How important is the screen size and resolution for designers?

The display is the most important interface between the designer and his work. The quality and size of the screen is more important when we deal with prints, but also for photo retouching and video editing. However, the web design can be done using middle-range displays, because most of the people don’t have high quality ones, so it can be more accurate. This doesen’t mean that better screens can’t be used, just isn’t mandatory.

Apple Thunderbolt 27 inch LCD

I don’t know what others prefer, but I am a fan of large displays. For the moment I work on a 24″ full hd display and a 22″, both TFT LCD’s using TN technology but one with LED backlight. I hope to get an update to 27″ IPS display soon 🙂

Here are some large high quality displays that I recommend for graphics design:

  • Dell UltraSharp U2711
  • HP ZR2740w 27 inch
  • HP XW476A4 27 inch
  • Apple Thunderbolt Display 27 inch
  • Apple Cinema Display 27 inch

A very important characteristic of a computer screen is the panel type. For designers I strongly recommend IPS displays, as they have very good viewing angles and color reproduction.  You can read more about IPS techonology here.

Bare in mind that very large displays have very large resolutions. For example 27 or 30 inch lcd’s usualy have 2560×1440 or even 2560×1600 pixels resolution, so the video card must be very good in order to render quality images at this size.

A feature very important for print industry but also for web si the “pivot” function, so the display can be rotated 90 degrees verticaly (from landscape to portrait mode).