always send the best art you have

[The Vector Doctor]

"Sometimes I say no to force you to go look for better art" a tweet I posted some time ago....

In another thread someone asked why I was turning down a job. Probably 60% of the time, when I turn down a job eventually better art will appear when it forces my customer to do a bit more homework on their part and ask the customers if they have a higher resolution file or possibly cleaner art

I have had better art sent to me within minutes. Maybe my client made the mistake of grabbing the wrong file from their hard drive.

This is no different then when a customer comes in to your shop providing art and you quote them a $50-300 art fee and then by some "miracle" better art or if you are lucky vector art is suddenly found.

Also, I mentioned this in a previous thread. One of my customers was sending 10megapixel photos to me but his email was making them 200-300k tiny images.

In another thread here, someone had a photo of a Spanish mine panorama (cannot remember exactly) that was taken with an ipad. From the art it appeared that it was impossible to print at a large size and most said it could not be done. When in fact the reason for the poor art was because the signs101 forum would only allow uploading certain size images and the author here was just posting a sample thumbnail

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Some of you are probably thinking... duh, but it happens daily. A customer has 2 versions of the artwork and for some reason I get the worse of the 2

Another example is not scanning artwork at a decent resolution. I often get business cards placed on a scanner and scanned at 72 dpi

 

[oldgoatroper]

Another example is not scanning artwork at a decent resolution. I often get business cards placed on a scanner and scanned at 72 dpi

yep.... and they scan the whole bed while they're at it...

 

[Pat Whatley]

Out of curiosity how often does somebody send you a low resolution file, you ask for a higher resolution so they take the same blurry file and save it at a higher dpi?

 

[SignaramaFL]

Out of curiosity how often does somebody send you a low resolution file, you ask for a higher resolution so they take the same blurry file and save it at a higher dpi?

My favorite is when we ask for an EPS file, and they send us a low res JPEG saved as an EPS.... and they don't understand why that isn't correct

 

[WildWestDesigns]

The embroidery digitizing that I do for the average joe, I would say 90% of what I get are low res blurry JPGs. That's just something that dealing with the general public I have had to just deal with.

They don't even attempt to save a low res jpg to an eps file.

 

[oldgoatroper]

...and then there's those times when they are certain they are doing you a favour...

"Here, I put this JPEG in a Word Document for you... "

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Out of curiosity how often does somebody send you a low resolution file, you ask for a higher resolution so they take the same blurry file and save it at a higher dpi?

not too often. Mostly like what was also mentioned above. Sending the same file embedded in a word, powerpoint, excel, or eps/ai/pdf

 

[omgsideburns]

lol... my boss has a habit of telling people to send a PDF so we get scan-to-pdf's all the time. ugh.

 

[Mike F]

The best is when you ask for a better copy of something and they send you something even crappier. Yes, that 120x240 gif is really going to come out looking better than the 320x450 jpg you sent me the first time

Or my personal favorite... "Just go with it."

 

[TheSnowman]

I love these topics! I do have to vote that the taking a gif off of their "website" and changing the file name to "EPS" is my favorite.

I quoted a job for a place right next door. They said their logo is on the website, I go there, and it's TEENY. So I quoted the artwork re-creation (By Eric) and a week later, I drive by. They blew up a thumbnail to a 4' X 8' banner. It looks so terrible. Never seen so many pixels in all my life.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

Here is an example of what I am talking about. I did not ask why, but the first version of the logo sent to me looks like the attached. I said no way. A few minutes later I got a much higher resolution file

Maybe they grabbed the wrong file on their hard drive. When you pick a file to attach in your email, sometimes my customers must rely on the thumbnail image and don't open it up to be sure it is the best one they can send

 

[VizualVoice]

yep.... and they scan the whole bed while they're at it...

LOL, I just got one in my email not 5 minutes ago, scanned the whole bed, but he did have the graces to at least scan at 300dpi. Of course, it also has all kinds of scanner artifacts in the gradient background just for good measure.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

And the other extreme. Someone sent me a 4foot x 8foot 600 dpi photoshop file of some basic text. Took longer to download, open and place into illustrator then it did to recreate

 

[TyrantDesigner]

Customer a few years back came in with an 8 gig flash drive that had a 7 gig psd on there. Customer said he couldn't open it and wanted to recreate the art for his vehicle graphics ... after 30 minutes of it loading came up to be a logo of an arrow and some helvetica text with a drop shadow. He didn't want to pay the vectoring/art fee and left with a 7 gig file.

 

[The Vector Doctor]

another sample

Sometimes I never hear back from a customer when I say no way. But I cannot stress enough how often this happens. Almost daily. Here is another one from today. Top sample was sent to me and I said no, that i needed cleaner/clearer art.

The art below arrived one day later, much better sample

Sorry for bringing up an old thread but I have had many people ask me why I turn down some jobs. Some are so bad I cannot even quote it let alone trace the art. But by saying no and a little homework from you or your customer, better art will show up

I might do you a favor too. After a bit more asking, even vectors show up when the customer looks harder for suitable files

 

[omgsideburns]

Crikey!

 

[Custom_Grafx]

I've also heard of a couple of situations where they don't have access to the art because they pissed off the wrong guy (the graphic designer) - by not paying him/her etc.

Dig deep enough and there is usually a good reason why someone can only supply an unacceptably low quality file.

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Oh yeah... and there's always the company who thinks they can get a 'graphic designer' on minimum wage who copies/pastes a graphic from google search and says "make it that red, but a bit brighter" - in an email...

 

[Custom_Grafx]

Got an interesting one today. Here's the sequence of events.

1) We'll provide the artwork (customer)
2) I get the artwork - it's all good. They want me to mock up from my end to make sure it's all good (I had to change one section to 7 different numbers, one for each floor)
3) I send the confirmation proof
4) I receive a list, no joke, that would have taken at least half an hour to write up, with adjustments that needed to be made to my proof. Change this, less space here, more leading there, bold here, not bold there, numbers smaller, the list went on.
5) I send back an email saying the price doesn't include artwork, and I quoted based on "art supplied" and ask if they can supply the artwork with the required adjustments.
6) A bit later, I receive a print ready artwork of everything as they wanted it.

I'm wondering.... why didn't they just send me that in the first place?

The curious part to all of this is that their business is an agency and would be full of people permanently on Ai/Ps. What gives? Sigh...