This is a first....

[Vinyl slayer]

I got an e-mail from a client wanting a logo printed. I told them a vector file and sometimes PDFs.

They send me a PDF and I open it to find a raster image screenshot of an e-mail with the logo in it.............WTF????..

View attachment 152387

your first? really? I get that at least once a month. It's amazing how many people think they can take a website image, and save it as a pdf or png.... or a number of other options, and think it's magically vector.

I'm with ya on

 

[Vinyl slayer]

often I am tempted to just print a sample of the file, take a pick and send it back as a proof.

When I get really poor artwork, I'll make it at size, show it at 100% on my screen, and take a screen shot - send that to them. They often find something better real quick.

If it's simple enough artwork/logo though, I can just vectorize it myself so I have something decent to work with. Good customer service.

 

[Vinyl slayer]

I'm currently working on a vehicle wrap, and there is a graphic on their business cards that they want on the tailgate, or something similar. After our meeting, he emailed me the font names he wants to use, and for the graphic (dog buts - it's a poop scooping service) he emailed me the vista print template they used. LMAO... cant use that buddy. I'll just find some nice dog butts on Istock and charge him for it.

 

[GAC05]

I'm currently working on a vehicle wrap, and there is a graphic on their business cards that they want on the tailgate, or something similar. After our meeting, he emailed me the font names he wants to use, and for the graphic (dog buts - it's a poop scooping service) he emailed me the vista print template they used. LMAO... cant use that buddy. I'll just find some nice dog butts on Istock and charge him for it.

Ok, now you have my attention, I want to see what a poop-scooping wrap ends up being.

 

[Vinyl slayer]

Ok, now you have my attention, I want to see what a poop-scooping wrap ends up being.

LOL, this actually isn't my first. We have done this for another company a few years ago... we've done a few vehicles for them actually. The first one, had a lawn/grass ribbon along the bottom. logo, etc. get this - I had to draw my own vector poop with flies. I was showed something stolen from the internet, so I drew my own. At the time, my kid was at the age when poop, and poop emojis were hysterical. I was kinda stoked to go home that evening to say: "guess what mommy got to draw today". It's the little things in life. I love my job.

 

[Johnny Best]

Who’s in the gang/click?

 

[Big Rice Field]

Most customers need to be educated about the differences between raster bitmaps and vector art.

 

[Vinyl slayer]

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Is that the pooper scoopers or the s101 clique?

 

[MJ-507]

I've received plenty of raster images saved as PDF, AI & EPS files but, in my 25 years, I've never had a customer send a screenshot saved as a PDF. Even if I tried to, I don't think I could have thought about that happening.

I will say, when I receive a raster & tell the customer the cost to vectorize the image, it's amazing how they are suddenly able to supply a vector file.

 

[DeadDoc]

On a similar note back when I was at O.Max. we would consistently get low res images and would tell people to give us the native and or a 300DPI+ image. 99% of the time thy went o photoshop just to resample the image to 300. Never ceases to amaze me how much people know or the lack of knowing.

 

[Geneva Olson]

My favorite is when people say they are graphic artists and give me artwork from photoshop that I have to cut. I tell them I need a vector file so they convert it to a pdf...but it's still a jpeg saved as a pdf. look at it in wireframe on corel and it looks terrible. OR when there are so many layers to it that are truly unnecessary.

I have had some pretty good success with people using canva for banners. They size it out on canva and I print it. Easy peasy.

 

[gnubler]

Is that the pooper scoopers or the s101 clique?

Ha! That's fitting, as in my former profession we called ourselves "crap shovelers". Nothing but garbage in, garbage out, day after day. You can try to educate customers on raster vs vector, but seriously, why? All they care about is getting a polished finished product, my job is to provide a service and just make it work. I've found plenty of vector versions of company logos by searching their websites for PDF files, that, if you're lucky, were put together by a graphic designer at one point. Search like this and all PDFs on their web server will pop up in Google.

.pdf site:http://www.website.com

 

[gnubler]

I have had some pretty good success with people using canva for banners.

Canva was designed to make work a living hell for commercial printing and prepress. And the crap designs I see amateurs coming up with now make my eyes water. Canva's stock templates are professional and well done, then people utterly destroy them with just a few clicks.

 

[Geneva Olson]

Canva was designed to make work a living hell for commercial printing and prepress. And the crap designs I see amateurs coming up with now make my eyes water. Canva's stock templates are professional and well done, then people utterly destroy them with just a few clicks.

What does it matter if you don't have to do the artwork to clean it up? I tell them what it is going to look like and that's it. They pay for the banner and I've done zero artwork.

 

[gnubler]

Nine times out of ten when I get "artwork" from Canva or similar systems it takes me longer to fix than had I designed it from scratch in the first place. And customers can't understand why they have to pay because "my last printer never had any problems with it." It's easier to just fix it and move on, and everyone's happy.