Pro Signs & Graphix said:
Searching for artwork is indeed a pain in the butt, especially if you have lots of it! Catalogs help to an extent but not even close - as compared to the time that is consumed.
Suggestion.....as Fred states that he will be offering individual pieces, we have all seen the same do the "finding" for many. Therefore, for anybody in need of a certain "piece" - ASK FRED. Most of the time, it seems, the gentleman comes up with "not-so-common" (if common at all) pieces.
Just a suggestion.
I personally like online searching much better than printed catalogs or all the different proprietary browsers supplied with most desktop publishing clipart collections. Even with printed catalogs, it's very difficult to know what choices you have within a collection or across multiple collections.
We literally have millions of pieces of clipart on our shelves that never get used because of the difficulty and time it takes to browse through all the different collections.
From the publisher's point of view, (people like Andy Holmes at Vector Art, Dave Dorsey at Aurora Graphics, myself at Allied Computer Graphics and others) the issues of preventing piracy dominate most decisions in this area. The answer has historically been to supply a user guide but not to make it particularly easy to find what you want and to make it nearly impossible without the book.
Now, with rising costs for both printing and shipping, the trend is to supplying PDF user guides or less. Aurora, for example, supplies "contact pages" which are individual thumbnail pages in JPG format. I printed out his Print Craft Suite and Monster Wraps from the contact pages and it took over half a day. His answer to making that aspect easier was that it is easy enough. His approach is that he doesn't believe in giving his sign customers access to choose artwork anyway so that catalogs are not needed.
The latest release from Vector Art is the Mega Digital Collection. It is their first release to go with a PDF user guide ... four actually because the collection is actually four different collections. We are looking at doing the same thing with our Plotter Art brand, but will offer the electronic guide versions as a separate product at a reduced price while continuing to offer printed guide versions as we always have.
I once suggested to Andrew Holmes the creation of an online database for paid subscribers to show the contents of many collections. The site would not be in the business of selling collections but would make it very easy to find what you already have a license to use on CD or DVD. The answer was a resounding NO because of the great help it would be to those who would then sell illegal copies of anyone's collections.