What does 4K mean for you?

As a designer, motionographer, video editor, or in fact anyone in the creative industry, you're going to be hearing a lot about 4K over the course of 2014. But what is it, and what does it mean for you? Well, if you're a graphic designer or illustrator, it's unlikely to be impacting your workflow in the near future.

A bit of background: a resolution of 1080p (1920x1080 pixels) has been a standard for quite some time, and we're pretty used to it. It's the highest resolution on a 21.5in iMac and it's likely the resolution of your television at home. But 4K, as the name suggests, offers roughly four times the number of pixels. 4K itself is a rather generic term, describing content or display devices that have a horizontal resolution of around 4,000 pixels. In reality, as designers, you're likely to come across 4K Ultra HD - which is a resolution of 3840x2160 (twice 1080p resolution, with four times as many pixels).

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Rob Carney

Rob is editorial, graphic design and publishing lead at Transport for London. He previously worked at Future Publishing over the course of several years, where he launched digital art magazine, ImagineFX; and edited graphic design magazine Computer Arts, as well as the Computer Arts Projects series, and was also editor of technology magazine, T3. 

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