Low quality sign shops here in maine

[Jamie0075]

I just drove by the sign !! Had to stop!

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

View attachment 134878 I just drove by the sign !! Had to stop!

Looks like dirt resistant paint and calendared vinyl.

 

[spectrum maine]

I have been in the sign business in maine & new hampshire for 30 + years. Lately signs are percieved as a commodity rather than art or craft.
We have a local franchise shop that has made it 100% clear that they will do it cheaper. Their favorite sales tactic is "we will do it for 10% less then the competition" (there goes the profit) Instead of trying to upsell a customer to a nice carved sign they will sell them a digital print on alumilite.
No fancy design, just vinyl slingers. Totally ruined the fancy truck market.
What i used to get 25 years ago for a set if truck doors, i struggle to get now. I dont understand it. Has the price of electricity, vinyl, gas, good help or rent gone down? This franchise shop has changed owners numerous times & is currently for sale. The reason- NO PROFIT. I still use matthews paint on my carved signs & they last over 20 years. My last job the architect called out Benjamin Moore paint on a sign system & i refused to use it. 2 gallons of matthews was almost $500. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!. enough of this rant.....Im gonna go hand letter an awning & an old fire truck.

 

[spectrum maine]

Ogunquit, Kennebunk Port, that area has some awesome signs. Bangor, Rumford, Machias and all the country named towns like Mexico, not so much.

There is a guy in Rumford that is one of the best truck letterer i have ever seen. Definately not a low price shop. check him out - erik designs

 

[JR's]

you cant win a race to the bottom.

 

[Jamie0075]

Lmao

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

I have been in the sign business in maine & new hampshire for 30 + years. Lately signs are percieved as a commodity rather than art or craft.
We have a local franchise shop that has made it 100% clear that they will do it cheaper. Their favorite sales tactic is "we will do it for 10% less then the competition" (there goes the profit) Instead of trying to upsell a customer to a nice carved sign they will sell them a digital print on alumilite.
No fancy design, just vinyl slingers. Totally ruined the fancy truck market.
What i used to get 25 years ago for a set if truck doors, i struggle to get now. I dont understand it. Has the price of electricity, vinyl, gas, good help or rent gone down? This franchise shop has changed owners numerous times & is currently for sale. The reason- NO PROFIT. I still use matthews paint on my carved signs & they last over 20 years. My last job the architect called out Benjamin Moore paint on a sign system & i refused to use it. 2 gallons of matthews was almost $500. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!. enough of this rant.....Im gonna go hand letter an awning & an old fire truck.

I duno if that's worse or having a reputable, long-time GOOD sign-designing company who constantly underbids and undercharges for all their good work...I don't know if he even realizes how low he is

 

[spectrum maine]

I try to get at least time + 2-3x materials. Without markup you are just treading water. Bottom feeders just work to keep the lights on.This was predicted when the vinyl cutter came along. it took about 20-25 years though.

 

[ChicagoGraphics]

There's bad quality everywhere. Sometimes it's justified...

We've sent out some signs with bad banding on them like the op before. Our head was bad, and we couldn't get a replacement for a week... Some customers didnt want to wait, and said to just print it. Their reasoning was if your more than 2 ft away, you don't even notice it. And the purpose of a sign is to draw you in from far away... So to them it did the job.


I was just in china for a few weeks - every, and I mean every sign had banding or fuzzy text, or was a small image blown up about 800% more than it should be. Every decal, every sign I saw was slapped on.. didn't even try to get it straight, they just slapped it on. Don't even get me started on the English... 75% of the signs that had English, the letters were so badly aligned .I don't even know how.... Some letters would align to the top of others, some to the bottom... Some just in the middle... Etc.

I was amazed at how bad the quality was... But then I realized it gets the job done... And in 1/10 as much effort as we put into doing it properly.

I throw stuff away when I see banding all the time... If I accidently weed a letter and stretch it, or place it down not perfectly... I'll recut the letter, or the whole thing if I need to... I've ripped off full panels because of small tears, slight crookedness, or even contamination in a spot no one would ever see.

When it's MY work I want it to be perfect... When it's someone else's I don't care.

There's a lot of utility wraps around, the companies do them for half the price our company does them for. Some literally are 6" too short, have multiple joins on all sides... And we're talking a 30-40" wide box, no reason for it.

A lot of companies come back to us after getting that quality of work done for half the price.... So it doesn't bother us. Ugly signs, and shoddy work is part of.the business, it's a part of every business...

What

There's bad quality everywhere. Sometimes it's justified...

We've sent out some signs with bad banding on them like the op before. Our head was bad, and we couldn't get a replacement for a week... Some customers didnt want to wait, and said to just print it. Their reasoning was if your more than 2 ft away, you don't even notice it. And the purpose of a sign is to draw you in from far away... So to them it did the job.


I was just in china for a few weeks - every, and I mean every sign had banding or fuzzy text, or was a small image blown up about 800% more than it should be. Every decal, every sign I saw was slapped on.. didn't even try to get it straight, they just slapped it on. Don't even get me started on the English... 75% of the signs that had English, the letters were so badly aligned .I don't even know how.... Some letters would align to the top of others, some to the bottom... Some just in the middle... Etc.

I was amazed at how bad the quality was... But then I realized it gets the job done... And in 1/10 as much effort as we put into doing it properly.

I throw stuff away when I see banding all the time... If I accidently weed a letter and stretch it, or place it down not perfectly... I'll recut the letter, or the whole thing if I need to... I've ripped off full panels because of small tears, slight crookedness, or even contamination in a spot no one would ever see.

When it's MY work I want it to be perfect... When it's someone else's I don't care.

There's a lot of utility wraps around, the companies do them for half the price our company does them for. Some literally are 6" too short, have multiple joins on all sides... And we're talking a 30-40" wide box, no reason for it.

A lot of companies come back to us after getting that quality of work done for half the price.... So it doesn't bother us. Ugly signs, and shoddy work is part of.the business, it's a part of every business...

What part of China were you in? I live.in Shenzhen now and most of the work here is awesome unless the customer has their employees instal it then its a different story. You gotta love the Chinglish signs, I have taken pictures of a lot of them, they just dont care.

 

[Gino]

Couldnt do as many as you, as I dont have that much free time, but i DO..... totally agree withat you.

 

[signman315]

There's bad quality everywhere. Sometimes it's justified...

We've sent out some signs with bad banding on them like the op before. Our head was bad, and we couldn't get a replacement for a week... Some customers didnt want to wait, and said to just print it. Their reasoning was if your more than 2 ft away, you don't even notice it. And the purpose of a sign is to draw you in from far away... So to them it did the job.


I was just in china for a few weeks - every, and I mean every sign had banding or fuzzy text, or was a small image blown up about 800% more than it should be. Every decal, every sign I saw was slapped on.. didn't even try to get it straight, they just slapped it on. Don't even get me started on the English... 75% of the signs that had English, the letters were so badly aligned .I don't even know how.... Some letters would align to the top of others, some to the bottom... Some just in the middle... Etc.

I was amazed at how bad the quality was... But then I realized it gets the job done... And in 1/10 as much effort as we put into doing it properly.

I throw stuff away when I see banding all the time... If I accidently weed a letter and stretch it, or place it down not perfectly... I'll recut the letter, or the whole thing if I need to... I've ripped off full panels because of small tears, slight crookedness, or even contamination in a spot no one would ever see.

When it's MY work I want it to be perfect... When it's someone else's I don't care.

There's a lot of utility wraps around, the companies do them for half the price our company does them for. Some literally are 6" too short, have multiple joins on all sides... And we're talking a 30-40" wide box, no reason for it.

A lot of companies come back to us after getting that quality of work done for half the price.... So it doesn't bother us. Ugly signs, and shoddy work is part of.the business, it's a part of every business...

Agreed! You have to take the time to know your customers. Some customers actually prefer lower quality work in favor of price and fast turnaround. While other customers want museum quality work regardless of the cost/time. To take the same attitude for every project is a bit belligerent and amateur if you ask me. I've sent photos to customers showing a small flaw i.e. dust under the laminate or a small white spot in the print and the response is inevitably "what are we looking at here, where's the flaw?" or "why are you wasting my time with this, it's fine". So I always take the time to understand my client's expectations and their standard of quality. Then I provide the best quality possible within those constraints. So it's that old saying "price, quality, and speed...the customer picks two and the third is up to me" if they want a good price and fast turnaround then quality is up to me. Or if they want a good price and excellent quality then i get to determine the turnaround time and so on. So to work blindly and not consider your customers preferences is simply amateur and a lack of experience. I once took a class for color management in printing environments, the teacher passed around two sample prints...one printed at twice the speed as the other. While the faster print was obviously lower quality it was still fully acceptable even at close range, and that's viewed through the eyes of a room full of professionals. Now think about your average viewer, they don't have the "eye" that a good sign maker has....so they don't even see the flaws that we see...further once you point the flaws out they don't even care. It's what I call "shop goggles"....your nose is against the work in your shop and your "shop goggles" make you worry about every little flaw/issue when you are literally wasting your shop's and customer's time by worrying about it. And of course there's always a few exceptions, if the client wants museum quality work then you bet your booty i'm reprinting it with even the slightest flaw, but that's because I understand my client's needs...

 

[D.CAL MARKET]

I have been in the sign business in maine & new hampshire for 30 + years. Lately signs are percieved as a commodity rather than art or craft.
We have a local franchise shop that has made it 100% clear that they will do it cheaper. Their favorite sales tactic is "we will do it for 10% less then the competition" (there goes the profit) Instead of trying to upsell a customer to a nice carved sign they will sell them a digital print on alumilite.
No fancy design, just vinyl slingers. Totally ruined the fancy truck market.
What i used to get 25 years ago for a set if truck doors, i struggle to get now. I dont understand it. Has the price of electricity, vinyl, gas, good help or rent gone down? This franchise shop has changed owners numerous times & is currently for sale. The reason- NO PROFIT. I still use matthews paint on my carved signs & they last over 20 years. My last job the architect called out Benjamin Moore paint on a sign system & i refused to use it. 2 gallons of matthews was almost $500. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!. enough of this rant.....Im gonna go hand letter an awning & an old fire truck.

 

[ams]

Yep it's everywhere, but hey means more business for you.

 

[James Burke]

I dont know what up with the arrow though

The arrow is part of the new ADA initiative for tactile road signage. It all started with those braille center lines on the road.


JB

 

[bmt Promotions]

I guess it depends on where in Maine you are and the type of signs being made. The reflective on wood I've seen done here too.