WildWestDesigns
Active Member
When I see that, I do get leary about just how on the up and up it is. Deep slashes on new stuff, I do get leary. What's the catch type of thing.
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Please convert all fonts when creating your pdf's
- Thread starter myront
- Start date
When I see that, I do get leary about just how on the up and up it is. Deep slashes on new stuff, I do get leary. What's the catch type of thing.
There is no catch to those introductory discounts at MyFonts. They're legal and usually directed by the type foundry releasing the new type family in order to juice its popularity. Other sites like FontShop and Fonts.com do the same thing with many new foundry releases. Sometimes if the discount deal expires at one online fonts store it might still be active on another site.
What a lot of BS. that hasn't really been a problem since the 90s, if you know your software.
kcollinsdesign
Old member
Most graphic designers are not familiar with the production requirements of sign making. Add to that, many designers are either reluctant or, due to policy, cannot release their source files. Most competent design firms will sell their client the required licensing, and are generally willing to provide the requested art files (for a fee, of course).
I seldom have problems with designers. It is business owners, or their staff, that present challenges. Many are unwilling to disclose who did their design, for fear of either licensing infraction or being charged a fee (both for additional licensing and file conversion). History has taught them that sign companies will convert their file for free, and generally without the knowledge of the original designer and rights holder.
I will convert a file, but with a disclaimer that my work cannot be used for any un-licensed or illegal purpose. I also charge appropriately.
I seldom have problems with designers. It is business owners, or their staff, that present challenges. Many are unwilling to disclose who did their design, for fear of either licensing infraction or being charged a fee (both for additional licensing and file conversion). History has taught them that sign companies will convert their file for free, and generally without the knowledge of the original designer and rights holder.
I will convert a file, but with a disclaimer that my work cannot be used for any un-licensed or illegal purpose. I also charge appropriately.
shoresigns
New Member
Learn to use your Adobe software. You can easily flatten transparencies or outline fonts in a PDF with Illustrator or Acrobat. I don't know why you would pester your clients and their designers for something you can easily do yourself in under a minute.
myront
Dammit, make it faster!!
You're missing the point of my original post. Yes, I can get around pdf files without the fonts converted but it is and always will be an extra step. Time is money. If I do a workaround all day long it adds up to an hour or days to my time. I simply want to TEACH designers out there to make files COMPLETELY print ready and CROSS PLATFORM COMPATIBLE.
Not even gonna get into the conflicting size issues...
Not even gonna get into the conflicting size issues...
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
Sometimes yes, sometimes no with regard to being able to fix some things that are done in a design.
And that's where we would have to charge for it.
I typically dislike doing that in files as inevitably something else goes wrong. As I didn't "build" the file, I don't know all of it's "quirks". Sometimes I catch those things, sometimes I don't. That can very well affect the end product.
Now, the classic come back is "But "you're" the expert. Handle it, handle it." If I have to do more prep work, I do charge for it, as time is money. Sometimes it's quicker to build it from scratch then to try to fix it.
What really gets me though is the "designers" that say "that everything is to be used "as is", if they can't do that, go somewhere else." That to me is when the designer should know production that their design is going to be used for (at least the typical production that it is used in most instances).
petepaz
New Member
exactly, if you are charging a separate design or set up charge then fine you can fix it but if you priced a job to them based on receiving print ready artwork (and that should also be discussed ahead of time) then it's a problem.
It's not even experienced designers who present the most challenges, it's the DYIers using Paint, Publisher, etc. which now that Acrobat has become so ubiquitous to desktop publishing all have "Save as PDF" options.
Our approach is to do EVERYTHING under our internal power first to make a supplied file workable quickly and then if a designer is involved, we contact them, we don't act like PITAS and show some respect and generate some camaraderie. I've never had a designer who I've approached as a colleague or peer treat me with anything but mutual respect and helpfulness.
There is an element within our craft that holds animus towards graphic designers ( mostly from jealousy from what I've observed ) and when that attitude is projected, their hackles get raised.
Our approach is to do EVERYTHING under our internal power first to make a supplied file workable quickly and then if a designer is involved, we contact them, we don't act like PITAS and show some respect and generate some camaraderie. I've never had a designer who I've approached as a colleague or peer treat me with anything but mutual respect and helpfulness.
There is an element within our craft that holds animus towards graphic designers ( mostly from jealousy from what I've observed ) and when that attitude is projected, their hackles get raised.
myront
Dammit, make it faster!!
Not in my 23yr experience. Many "schooled" designers don't see sign designers as "real" Graphic Designers.We often get sign requests from the Graphic Design Instructor from a college. Very rarely are their files "ready to go". I just keep my mouth shut and press on....
There is no such thing as 100% foolproof, consistent anything in the world. Anecdotal evidence like my experience is equally subject to variables just like yours or anyone else's.
Are you sure that Instructor isn't sending you files that his students worked on?
kcollinsdesign
Old member
I always ask for permission to use art. If the client is a franchise or associated with the company, that permission is readily available. It gets a little trickier with custom design work done by smaller design firms, but in most cases the client can track them down. Where it gets hard is when somebody is trying to deceive somebody (not paying license fees, logo use violations, stealing copyrighted material, etc.). In those cases I have to go by my gut, but in any case I will require the client to sign a waiver claiming responsibility for the proper, lawful use of the art. It is after those terms are settled that I will use the art. If it is in a form I can not open, then I charge for my service to replicate the art.
Replicating art files can be tedious. Sometimes you have to replicate what are obviously design errors on the original. Sometimes, I offer to "correct" the art, but it will always be in service of the final project. I charge appropriately for these services, but I do not sell any rights to this art to the client.
As far as font data embedded in the file format, it is converted to curves and becomes part of the image file needed to fabricate the product. This has been possible for years, and presents no real obstacle.
Replicating art files can be tedious. Sometimes you have to replicate what are obviously design errors on the original. Sometimes, I offer to "correct" the art, but it will always be in service of the final project. I charge appropriately for these services, but I do not sell any rights to this art to the client.
As far as font data embedded in the file format, it is converted to curves and becomes part of the image file needed to fabricate the product. This has been possible for years, and presents no real obstacle.
myront
Dammit, make it faster!!
Perfect example today. Received a link to a pdf file from a client today for a banner. File size is 446k. Couldn't just email the file! Her title in her email reads "Talent & Marketing V.P."
File was not sized even close to the requested size and a raster logo of their own business was used instead of a vector, text not converted.
20min to download, open in Acrobat Pro, save out as an Optimized pdf, drop in our banner template & scale to size, create a png proof file, and finally print a paper copy.
And clients want to know why our prices are higher than other others!
File was not sized even close to the requested size and a raster logo of their own business was used instead of a vector, text not converted.
20min to download, open in Acrobat Pro, save out as an Optimized pdf, drop in our banner template & scale to size, create a png proof file, and finally print a paper copy.
And clients want to know why our prices are higher than other others!
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
Be thankful that it wasn't embedded into the email itself. Compression always gets it there when it's embedded. So while they may have sent a decent file, it becomes unusable at my end.
Big Rice Field
Electrical/Architectural Sign Designer
If you export to PDF out of Corel, you can check the box under PDF/Settings to embed the fonts in the PDF file. There must be a way to do the same in Illustrator, but it may not be a default setting and users are not aware of it. Most folks just convert fonts to shapes or lines.
WildWestDesigns
Active Member
There is, unfortunately, like many another workarounds, it isn't always 100%. I have fonts that won't embedd into PDFs due to their licensing. Ai will give a msg warning me of such, every time I safe the file. Not all fonts do this, some people may not have any fonts that do this, I do have fonts that do this.
The only solution that works 100% of the time is to convert fonts to outlines/curves. I don't know if it's laziness, ignorance or what, but it doesn't happen anywhere near the amount that it should when people send files out.
I wish that was the case for me (and I think myront would say the same), but it hardly ever happens in my experience and I don't get vector files anywhere near the amount that some people on here do. So if most people actually did that, my instance of getting font substitution msgs should be drastically less then it is.
myront said:
I've seen the syndrome go both ways. I've seen people who've taken design classes or even earned art degrees who don't have any real talent. And I've seen people with no formal training produce really good work. Likewise there's plenty of designers who did get formal training or degrees who are clearly great at graphic design, illustration, etc. And there's no shortage of self taught designers working in our industry who really do suck at design. Being able to point and click around in a graphics problem is never enough to qualify anyone as being a real graphic designer.
I'm one of those odd dudes working in the sign industry that does have an art degree (from a reputable school too). I've been doing this stuff for a long time. I usually treat other designers I work with directly with at least some mutual respect, especially when they're people who I've seen produce good quality work. I don't care if they have a degree or any formal training at all. The quality of their work speaks for itself. Any "real" graphic designer is going to be a willing student of the craft, trying to learn, improve and grow, regardless of whether he is paying tuition to some college or just trying to learn on his own.
On the other hand I'm pretty merciless when it comes to garbage quality sign design. It's not too difficult to tell when someone was just phoning it in on a project. One of my biggest pet peeves is seeing default Arial stretched and squeezed to fill a given space. Whenever I see that I automatically figure the person who "designed" that absolutely does not give a s*** about good design. There's a long list of other garbage I routinely see in sign layouts.
I get pretty heated about bad sign design these days because I feel like our industry is under a serious growing threat of sweeping anti-signs ordinances. It's impossible to legislate good taste or make it so only people with actual talent can do design work at sign companies. So, instead, communities (many of them upper income locations) are "cleaning up" their civic landscapes by banning whole categories of signs and putting suffocating limits on the few types of signs they're still willing to let businesses install. I feel the sign industry has to start making at least some kind of effort to police itself. I worry that if we don't do that and continue doing business as usual these anti-signs ordinances will spread and make times very tough for our businesses.
A sign designer has a certain level of civic responsibility to not take a visual dump on the local landscape. It's not a big deal if some hack badly designs a printed flyer or the banner ad on some web page. That stuff is very temporary. Signs can stand next to a road literally for decades. I don't expect a sign to be some miraculous, virtuoso piece of artwork, but I don't think I'm asking too much for the designs to be clean, balanced and competent. Unfortunately not nearly enough people doing design work at sign companies know how to do that.
kcollinsdesign said:
Some of what I see is just bad, amateur design. Then there's other instances where it's a matter of one graphics application not being able to accurately import artwork made in a different application. That's why I've used CorelDRAW and Illustrator in parallel with each other for many years. And then there's the matter of people generating PDFs from applications like Illustrator and doing it very very wrong. If it's obvious to me the PDF was generated from Adobe Illustrator I'll have no hesitation at all about asking the client for the unadulterated AI file. I give them a choice with the request. They can either provide me with clean artwork or they can pay design fees for the time it takes to clean up the tangle of clipping groups, "non native art" fills, duplicate objects and all sorts of other trash that result when generating a bad PDF.
kcollinsdesign said:
Embedded fonts in PDFs usually aren't much of a hassle at all. I run into far worse problems when fonts aren't converted to outlines in other file formats, like EPS. Microsoft Publisher files are an adventure to try to import. An ancient CorelDRAW file with active text on path lettering or other effects may open in unpredictable ways in an up to date version of the program, even if you have the same fonts that were used in the design. In all my Corel-based sign designs I've long had the habit of "finalizing" my text by converting it all to curves once I'm done editing it.