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I remember..

Notarealsignguy

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
Gino said:
I rememebr when none of this sh!t was even a dream. It took hand/eye coordination and some talent, be it raw or cultivated. The problems of today are ALL built-in obsolescence. It's silly to see what this industry has turned into. Ya can't find paint that'll cover worth a sh!t. Ya can't find a printer that will give ya more than a few years of faithful use. Ya can't find decent employees and if ya can, they aren't really sign people. Ya can't find anyone who agrees with another person on terminology. Ya can't find anyone who can draw a stick figure, let alone do any calculations in their head without a computer.

Can anyone here draw an oval with out tracing it or producing it on a plotter ??
Can anyone here mix colors together to match some specific color ??
Does anyone here understand the color wheel ??
Does anyone know how to build basic elements without looking it up on the internet ??
Can anyone do just about anything without the internet ??
Who knows how to use a scale ruler ??
Click to expand...
Let's be honest here, fractions are tricky. That's why they make adjustable wrenches.
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
No, just all the hacks in it lately.

Duh, what font is this ??
Duh, my vinyl won't stick, what cheap stuff can I use ??
Duh, how to I tape my sign to a wall ??
Duh, why do I need a permit ??
Duh, where is the cheapest place I can buy supplies ??
Duh, who knows how to paint a wall ??
What's paint??
 
B

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
Hacks, "bottom feeders," amateurs, etc have come and gone from the sign industry for decades. Really, once the computers arrived so did people with little if any ability to draw and paint by hand. It's the whole syndrome of people thinking the computers are creating the artwork, not the person using the computer. Prior to so many things in the graphics industry being computerized it took both a good bit of natural talent plus real formal training to get anything done.

Once computer systems were installed businesses started hiring people who were entirely self taught rather than people who took classes in page layout, color theory, agency & studio skills, etc. The self taught people worked for less money.

In more recent years the situation has worsened a bit by a growth in customer provided artwork. Now the self-taught amateurs don't even work for a sign company. We are another step along in a race to the bottom. Now everybody thinks he's a f***king artist. I've seen a growth in problem-child files from clients who don't even have a basic grasp of simple geometry, much less understanding the difference between pixels and vectors. But they want all the glory of doing the design work themselves and there is hell to pay if you want to bring up technical problems with their precious creation. It's a real PITA to work around badly design, poorly conceived client artwork in a sign project. I feel like I'm almost literally trying to polish a turd.

At least some things are getting better. Computing hardware has improved by some big leaps and bounds in recent years. My old desktop PC with its traditional SATA hard disc and 3rd Gen Core i7 CPU takes what seems like several minutes to boot fully. CorelDRAW 2021 can take over 3 minutes to launch on this old system. My new Alienware X17 has a NVMe SSD for its hard drive. The thing fully boots in a few seconds, as do the applications. I just ordered a second SSD for it, a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB Gen4 unit for the SSD 2 drive bay. It will be easy to install and will take hardly any time at all to set up in Windows 10.
 
Texas_Signmaker

Texas_Signmaker

Very Active Signmaker
Bobby H said:
Hacks, "bottom feeders," amateurs, etc have come and gone from the sign industry for decades. Really, once the computers arrived so did people with little if any ability to draw and paint by hand. It's the whole syndrome of people thinking the computers are creating the artwork, not the person using the computer. Prior to so many things in the graphics industry being computerized it took both a good bit of natural talent plus real formal training to get anything done.

Once computer systems were installed businesses started hiring people who were entirely self taught rather than people who took classes in page layout, color theory, agency & studio skills, etc. The self taught people worked for less money.

In more recent years the situation has worsened a bit by a growth in customer provided artwork. Now the self-taught amateurs don't even work for a sign company. We are another step along in a race to the bottom. Now everybody thinks he's a f***king artist. I've seen a growth in problem-child files from clients who don't even have a basic grasp of simple geometry, much less understanding the difference between pixels and vectors. But they want all the glory of doing the design work themselves and there is hell to pay if you want to bring up technical problems with their precious creation. It's a real PITA to work around badly design, poorly conceived client artwork in a sign project. I feel like I'm almost literally trying to polish a turd.

At least some things are getting better. Computing hardware has improved by some big leaps and bounds in recent years. My old desktop PC with its traditional SATA hard disc and 3rd Gen Core i7 CPU takes what seems like several minutes to boot fully. CorelDRAW 2021 can take over 3 minutes to launch on this old system. My new Alienware X17 has a NVMe SSD for its hard drive. The thing fully boots in a few seconds, as do the applications. I just ordered a second SSD for it, a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB Gen4 unit for the SSD 2 drive bay. It will be easy to install and will take hardly any time at all to set up in Windows 10.
Click to expand...
With gig internet and core i7, We finally got to the point when you can click and instantly get what you want with no lag.
 
Johnny Best

Johnny Best

Active Member
I am sure all the Monks were pissed when Gutenberg came up with moveable type and the printing press. No more hand printed bibles.
 
B

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
It still required formal training and skills to use a printing press. Today we have people hopping onto computers with no idea what they're doing so they can make up their own chapters of the bible.

One symptom of how bad it is: over in Adobe's Illustrator users forum a couple days ago some clown there was griping how much Illustrator supposedly sucks because it didn't have a bunch of pre-built art in it. Apparently the user wanted some kind of "wizard" driven program to just churn out designs automatically. This guy's judgment was that Illustrator was only good if you know how to draw by hand. Geez.
 
Notarealsignguy

Notarealsignguy

Arial - it's almost helvetica
Back to the original topic, I still don't understand the mass appeal of these latex printers. So you can laminate same day, who cares? What is ironic is that half of the other forum posts are people complaining about being rushed.
 
balstestrat

balstestrat

Problem Solver
Notarealsignguy said:
Back to the original topic, I still don't understand the mass appeal of these latex printers. So you can laminate same day, who cares? What is ironic is that half of the other forum posts are people complaining about being rushed.
Click to expand...
Honestly quite a lot of people care and like it.
Simple question, do you want this now or tomorrow? I know your customer wants it last week but now is better than tomorrow.
 
M

MNT_Printhead

Working among the Corporate Lizard People
Johnny Best said:
Latex does not print fine copy from what I have seen but overall color is grea.
Click to expand...
I am able to get 6pt type to print okay, smooth gradients not so much.

I never had an issue laminating the same day with solvent and eco-sol. If I didn't have a show room and office connected to my shop I would be running solvent, but I inherited latex and had to spend $14k to prove eco-sol was safe in a past work situation.
 
B

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
I have no problem printing very fine or tiny copy with our two HP latex printers. The resolution of those printers is far sharper than the eco-solvent printer we previously used. One of our clients is a marijuana growing company that orders hundreds of pre-cut product labels at a time. Some of the lettering on these stickers is almost microscopic, yet it's still sharp and clearly legible. Lettering output by the old printer would start getting muddy and clumpy around the 6-8pt range.

We do alright with gradients. However, I tend to 'round-trip any of my Corel-generated artwork through Adobe Illustrator. Colors and gradients will get fine tuned there, particularly if positioning of the gradient is thrown off at all. If I feed an Illustrator-generated PDF into Onyx Thrive the gradients usually come out of the latex printers really smooth. I've seen some banding issues going from Corel straight to Thrive using Corel-generated EPS or PDF files
 
McDonald Signs

McDonald Signs

McDonald Signs & Graphics
I remember starting out in the 1980's at 15yrs old hand painting signs.....
I look back on it now and think it was the good ole days but in reality it was alot of hard work and dangerous working on old scaffolding and wood walkboards for the guy I worked for and hard to produce large volumes of work.
Now I can do a large volume of work and print it myself on my own printer or cutter or sub it out and have the signs banners or decals etc at my door in 3 days or so and install with my own Genie lift.
Technology has been really good in that way.
But I do think it was alot simpler back then.....before I new what a computer was lol
 
gnubler

gnubler

Active Member
James Burke said:
I long for a hypothetical world-wide power outage that lasts for one month. I'm sure the narrative would be totally different once we all gathered again. Our grit, creativity and concern for humankind would never be the same....and hopefully for the better.
Click to expand...
A little hardship would do humanity a huge favor...flush out the weak. How long until the Twitter/Snappygram crowd began spilling blood after their phones became useless? The phones are currently their brains.
 
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