Do you make/improve designs for customers or only take 100% ready to print files ?

[Printer101]

every single person:
" can you please turn this 3"x3" logo into 22 " wall decal ".
Do you trace it in illustrator or send them to find a designer, or charge them design fee ?
I have so many questions. Customers send over the shittiest jpgs and then I have to make it into a diamond somehow.
How exactly does it work. I'm only venting to you guys . I help all my customers and being nice. But I'm tired of remaking their "art " in illustrator.

 

[Solventinkjet]

The old joke is, if you charge them to recreate art so that it can be enlarged, they will magically find the print ready file they had all along!

 

[myront]

Ha, deal with it everyday. Here lately been getting a lot of files designed in Canva and Canvas. Both programs have the ability to save as pdf but no one does. I have to explain to them why we're not printing their file.
Me: "Do you have the file in vector format i.e. pdf, eps, ai, MS Powerpoint, MS Word?"
Client: "Sure how's this?
Me: "You literally just inserted the jpg to a MS Word then save as pdf or used photoshop. That's not how it works."

Minor changes we'll do but, yeah, mention an art fee and they come up with something.

 

[Gino]

Just had a woman ask if she could have a set of 24" x 60" magnetics and she sent me their logo. It was a jpeg about 1/2" square. She finally agreed to use just words, after I told her how much it would cost her to re-create it. Oh...... and she wants them tuesday by lunch.

 

[gnubler]

This has been going on for eternity. Back in the old days customer would fax over a fuzzy logo or whatever and want it printed. Now with Canva, Fiverr, and online design, graphic design services have been almost completely devalued and I usually bundle the estimated cost into my quotes so the customer can't pick it apart. I'm tired of explaining how it works, not worth the effort anymore.

 

[Boudica]

every single person:
" can you please turn this 3"x3" logo into 22 " wall decal ".
Do you trace it in illustrator or send them to find a designer, or charge them design fee ?
I have so many questions. Customers send over the shittiest jpgs and then I have to make it into a diamond somehow.
How exactly does it work. I'm only venting to you guys . I help all my customers and being nice. But I'm tired of remaking their "art " in illustrator.

Honestly... it depends on the customer, and the project. if it will make us money, or they are a good long standing customer - I'll just fix the problem. If it's a one-off-pita-job-that-will-loose-money... send it back.

 

[Printer101]

Ha, deal with it everyday. Here lately been getting a lot of files designed in Canva and Canvas. Both programs have the ability to save as pdf but no one does. I have to explain to them why we're not printing their file.
Me: "Do you have the file in vector format i.e. pdf, eps, ai, MS Powerpoint, MS Word?"
Client: "Sure how's this?
Me: "You literally just inserted the jpg to a MS Word then save as pdf or used photoshop. That's not how it works."

Minor changes we'll do but, yeah, mention an art fee and they come up with something.

Pdf and vector are extra and only comes with paid canva account. I'm thinking to have my own paid canva account. Just to download customers logos in vector .

 

[Billct2]

Here's a close up of what it will look like that big on a print, if you don't want that cr*ap then I will needa vecror pdf or high rs image file.
After they send the same file exported as a pdf, Sorry that's not how it works.
It will be $$ to recreate it.

 

[pro-UP]

Ha, deal with it everyday. Here lately been getting a lot of files designed in Canva and Canvas. Both programs have the ability to save as pdf but no one does. I have to explain to them why we're not printing their file.
Me: "Do you have the file in vector format i.e. pdf, eps, ai, MS Powerpoint, MS Word?"
Client: "Sure how's this?
Me: "You literally just inserted the jpg to a MS Word then save as pdf or used photoshop. That's not how it works."

Minor changes we'll do but, yeah, mention an art fee and they come up with something.

That is funny because we have encountered that in the past. Generally, we do not do designs. We work with sign companies and they bring us their designs (we do the data and submittal packages). I like Canva to use personally for projects where I don't want to bother a designer and just for meeting presentations. It makes sense that more people will use it to make their own sign designs.

 

[Pauly]

It depends on your business.

We're a print only shop. We dont touch peoples files. only time is if we need to check and fix spot channels for cut paths and white ink. But we're building some automations around it to solve those issues.

 

[MiguelGonzalez]

Facing same problem every damn day, some cheap designer would design their stuff even logos on Photoshop and save it as low quality jpeg and png and the client proceeds to send them to me through WhatsApp which compressed everything. When i told them about the extra charge for retouch they'd say that crapy image is good enough. If they say so off to the printer it goes.

 

[visual800]

we have discussed this so many time and YES it gets worse every year. If it a good job I will recreate their logo to do my work BUT if they want my re-creation they are going to pay out of the ass! nd when I send them a quote they get the same crappy resolution jpeg they sent me BUT I let them know I did it in vector format

Most of the time their logo can be recreated as most of them are very simple and you can figure out the fonts. It makes me wonder if all the se folks are using free programs tht only allows them to have a jpeg

 

[hybriddesign]

we probably work/adjust/improve on 75% of the jobs we take but most of our clients are referral or long standing customers (we don’t have much of a website so if they got our contact it was likely given to them by another customer). We charge accordingly and do our best to upsell add ons. We now send most of our logo redraws our and just tell them up front it’s $30-60 to get the logo redone if your file is no good. We barely mark it up and just try to get it redone as fast as possible to move the job along.

Hoping to launch a site in the next few weeks with online ordering and designing and hoping that most jobs coming in that way don’t need art… we’ll see

 

[caribmike]

I'm always afraid that, if I turn down a job that needs design, the customer will go to a designer who will then scoop the print job from me and send it to one of their outsource contacts. I'll admit that I do make great money with graphic design work.

 

[Scotchbrite]

If it needs a lot of work, we charge but we try to keep the expense minimal. If it's something simple like a specific font, I'll just do it.