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Who sends "graphics" as a publisher file?!

Rooster

Rooster

New Member
Some of my clients do. I just open the files and create a PDF or tiff from them.

Shoot over the years I've worked with pretty much every kind of file and for the most part these applications all tend to work pretty similar. Publisher (like anything M$) is a bitch though.

If you're in the business of accepting outside files from your customers and you get all weirded out by non-standard file types. Then maybe you're not the graphics guru that you think you are.

I know my customers are always thrilled when I tell them that I can work with whatever they bring in. I just explain that it's no guarantee of quality as whatever they bring in still needs to be built correctly. If there's an issue I show them a proof and we either run it with their approval or we fix the issue(s) at their expense.

When a customer has invested the amount of time into the files that some of them do, a smart ass remark or a berating of their choice of application can kill off a potential sale. My stance is to remain professional and help them through the process of getting their files to print as well as they can. I'm supposed to be the expert right?

Besides, sometimes I can bill out more to fix the file than the print job was going to be worth anyhow. That's a nice little addition to the revenue stream.
 
C

CentralSigns

New Member
For me most customers have already paid way to much for graphics design. These are the ones that want a sign cheap cause the budget is blown. They don't realize that any sign shop can build a simple design and that's for certain. This files always come that way from a certain designer. I'm sure he charges per hour or per call. Then we play send the right file for a week till I get the right one.
 
The Vector Doctor

The Vector Doctor

Chief Bezier Manipulator
My guess is 95% or higher of designers or artists do not use Publisher do design with. Publisher, Excel and Word docs as artwork exist because that is what the secretary or "in-house" marketing team uses to produce company letterhead, fax cover sheets and office collateral

I get plenty of very nice logos that were obviously designed by someone who knows what they were doing, but they are embedded in word docs because no one at the company can open or edit anything that the designer produced the file in.

They don't want to pay the designer so "Linda" at the front desk or Bob in sales gets to design the banner today and they use Powerpoint or Word after they discovered "word art" "Hey that's neat, I can draw in Word, who needs stinking designers?"
 
Techman

Techman

New Member
copy the image out of publisher..,, paste it into photoshop,, save it asa t iff. Whala!

TExt? thtas another monster
 
signgal

signgal

New Member
9 times out of 10 I find they have the correct .eps file but can't open it and think it's "corupt". When I tell them to send me the one they can't open or pay art charges, I usually get the file. I have this company's logo... she just made up a little sketch and wanted to show me what they had in mind.
 
daveb

daveb

General Know-it-all
I get plenty of very nice logos that were obviously designed by someone who knows what they were doing, but they are embedded in word docs because no one at the company can open or edit anything that the designer produced the file in.
Click to expand...
That's usually true. The designer sends them logos in various file formats, they experiment until they get it into the POS Word and then they totally forget where the original file is. Your only choice is to sweet talk the secretary so she takes it as a personal challenge to find the original files (that does work sometimes), or find out who the designer was. Otherwise it's redraw and extra art charge. As for banners, etc. designed in Word, I've yet to see the Word doc I couldn't reproduce in about 5 minutes (usually, there are always exceptions). Sometimes it's easier just to reproduce it than argue with the customer, you can always tack on a little extra this time or next.:popcorn:
 
Dice

Dice

New Member
SignGal are you all set? I have publisher 2010 for just such an occasion. The new one isn't to bad, it can actually save to a PDF.

Pub -> PDF -> AI fix all the crap.

FYI it comes with Office Professional, thats why many offices have it.
 
signgal

signgal

New Member
Thanks Dice! The converter link posted by Jhill worked and she sent me a pdf later in the day, so she must have 2010 too :) I appreciate the offer though
 
wonsngis

wonsngis

New Member
Here's the one that really cracks me up; They provide artwork in a sub-par format, so we ask if they might have it in .eps or .pdf format. They then resubmit the original file, only having deleted the original file extension and replaced it with .eps or .pdf.

The more advanced, yet still very naive user will take a low res image and simply paste it into illustrator and save it as an .eps- somehow thinking that that makes it usable.

Back to the publisher issue... I keep that program on a couple PC's just because it comes up much more often than I'd like. The easiest conversion for me is to open it in publisher, select all, copy and paste into illustrator. It does work, but you'll have some cleanup to do- especially if there are gradients involved.
 
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