Production Ready Artwork?! General Recommendations?

[jaylem]

Ok, Mr. Customer. I get it. You wanna know how cheap you can get this banner. IF you have production ready artwork it's $5 per sq ft. IF NOT then it's $65 an hr. to create production ready artwork. After giving proper art specs for vector or raster imaging and supported file types (AI, PDF, JPEG, TIFF, EPS, PS) I am constantly given 5" artwork artwork at 72 dpi for a wide format print or people embed raster images into an EPS and call it vector. What part of 100 dpi at FULL SIZE minimum requirement do they not understand?! NO, i cant just grab it off the web!



How do you handle and request production ready artwork for various projects?

 

[equippaint]

Tell them what you need in plain english. Ask them if theyve had any signs done before, tshirts or whatever and say that is the artwork you need. Did you have your logo designed by someone? tell them they should have given you this when you paid them for it. When they send you something like a jpeg, just reply that it wont really work with a brief non-boring explanation. If the company didn't send you the vector when they made your logo it will be $xxx to recreate it but they should have done that. They will either find it or realize they got screwed. Speak in laymans terms and dont expect everyone to understand graphics, that's why they came to you rather than do it themselves unless you're just a wholesale printer. You may be annoyed but they can get just annoyed with you
If you get it all the time, increase your pricing to account for doing some minor artwork and call it a day. Let them get annoyed with someone else and come to you for a no crybaby solution but a little higher price. When you're too cheap there's no room for anything. Not saying you are, just in general, I don't know banner pricing.

 

[ChicagoGraphics]

Be happy your getting the artwork 5", I normally get something from a website or something they found online and after explaining the process, I get the same answer " it looks great online" Had a few customers gave me a writhen OK to print how it was then went WAKO on me when they we're delivered. I gave up on explaining the whole process. Now I just tell them straight out, you give me sh^t artwork, you will get a shi^ty looking sign in return simple as that.

 

[Billct2]

If they say they have had a logo "professionally" designed I ell them send me all the files you have. If I get garbage I will explain that there is a cost of $___ to reproduce the design, if it's even possible. At that point they either find the right artwork file, agree to pay or go away. This is the procedure for new customers who are shopping around. Regular clients and referrals get more attention but it still comes down to the same options

 

[3SixtySigns]

this made me literally laugh out loud!! Very true

 

[visual800]

it kills me how some will say "They had artwork done" and when you ask for file they send a bmp or a thumbnail. These are kinds of jobs I would prefer just go away. The main issue is people look at crap on the screen but we have to deal with it in real life.

I tell them it looks like hell and it will look worse blown up, usually they go away

 

[JohnBFryJr]

And if they take a crappy bimap and export to different files extentions it's still the same bitmap.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

 

[gabagoo]

What I would like to know is how do you explain in understandable terms why the logo looks good on the computer screen, but really is the size of a postage stamp.... how does the screen make it look so high res and our printers can't? I always feel like they think I am lying to them to try and pry more money from them...

 

[WildWestDesigns]

What I would like to know is how do you explain in understandable terms why the logo looks good on the computer screen, but really is the size of a postage stamp.... how does the screen make it look so high res and our printers can't? I always feel like they think I am lying to them to try and pry more money from them...

That's a losing battle. I imagine that quite a few of them are thinking either trying to get more money out of them (especially if they had someone else do the design, they are probably thinking that you are ticked about them going to someone else versus using you for design) or that you don't know what you are doing and thus don't know how to make it work.

Imagine trying to tell someone that even though they did send me a [true] vector file that due to machine requirements, it isn't production ready (and this is different then it not being say cut vinyl ready).

 

[hcardwell93]

What I would like to know is how do you explain in understandable terms why the logo looks good on the computer screen, but really is the size of a postage stamp.... how does the screen make it look so high res and our printers can't? I always feel like they think I am lying to them to try and pry more money from them...

I explain it this way: "You know those little sweaters people put on cats and tiny dogs? That's the size of what you gave me. Now I need to put the sweater on Chris Farley...can you imagine what that will look like?"...."Got it!"

 

[JohnBFryJr]

I'll be using that line for sure.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

 

[Billct2]

To illustrate the issue I take a tiny section of the image enlarge it and send them a low res jpg of it, they usually get it then

 

[jaylem]

Tell them what you need in plain english. Ask them if theyve had any signs done before, tshirts or whatever and say that is the artwork you need. Did you have your logo designed by someone? tell them they should have given you this when you paid them for it. When they send you something like a jpeg, just reply that it wont really work with a brief non-boring explanation. If the company didn't send you the vector when they made your logo it will be $xxx to recreate it but they should have done that. They will either find it or realize they got screwed. Speak in laymans terms and dont expect everyone to understand graphics, that's why they came to you rather than do it themselves unless you're just a wholesale printer. You may be annoyed but they can get just annoyed with you
If you get it all the time, increase your pricing to account for doing some minor artwork and call it a day. Let them get annoyed with someone else and come to you for a no crybaby solution but a little higher price. When you're too cheap there's no room for anything. Not saying you are, just in general, I don't know banner pricing.

What

Tell them what you need in plain english. Ask them if theyve had any signs done before, tshirts or whatever and say that is the artwork you need. Did you have your logo designed by someone? tell them they should have given you this when you paid them for it. When they send you something like a jpeg, just reply that it wont really work with a brief non-boring explanation. If the company didn't send you the vector when they made your logo it will be $xxx to recreate it but they should have done that. They will either find it or realize they got screwed. Speak in laymans terms and dont expect everyone to understand graphics, that's why they came to you rather than do it themselves unless you're just a wholesale printer. You may be annoyed but they can get just annoyed with you
If you get it all the time, increase your pricing to account for doing some minor artwork and call it a day. Let them get annoyed with someone else and come to you for a no crybaby solution but a little higher price. When you're too cheap there's no room for anything. What layman terms can be used to describe art specs, file types, and other industry print terms?

$5 per sq. ft. Is the very top end of what customers expect to pay for banners. You can get them for as low as 1.50 per sq. Online but all the other sign shops are about $5. I pride myself on not being the cheapest guy on town.

I always buffer the hassle of getting good artwork by letting them know it helps us provide them with the best possible sign without additional cost to them...its always about the client.... well, maybe...im not going to send out work that doesn't represent our shop in the best possible light...i don't wanna hear "who made that sign for you? It looks a little blurry." You think the client is going to take ownership of crummy artwork that degraded the end result?

 

[jaylem]

Tell them what you need in plain english. Ask them if theyve had any signs done before, tshirts or whatever and say that is the artwork you need. Did you have your logo designed by someone? tell them they should have given you this when you paid them for it. When they send you something like a jpeg, just reply that it wont really work with a brief non-boring explanation. If the company didn't send you the vector when they made your logo it will be $xxx to recreate it but they should have done that. They will either find it or realize they got screwed. Speak in laymans terms and dont expect everyone to understand graphics, that's why they came to you rather than do it themselves unless you're just a wholesale printer. You may be annoyed but they can get just annoyed with you
If you get it all the time, increase your pricing to account for doing some minor artwork and call it a day. Let them get annoyed with someone else and come to you for a no crybaby solution but a little higher price. When you're too cheap there's no room for anything. Not saying you are, just in general, I don't know banner pricing.

What

 

[ExecuPrintGS]

To illustrate the issue I take a tiny section of the image enlarge it and send them a low res jpg of it, they usually get it then

This is exactly what i do.... I make a clipping mask of a section of logo and print it out on our color copier and show them at scale what it will look like.
Most people understand it, the ones who don't don't understand why i think their pixelated garbage looks like garbage, they think it looks great.

 

[bannertime]

To qualify for print ready artwork pricing it needs to meet three criteria. It needs to be the correct resolution, the correct size, and to be the correct file type. If you're not sure what those mean, send me everything you have. If it's from your website, it's probably not right. If we have to recreate something it will cost $## per hour and typically takes less than an hour. We keep the artwork for future work, and if you'd like to have a logo package for your own use, it's $##. It's $## for every time we have to send you the logo.

That's my typical spiel.

 

[gabagoo]

it's probably best to build it into the cost of whatever you are doing, then you don't even have to have any conversation