the condition described in the warning as being under control and allows the ad to be sent.

NADA ads have to be PDF files, consisting of one page only. A series of ads for separate pages in the same magazine must be preflighted and distributed separately. NADAexpress has functionality well suited for such cases.

The PDF files are very often created using Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress, or possibly by Adobe Acrobat Distiller. However, any method or means of producing the PDF is OK as long as the PDF itself fulfills the technical requirements.

Colors

As opposed to newspaper ads, a wide range of color spaces are allowed in magazine ads. DeviceCMYK is the preferred color space, but also RGB color spaces and ICC based colors are OK. CIE based color spaces, such as CalRGB, CalGrey or lab, are not allowed.

Note that when converting colors to DeviceCMYK (typically when exporting to PDF), which ICC profile to use for conversion varies, depending on which magazine the ad is intended for. In the lower half of this page are listed the Norwegian magazines and their corresponding ICC-profiles. The page is in Norwegian, but probably fairly easy to understand even if you aren't familiar with that language [hint: «omslaget» means the cover while «materien» means the inside pages].

Starting in June 2018, color conversion to CMYK for magazine ads may be done directly in NADAexpress. This functionality is well integrated into the preflight+sending-cycle, so that the color converting of ads that initially get preflighting color errors may be done on the fly.

If the ad is in DeviceCMYK or in RGB, any ICC profiles used (for conversion and such) should not be included in the PDF file. But if the ad uses ICC based colors, the corresponding ICC profiles must necessarily be included in the PDF.

Fonts

All the fonts used in the ad must be embedded in the PDF file. Fonts must be either PostScript fonts (aka. Type1 fonts) or TrueType fonts. CID fonts are also OK. Type 3 fonts and Multiple Master fonts are not allowed.

Images must have sufficient resolution - but not more

A resolution of 250 ppi is recommended for color or grey halftone images. Images with a resolution of less than 100 ppi will generate a prohibitive error, so that the ad cannot be sent.

Transparency

Real transparency is allowed. No need to flatten transparency.

Size of ad

Norwegian magazines are of many different types, and they have varying page sizes, and correspondingly varying ad sizes. Information may be found at the web sites of the different magazine publishers. In general, magazine ads with bleed shall have printer's marks. Details to be found at the publishers' web sites.

Too old, too complicated, and too fancy PDF is not allowed

The recommended PDF version is v1.6, but anything from v1.3 upwards is acceptable. No PDF version is "too new" by itself, but many of the constructs introduced in the newer PDF versions are not allowed. The PDF file can contain neither Acrobat Forms nor Annotations nor Watermarks nor other strangenesses.