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Best place to hire experienced sign people?

myront

myront

Dammit, make it faster!!
rjssigns said:
Intern from a local tech college. One local to me trains students on all types of wide format equipment. Students also learn cut vinyl and do various wrap projects. This semesters students are doing command car graphics for a local fire department.
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Colleges only teach Adobe. And they don't teach about file types and such. They expect to make top dollar right from graduation.
 
ams

ams

New Member
myront said:
Colleges only teach Adobe. And they don't teach about file types and such. They expect to make top dollar right from graduation.
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It is annoying that they only do Adobe or so it seems. I've had designers with Adobe degrees and be some of the worst designers I've ever had. One recent guy wanted $18/hour and had no job history other than being a lifeguard.
 
A

AKwrapguy

New Member
myront said:
Colleges only teach Adobe. And they don't teach about file types and such. They expect to make top dollar right from graduation.
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I almost thought about talking to my local college and seeing if I could become a guest lecture. 'Just about everything that you have learned is wrong and has no real world application and if you send me another fucking jpeg logo I will literally print it out, put it on .080 and beat you with it." Now let me explain why.....
 
Rick

Rick

Certified Enneadecagon Designer
ams said:
The reason my signweb posting is basic is because if I say "You must have a minimum of 5 years experience in project management, or you must be above 35 years old or you must have mig welding experience" I would lose a ton of potential people. I want to find some people first and then see what they have to offer. A little experience is better than no experience in certain cases.
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Ummm, there are ways to word it where you can get someone more the range you are looking for and still keep in open for people who are trainable, I did see you courting a sign guy with 20+ years experience on Signweb so it's hard to know what you are really looking for. I get what you are saying, but you are not consistent with your postings, if you are having better luck on indeed, post your indeed ad on Signweb, just makes sense.
 
Rick

Rick

Certified Enneadecagon Designer
AKwrapguy said:
I think it also depends on what your looking for, what your looking at paying, benefits, and expectations. If your willing to put in the time and train/teach someone you can get someone with less experience and cheaper but if you want hire someone that can for the most part hit the ground running your probably going to have to pay for it.

Rant time:
As a younger person this is probably one of my biggest issues working in this business. I have years of experience with Flexi, Photoshop, Illustrator, Versaworks, Wasatch, Muse and more. I've worked with/on Mimaki, Roland, HP Eco-Solvent and HP Latex. I'm a 3m certified installer, and have a BA in a design field. I have years of experience in Marketing, Sales, Customer Service and Design. I've run a small shop, I've been a lead installer for another and more.

Yet every time I see posting for a job it's $14-$16 an hour. This would have been a great wage in the 80's or early 90's but today, this is just not acceptable and I know that sometimes the margins on these jobs are tight and with the lower cost of entry into the industry more and more people are fighting for the same dollar. Also now every kid with an I-Pad thinks that they can design. For ****sakes most 'designer's' I deal with can't comprehend the fact that a vehicle is a 3 dimensional object and taking a image from Facebook to put on 4'x8' banner is going to look like ****.
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I went through the same thing, I have a ton of production experience and worked every position, machine and software in a sign shop.... at some point I made a conscientious decision to find sign work that appreciated my expertise... It wasn't at a sign shop, it was at a design firm that specialized in sign design. In my experience, most sign shop designers are not all that great - Adobe or Corel - after moving up in my career, I now know more better designers than bad ones...
 
A

AKwrapguy

New Member
Rick said:
In my experience, most sign shop designers are not all that great
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Fair enough. I think that what frustrates me the most is not the quality of the art work cause to be honest art is kind of objective and if the client likes it then there's not much to do about it. It's more the technical aspects of the files and artwork.
 
Solventinkjet

Solventinkjet

DIY Printer Fixing Guide
DerbyCitySignGuy said:
Absolutely agree. 100%.

When you have guys opening shops and then head hunting and offering people with lots of experience and wide-ranging skill sets $12 an hour, it's offensive. I get that you just opened your shop and you need someone who can do design, run your printers, do installs, and deal with customers, but that's an offensive offer. That's an offensive offer for someone just out of school with a design degree. Yet it happens all the time, because people think, "Well, minimum wage is $7.25, so this is a great offer!" No. No, it is not.

$15 an hour here is barely above a living wage for a married person, much less someone who has a family, a car, a house, and all the other normal life bills.
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I got a job at a start up sign shop when I was straight out of high school with no experience other than a 2 year graphic design program. They started me out at $8/hr. Once I was there for 3 months and they realized I was worth the money they upped me to $12/hr which at the time was living the high life for me. That was about 13 years ago and in a medium sized city. These days if you live in a bigger city like Denver $12/hr isn't enough to pay rent let alone feel compensated. I agree with you. It's offensive to offer anything less.
 
GAC05

GAC05

Quit buggin' me
Your local big box store doesn't provide a referral service?
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Our's does
 
Rick

Rick

Certified Enneadecagon Designer
AKwrapguy said:
Fair enough. I think that what frustrates me the most is not the quality of the art work cause to be honest art is kind of objective and if the client likes it then there's not much to do about it. It's more the technical aspects of the files and artwork.
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When I show up to a shop I'm working for, what I find most often is a designer can't design so the client has no choice... though I do agree, clients are their own worst enemy... I don't see design as art, I see it as a solution, that may make it objective, most clients see art and design subjectively and thats may not end up with a good result.

I get bad files all the time, I get paid to fix them or review them so I have no problems with that, what I take issue with is signs not being code compliant... a get a lot of files from sign shops that are way off and have to deal with sign shop designers thinking they know what they are doing... it's refreshing to get a sign shop designer who know what they are doing.
 
Rick

Rick

Certified Enneadecagon Designer
myront said:
Ouch! lol. Not the case here.
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I always ask myself when I think I'm good at this... "Are you sure?"
This isn't the first time you said this - I always ask my designer friends who are better than me if I still got it, I'm not always happy with their answer...
 
Rick

Rick

Certified Enneadecagon Designer
AKwrapguy said:
Some of the worst files I get are from agency's.
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Some of the worst construction documents I get are from sign shops - pretty scary when they are the ones building and installing it... usually using the wrong typeface, not wanting to use a concrete base even though they bid on it, bad material substitutions, cheaping out...
 
A

AKwrapguy

New Member
Rick said:
I get bad files all the time, I get paid to fix them or review them so I have no problems with that, what I take issue with is signs not being code compliant... a get a lot of files from sign shops that are way off and have to deal with sign shop designers thinking they know what they are doing... it's refreshing to get a sign shop designer who know what they are doing.
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I know this a problem. We deal with it all the time. The latest is local companies under bidding us cause they are using non-compliant materials. Sometimes we have to explain to the contractor that their bids are invalid because of this. Most of them are pretty good about this but a few don't seem to care until an inspector comes and makes then take them all down and have to get all new one made up and replace them.
 
ams

ams

New Member
Rick said:
Some of the worst construction documents I get are from sign shops - pretty scary when they are the ones building and installing it... usually using the wrong typeface, not wanting to use a concrete base even though they bid on it, bad material substitutions, cheaping out...
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So.......... question. If you hate sign shops so much, why are you on this forum?
 
GAC05

GAC05

Quit buggin' me
ams said:
So.......... question. If you hate sign shops so much, why are you on this forum?
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I for one would still be, to some extent, a sign hack without Rick here on the forum.
Before his help all my circles looked like this:
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