Customer artwork

[visual800]

This has always been an issue BUT I would say in the past 5 years its worse. No vector art and they cant even tell me what fonts were used. Ill zoom in and screenshot it and send it back telling them this is what it will look like. I pretty much lose interest with all this back and forth BS over art done on an app on their smartphone. People are getting a little more cocky these days wanting to design their own stuff and it looks unprofessional

 

[Gino]

Well, it hit...... and it hit them hard. Just put up a sign, designed by the client who didn't listen to anything I said. They insisted it would be fine. I told them different. Now, they're b!tching about certain things not looking right. I said, do you remember me telling you this would happen if you didn't give me better artwork ?? No !!! She said, oh, now it's our artwork ?? I asked was there anything wrong with the cabinet ?? No. Was there anything wrong with how we installed it ?? No, not really. So, your only complaint is about the part you supplied ?? But you're the professional, you're not supposed to let this happen. When we look at all the other signs, they don't have this look. That's because the artwork was prepared properly. You didn't wanna do that or pay me to have it done. You knew better. They came back, we're the customer and for that kinda money, we should get what we want. You did. I wrote out you needed to cough up another $250 for this not to happen, but you said no. It was an itemized line on the quote. The one person in this transaction, I really do not like, not at all and I lost it. It literally became a yelling match for about 5 minutes. I told her to shut the fug up. I said, you ask me a question and I get 2 words out and you jump all over me. Either let me talk or......... and she jumps all over me. I walked away, got in my truck and went back to the shop. The alright partner came by yesterday late afternoon and apologized. I told her that's the first time, since I was a kid that I acted like that. She said, it's not your fault. I'm actually afraid of my own partner and don't know how to get out of our partnership. She's doing this to everyone I know and we're only open for 2 days.

So, at least I know I was not being unfair.

 

[Stacey K]

Well, it hit...... and it hit them hard. Just put up a sign, designed by the client who didn't listen to anything I said. They insisted it would be fine. I told them different. Now, they're b!tching about certain things not looking right. I said, do you remember me telling you this would happen if you didn't give me better artwork ?? No !!! She said, oh, now it's our artwork ?? I asked was there anything wrong with the cabinet ?? No. Was there anything wrong with how we installed it ?? No, not really. So, your only complaint is about the part you supplied ?? But you're the professional, you're not supposed to let this happen. When we look at all the other signs, they don't have this look. That's because the artwork was prepared properly. You didn't wanna do that or pay me to have it done. You knew better. They came back, we're the customer and for that kinda money, we should get what we want. You did. I wrote out you needed to cough up another $250 for this not to happen, but you said no. It was an itemized line on the quote. The one person in this transaction, I really do not like, not at all and I lost it. It literally became a yelling match for about 5 minutes. I told her to shut the fug up. I said, you ask me a question and I get 2 words out and you jump all over me. Either let me talk or......... and she jumps all over me. I walked away, got in my truck and went back to the shop. The alright partner came by yesterday late afternoon and apologized. I told her that's the first time, since I was a kid that I acted like that. She said, it's not your fault. I'm actually afraid of my own partner and don't know how to get out of our partnership. She's doing this to everyone I know and we're only open for 2 days.

So, at least I know I was not being unfair.

Only open for 2 days? Sounds like this operation will be finished by the end of the week!

 

[Eforcer]

I just want to know if others have this issue.
Customers come in and don't want to pay an artwork fee. Those get pricey. It seems like all of these customers have graphic artists in their family or have friends who are graphic artist. Turns out, they dabble in photoshop. I ask for vector files and they take a jpeg and export it into a pdf or eps file and voila, they think they did it. Turns out, when I get it and ungroup it, it's still just a jpeg.
I'm all about people "saving money" but I have had 2 customers TODAY ALONE who think they are awesome at creating artwork but when it comes to having to take the graphic apart, I can't do it because it's a jpeg.

What do you do when people present artwork that's not vector but are adamant that it is vector artwork?

I embrace these customers with a quote. I can not use your artwork as it is. I need it to look perfect, so you can be satisficed. You can have it vectored, or we can accommodate you with the proper format for X amount.

Most of my new clients are coming in with cell phone apps artwork. Inside I'm LMAO, but then I take that moment knowing that what ever they need, I'm adding more margins to their project Of course I've had people bounce, but I've also had some tell me they don't care, they just want it the way it is. I still won't do it. I tell them it's my reputation at stake. If I print these the way they are and someone may ask, where did you get that at? (With a smirk face) I don't that kind of reaction. I want them to ask with a smile, "Where Did You Get That At"? These comments, also provide potential clients with confidence that their merch will be in good hands.

JMO

Sign Up!

 

[Geneva Olson]

I embrace these customers with a quote. I can not use your artwork as it is. I need it to look perfect, so you can be satisficed. You can have it vectored, or we can accommodate you with the proper format for X amount.

Most of my new clients are coming in with cell phone apps artwork. Inside I'm LMAO, but then I take that moment knowing that what ever they need, I'm adding more margins to their project Of course I've had people bounce, but I've also had some tell me they don't care, they just want it the way it is. I still won't do it. I tell them it's my reputation at stake. If I print these the way they are and someone may ask, where did you get that at? (With a smirk face) I don't that kind of reaction. I want them to ask with a smile, "Where Did You Get That At"? These comments, also provide potential clients with confidence that their merch will be in good hands.

JMO

Sign Up!

I'm the same way when it comes to artwork. I don't want pixelated stuff going out the door.

 

[Geneva Olson]

Well, it hit...... and it hit them hard. Just put up a sign, designed by the client who didn't listen to anything I said. They insisted it would be fine. I told them different. Now, they're b!tching about certain things not looking right. I said, do you remember me telling you this would happen if you didn't give me better artwork ?? No !!! She said, oh, now it's our artwork ?? I asked was there anything wrong with the cabinet ?? No. Was there anything wrong with how we installed it ?? No, not really. So, your only complaint is about the part you supplied ?? But you're the professional, you're not supposed to let this happen. When we look at all the other signs, they don't have this look. That's because the artwork was prepared properly. You didn't wanna do that or pay me to have it done. You knew better. They came back, we're the customer and for that kinda money, we should get what we want. You did. I wrote out you needed to cough up another $250 for this not to happen, but you said no. It was an itemized line on the quote. The one person in this transaction, I really do not like, not at all and I lost it. It literally became a yelling match for about 5 minutes. I told her to shut the fug up. I said, you ask me a question and I get 2 words out and you jump all over me. Either let me talk or......... and she jumps all over me. I walked away, got in my truck and went back to the shop. The alright partner came by yesterday late afternoon and apologized. I told her that's the first time, since I was a kid that I acted like that. She said, it's not your fault. I'm actually afraid of my own partner and don't know how to get out of our partnership. She's doing this to everyone I know and we're only open for 2 days.

So, at least I know I was not being unfair.

well that business won't last.

 

[ProSignTN]

It's really pretty simple, just tell them it is not vector artwork regardless of the file extension and they will need to submit acceptable artwork if they don't want to pay for it. If they don't want to believe me so be it, it's really not the type of customer I want. Some people will just not listen and they are not the type I want to work with. And then if they are being that cheap then they are probably not going to like the price of the final product and want it cheaper. Call it a day and move on. Let them go to facebook marketplace and get a crafter with a cricut to make their stuff for $5.

The other way around this is including your artwork fee in your total cost so the customer doesn't see a line item. Everything I quote has 1 hour of artwork worked into it. If they provide adequate artwork great, if not then just go ahead and recreate it.

It's kinda like an amateur electrician hooking you up to 120v with only one wire. We are professionals, we know what we are doing. Do it .... or get out.

 

[CJ-NYC]

The worst is some of these new SaaS vector programs, like Canva -- whew, these can suck. Yes, it will output as a vectorized PDF but its all broken out in clipped paths and objects, it's a mess. Basically anyone with a subscription to Adobe CC can claim they are a designer, but it is not necessarily the case. Second the Ignition outsourcing mentioned earlier in the thread. A lot of times for a very nominal fee substandard crap art can be cleaned up. Asking the client to go back and 'find' the original vector artwork that was clearly designed at some point will mean either losing the job or waiting months for them to get their sh!t together.

 

[Stacey K]

The worst is some of these new SaaS vector programs, like Canva -- whew, these can suck. Yes, it will output as a vectorized PDF but its all broken out in clipped paths and objects, it's a mess. Basically anyone with a subscription to Adobe CC can claim they are a designer, but it is not necessarily the case. Second the Ignition outsourcing mentioned earlier in the thread. A lot of times for a very nominal fee substandard crap art can be cleaned up. Asking the client to go back and 'find' the original vector artwork that was clearly designed at some point will mean either losing the job or waiting months for them to get their sh!t together.

I agree! Ignition charges $15 for most vectors, no sense in spending time begging - you can tell right away if they know they have the original or if they don't. Even at a low labor rate of $60 an hour paying $15 when it would take 30 minutes, you just saved 30 minutes of time which just made you $15 - not including the time chasing down artwork which can be another 30 minutes of emails, texts, calls, etc. Even if you charge the customer nothing or $15 or $30, you are still far further ahead! Time is money.

 

[joshGN]

VectorDoctor....end of post...

Submit your crap file, get back an amazing file, in less than a day....for a nominal fee!

Ive never had a file cost more than $20 from him.

Charge the client 3x the cost for sending an email to him and move on with your life...

 

[bob]

Are you a sign maker or a dilettante passing through on your way to something else? To a real live sign maker making a sign involves laying out the sign. It's part of the job, you don't charge separately for it. It's no different doing it in pencil/charcoal/whatever right on the substrate or doing it with a computer. Client contributions usually referred to as 'nephew art', are treated as sketches and nothing more.

 

[Bobby H]

Well, it hit...... and it hit them hard. Just put up a sign, designed by the client who didn't listen to anything I said. They insisted it would be fine. I told them different. Now, they're b!tching about certain things not looking right. I said, do you remember me telling you this would happen if you didn't give me better artwork ?? No !!! She said, oh, now it's our artwork ??

When a client forces us to use artwork provided by them that is badly compromised we will force them to sign a waiver prior to production. The waiver is written proof they were warned up front about technical issues with their artwork.

The worst is some of these new SaaS vector programs, like Canva -- whew, these can suck. Yes, it will output as a vectorized PDF but its all broken out in clipped paths and objects, it's a mess. Basically anyone with a subscription to Adobe CC can claim they are a designer, but it is not necessarily the case.

Fake designers have been a problem going back 30+ years to when the graphic design industry shifted from analog production methods to digital.

One of the first selling points with computer graphics software: the applications would allow anyone to do the work rather than those pesky, high-priced "professionals" with their degrees and other snotty nonsense. The firm would save a fortune letting the secretary do the layout work instead, and the computers would get the work done faster!

Back when graphic design was done via paste-up boards, darkrooms, etc any projects required some up front planning, various kinds of acquired technical skills and discipline to complete. Computers allowed much of that to be thrown right out the window. With computers, anyone can be an artist! Unfortunately the graphic design field in general has been overrun by a lot of amateurs since then. There is a LOT of terrible quality design coming from people who get paid full time to do that sort of work. And the whole anyone can be an artist thing has pushed down wage scales. That is causing some people who do have talent to leave the field and find better paying jobs doing something completely different.

In the early days of "desktop publishing" many logos were pieces of vector-based artwork. I kind of blame the mid-late 1990's boom in Internet web design for the plague of pixel-based "logos" we've had to endure ever since. Amateurs were getting hold of pirated versions of Photoshop and using it to pass themselves off as designers. The situation is hardly any better today, even though there is a variety of free/cheap vector-based drawing tools on the market, even for portable devices like the iPad. Most people just can't (or won't) understand the difference between pixel-based and vector-based artwork.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

When a client forces us to use artwork provided by them that is badly compromised we will force them to sign a waiver prior to production. The waiver is written proof they were warned up front about technical issues with their artwork.



Fake designers have been a problem going back 30+ years to when the graphic design industry shifted from analog production methods to digital.

One of the first selling points with computer graphics software: the applications would allow anyone to do the work rather than those pesky, high-priced "professionals" with their degrees and other snotty nonsense. The firm would save a fortune letting the secretary do the layout work instead, and the computers would get the work done faster!

Back when graphic design was done via paste-up boards, darkrooms, etc any projects required some up front planning, various kinds of acquired technical skills and discipline to complete. Computers allowed much of that to be thrown right out the window. With computers, anyone can be an artist! Unfortunately the graphic design field in general has been overrun by a lot of amateurs since then. There is a LOT of terrible quality design coming from people who get paid full time to do that sort of work. And the whole anyone can be an artist thing has pushed down wage scales. That is causing some people who do have talent to leave the field and find better paying jobs doing something completely different.

In the early days of "desktop publishing" many logos were pieces of vector-based artwork. I kind of blame the mid-late 1990's boom in Internet web design for the plague of pixel-based "logos" we've had to endure ever since. Amateurs were getting hold of pirated versions of Photoshop and using it to pass themselves off as designers. The situation is hardly any better today, even though there is a variety of free/cheap vector-based drawing tools on the market, even for portable devices like the iPad. Most people just can't (or won't) understand the difference between pixel-based and vector-based artwork.

It's all relative. Not every sign painter was some sort of art genius, plenty of them sucked just the same. Everyone seems to get amnesia when looking back in time. There are a lot more people designing now but there also seems to be a lot more signs and graphics related crap being made than there was 20-30 years ago too.

 

[Bobby H]

It's all relative. Not every sign painter was some sort of art genius, plenty of them sucked just the same. Everyone seems to get amnesia when looking back in time. There are a lot more people designing now but there also seems to be a lot more signs and graphics related crap being made than there was 20-30 years ago too.

My comments about fake designers apply to the entire graphic design industry.

Regarding the sign industry niche, yes, there were bad sign painters and craftsmen back in the analog days. There's the old cliché of the screw-up, drunk sign painter. However, back then no one tried getting such jobs without having some prerequisite skills and training. Some shops had apprenticeships back then. Analog sign jobs did not have an image of being easy to the general public. Sketches were hand-drawn/drafted. Signs were painted, carved or fabricated by hand. There was no undo button.

Today all it takes to get a job designing signs at a sign shop is working eyes and fingers. The computers are really the thing doing the work, right? Not every sign company has such low hiring standards. But plenty of them do. It's clearly evident with a bunch of the $#!+ that's littering the landscape.

 

[Geneva Olson]

Are you a sign maker or a dilettante passing through on your way to something else? To a real live sign maker making a sign involves laying out the sign. It's part of the job, you don't charge separately for it. It's no different doing it in pencil/charcoal/whatever right on the substrate or doing it with a computer. Client contributions usually referred to as 'nephew art', are treated as sketches and nothing more.

I think there's a difference of opinion here. Do you charge set up fees or art fees? And it's very different from charcoal and pencil. I'm not an artist. I'm a sign shop. I have tools for the trade. I charge a shop fee. I'm a kind person, and I will help them along the way, but I'm not the one with the finished product. The customer has to be satisfied with the work that I provided them. I need their buy in and their approval. If that doesn't come, then I don't have a business. When a client sends me a sketch, I tell them they can either go to fivver or I can do it for a fee with 3 revisions. I don't want to do the artwork. It's time consuming. I have a graphic artist on staff and several of us are very savvy with corel draw, but time=money. I'm not wasting my time on someone's artwork when that's what is between me and making a sign =the money.

 

[bob]

I think there's a difference of opinion here. Do you charge set up fees or art fees? And it's very different from charcoal and pencil. I'm not an artist. I'm a sign shop. I have tools for the trade. I charge a shop fee. I'm a kind person, and I will help them along the way, but I'm not the one with the finished product. The customer has to be satisfied with the work that I provided them. I need their buy in and their approval. If that doesn't come, then I don't have a business. When a client sends me a sketch, I tell them they can either go to fivver or I can do it for a fee with 3 revisions. I don't want to do the artwork. It's time consuming. I have a graphic artist on staff and several of us are very savvy with corel draw, but time=money. I'm not wasting my time on someone's artwork when that's what is between me and making a sign =the money.

As I suspected, a dilettante. The client [Dairy Queen has 'customers'] doesn't have to be in love with it, it just has to pay for it. Nonetheless,I have clients that I just know that we're going to go back and forth an ungodly number of times. I have clients that are delighted with whatever I give them. I have clients that are somewhere in the middle. My prices are such that they accommodate the middle-of-the-road bunch. It all balances out. I do not, ever, charge someone to layout a sign. Ever. I charge for a sign, whatever that takes. Everyone pays the same for a sign of a particular configuration, regardless of the copy. My net is probably on the high side for sign-making. Go figure.

 

[kcollinsdesign]

Advanced T-shirts makes a series of plugins for Corel that may work for you. Also you can generally get anything vectorized for $5 - $10 by finding someone on Fivver (very easy and usually very fast). Most of the time I just end up doing it myself (if it takes me less than 10 minutes I usually don't charge).

The problem I see here is not vectorizing (solved long ago), but the ease in which clients can create their own art. It is true that back in the day these duties were usually relegated to an artist employed by the shop (skills varied widely). Today, if you are running a commercial shop, you just need to take a deep breath and accept what the client gives you. Convincing them that their art sucks will either irritate them or cause you endless grief coming up with proof after proof. Nobody charges for design (except for a few of us cantakerous old luddites on this forum).

I was fortunate to come up in a time when great artwork was sought after, and a t-shirt or sign business could be built on your reputation as an artist. Today, the process has been democratized and commoditized. Price and speed are the motivating factors. You have to decide if you want to be a business or an artist. If you want to be an artist the competition for paying jobs is intense; you will likely have better success following your own muse, and if somebody likes it they might buy it. Becoming an artist is a great route if financial concerns are secondary, but if you need to put food on the table it could be rough!

 

[Geneva Olson]

Advanced T-shirts makes a series of plugins for Corel that may work for you. Also you can generally get anything vectorized for $5 - $10 by finding someone on Fivver (very easy and usually very fast). Most of the time I just end up doing it myself (if it takes me less than 10 minutes I usually don't charge).

The problem I see here is not vectorizing (solved long ago), but the ease in which clients can create their own art. It is true that back in the day these duties were usually relegated to an artist employed by the shop (skills varied widely). Today, if you are running a commercial shop, you just need to take a deep breath and accept what the client gives you. Convincing them that their art sucks will either irritate them or cause you endless grief coming up with proof after proof. Nobody charges for design (except for a few of us cantakerous old luddites on this forum).

I was fortunate to come up in a time when great artwork was sought after, and a t-shirt or sign business could be built on your reputation as an artist. Today, the process has been democratized and commoditized. Price and speed are the motivating factors. You have to decide if you want to be a business or an artist. If you want to be an artist the competition for paying jobs is intense; you will likely have better success following your own muse, and if somebody likes it they might buy it. Becoming an artist is a great route if financial concerns are secondary, but if you need to put food on the table it could be rough!

Well, what's happened in the tshirt industry is cricut....Cricut came on the scene for scrapbooking years ago. When the scrapbooking because obsolete, the cricut people decided to sell it as a vinyl cutter..and it worked. All these lovely stay at home moms decided to make a little side business. They bought heat presses and a new side hustle was made.
I have to beg to differ on the design part. We ALWAYS charge an art fee and it's based on complexity.

 

[Vinyl slayer]

Well, what's happened in the tshirt industry is cricut....

T-shirts and Police car graphics.

 

[Terry01]

But, but, but I saw it on the internet and it looked cool...Yeah whatever