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Customer Wanting Design Files

B

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
Gino said:
I didn't say anything remotely like that. You're creating a new story or storyline to fit your thinking.

No matter what industry, business or trade you are in, you need to give a quote and in that quote you must tell the end-user what they will and/or will not receive. If you don't upfront tell them how much a design costs, that is on you for holding back pertinent information. Just because you created does not mean later when you decide to drop the client, you can keep their artwork.
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And you talk about me making up things? You're assuming our shop is not up front about what is agreed to or not in a price quote. In this discussion I'm looking at it from the perspective of the original poster. If it was me I probably wouldn't be in that situation in the first place.

First of all, we rarely do any vector re-creations of customer provided "logos" for free. We charge up front for that, even if we don't get the sign job. We'll give the customer a copy of that vector-based logo, even in multiple file formats. What we won't do is give a customer copies of our actual full sized production files. Those are our property. A client has about as much right to our shop drawings as he does the serial numbers and logins for the software we use.

Gino said:
You can't sell a car to someone and later go back and say. Alright, you've owned the car for 3 months, now. You still owe me for the tires, battery and gasoline and oil that was in it.
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If you buy a car from a dealership that doesn't mean you own the patents and other copyrighted material inside of it. The auto manufacturers still owns all of that.
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Bobby...... is English your first language ??

You're missing the boat up & down and all around. I am only speaking about the OP, not you or how you conduct business, but we do it pretty much the same as you. We are up front once talking price. We tell them the designing of a logo or re-creating one will cost money and that would normally be paid before any work actually starts, unless otherwise discussed or included in the price. After that a deposit is retained and the work begins with signed paperwork by both sides. When the work is finished or installed, we collect the balance due. Almost never is there ever a need to discuss who owns what. They will get jpegs of the finished logo, branding or whatever it's called today, but no vector files. Never. Those are our working files, not part of the end result.

So, all I'm saying is, anyone needs to be upfront with their proposal and tell them what they do or don't get for their money If you do, there's no need for these problems later.

Recently, we had a guy bring in his re-worked logo. I had help designing with another member on this forum about 7 years ago. The guy loved it. Move forward to about 2 months ago and his son takes over the business and changes everything. I showed him how badly his new logo will not work as he thought. He said, what should we do ?? I told him, we can take 'key' elements and reposition things, re-size things and maybe even change up some colors. Yeah, yeah, yeah......... hold on there cowboy, this will cost you, even though we're using your key ingredients. How much ?? Depends on how much time til you like what you see again, but I guarantee you, it will be far better, that what ya have now. I would say between $375 and $500. Okay. He loved what we did in no time and I got $450. Now, he already had all the components, and anyone could've re-created from my jpeg, but I handled it above board and professionally and he was totally happy. He's come back for a few small items, but we had his father as a customer and we now have his son as a true believer in us.
 
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greysquirrel

New Member
Maybe Im missing something here. If your customer paid you to create art for them, then yes they should get what they paid for. Now if you put art together because you where going to print them and did not charge them, than they should pay for the art.
 
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greysquirrel

New Member
yep...re-read...client was not charged for art, as long as they know that up-front, then they should absolutely pay for any art files. Or, you could get creative and allow them to pay you royalties on what boards eventually sell....
 
StarSign

StarSign

New Member
Wouldn't a design fee just be the the time it takes to create the design. You paid me for my time to design it, not ownership of said design. That would be a separate charge.
 
Geneva Olson

Geneva Olson

Expert Storyteller
lol. i had an issue with a customer over vector artwork that was his wifes naked body. i own the artwork. he's pissed because i own it. but there's nothing he can do about it . and his wife is pissed that i have it. ...i won't do anything with it. and he removed his review because i posted the photo in a reply. i had to make a point. sometimes lessons are hard to learn for some people.
 
2B

2B

Active Member
Geneva Olson said:
lol. i had an issue with a customer over vector artwork that was his wifes naked body. i own the artwork. he's pissed because i own it. but there's nothing he can do about it . and his wife is pissed that i have it. ...i won't do anything with it. and he removed his review because i posted the photo in a reply. i had to make a point. sometimes lessons are hard to learn for some people.
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SO MANY QUESTIONS
 
Geneva Olson

Geneva Olson

Expert Storyteller
2B said:
SO MANY QUESTIONS
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This man took a photo of his wife. He asked a friend of his to take the photo and turn it into a black and white drawing. The guy hand drew it. He brought the hand drawing to me and requested for me to take that image and use just the naked outline of his wife and make it into a decal to put on the fenders of his motorcycle.
He wanted this naked outline in blue. well, it came out a purply blue. even though he approved the mockup. When he picked up the fenders he said the color was wrong. I told him I would reprint it for him in the correct blue. (even though he approved the other color, he said he was focused on the line drawing and not the color--just like a man..focused on the boobies. :)-)

Anyway, he left with the motorcycle fenders and we didn't hear anything back until a few months later. He comes back and starts giving me a list of items he would like printed. I told him the cost and he said, "uh, no, I have a credit". I told him that it wasn't an in house credit, it was to reprint the item that was printed incorrectly. He said that he took it off of the motorcycle and didn't want it back on there. During the course of the conversation it came out that his wife had gotten pissed that he had gotten this done.
He got on social media and started trash talking us. He got on google and put a bad review. Well, we don't back down from bad reviews. If I do something wrong, I'll take the hit, and I will do everything in my power to make it right so if you left me a bad review, and I don't deserve it, watch out, because I have documents like we are going to court. Soooo, we posted the email of the proof and where he approved it.
He went NUTS and told us to get his wifes photos off the internet. That's when we got into a discussion over who owned the artwork. When we told him that I technically owned the artwork, the reality of this situation slapped him in the face.
 
V

victor bogdanov

Active Member
Reminds me of this request a few months back

2.jpg
 
Geneva Olson

Geneva Olson

Expert Storyteller
DL Signs said:
Starting to understand why the wife got so irate, rather than flattered :thumb:
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As the story unfolded, she did not want her husband exploiting her body. That became evident.

I wasnt interested in promoting the exploitation, however, when he left a bad review, I had to explain my position. That position was in the form of a mockup that had been approved. He was quick to remove the google review.
At the end of the day, i'm fairly certain his wife was pretty pissed at him for the fiasco.
 
DL Signs

DL Signs

Never go against the family
Geneva Olson said:
As the story unfolded, she did not want her husband exploiting her body. That became evident.

I wasnt interested in promoting the exploitation, however, when he left a bad review, I had to explain my position. That position was in the form of a mockup that had been approved. He was quick to remove the google review.
At the end of the day, i'm fairly certain his wife was pretty pissed at him for the fiasco.
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He probaably got off lucky. If I did something like that, there would be no reviews, good bad or otherwise... My wife would just shoot me :oops:
 
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