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young gun

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VitalSignsInc

New Member
Hey there My name is Josh Adams. I do all the design work for Vital Signs here in central Illinois. I Started wrapping vehicles when i was 16 to pay for my first car and have been to many wrap classes including oracals and ISA classes. Some of you may have seen me before at the sign shows in theese design classes where everyone is 10 years older then me hahahah. When i graduated highschool (just barely) i took over the design here since then i am upwards of fifty wraps. (im now 20). I am fluent in signlab and novice in photoshop good enough to put out a high quality wrap. I run a roland xj 640 and it never stops running with that i have 2 graphtecs a 40 and 70. The reason i am joing is i am getting the task of cleaning up the way our production flows and wanted some tips from what you use as order forms to flow from designer to print to application and schedule so tips would be greatly appreciated
 
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SignaramaFL

New Member
welcome to the boards!!! I am also fairly young ( just turned 22) But have only been in the industry for a year now. As far as work flow goes, we have job boxes that have particular areas depending where in production they are. Within these boxes they have a work order, and any other information or materials I may need. We also have a production meeting every morning which helps everyone stay on the same page! Hope this helps :)
 
ucmj22

ucmj22

New Member
these are some of the documents I use, they are works in progress so I still tweak them when I find something not working
 

Attachments

  • print specs.pdf
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  • estimate.pdf
    47.2 KB · Views: 172
  • work order2.0.pdf
    64.2 KB · Views: 197
  • proof label.pdf
    127 KB · Views: 182
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VitalSignsInc

New Member
That is similair to what we do i use estimate system but to be honest not up to its potential. What we struggle with the most is scheduling. Im proud to say i am so busy its hard to keep up. but with that we all know there is always thoose customers you want to please for the amount of work the bring in. so they get put on the burner and jobs like say some piece of paitn mask that some ol guy wants to burn up an hour of my time. and we do not charge for design here we just cant justify it. people will not pay the fifty bucks an hour or refuse to beleive it took me four hours to design this wrap. ( or cant understand why there awesome google image they found cant be turned into a sticker)
 
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VitalSignsInc

New Member
ucmj22 i love this. If i can find a way to tie this way of doing things together it would be perfect. thanks some people dont liek dealing with a designer who looks 12 hahahahah
 
ucmj22

ucmj22

New Member
I just discovered Wunderlist last week and I love it it is not the most in-depth scheduling program by any means, But it is very easy to use, it syncs my list to my phone and the owners phone, and anyone else who wants to log in and best of all IT'S FREE!!!
 
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VitalSignsInc

New Member
Where would i get this program? and i deal with alot of ol school guys most of the time still in gadget stone age. But me and the boss man use smart phones daily could be interesting. now this work order what are you making this with? I love the idea and the way it is set up is perfect. But there is a few things i would need to add on a back side 50% of my business is vehicle graphics. stuff such as make model cover (partial, full, and just lettering and what not) Our biggest problem is that we all use notebooks for messeges not taking and order forms. And as you would expect this gets gorribly messy! any other inputs would be great guys i love this site never knew there was such help for us sign guys
 
ucmj22

ucmj22

New Member
VitalSignsInc said:
Where would i get this program? and i deal with alot of ol school guys most of the time still in gadget stone age. But me and the boss man use smart phones daily could be interesting. now this work order what are you making this with? I love the idea and the way it is set up is perfect. But there is a few things i would need to add on a back side 50% of my business is vehicle graphics. stuff such as make model cover (partial, full, and just lettering and what not) Our biggest problem is that we all use notebooks for messeges not taking and order forms. And as you would expect this gets gorribly messy! any other inputs would be great guys i love this site never knew there was such help for us sign guys
Click to expand...
you can get the ap from the apstore if you have an iphone, or you can just go to their website 6wunderkinder and you can get it there. I love it because anyone logged on to your account can ad tasks or check them off. it would be great if you had an outside sales person. As for the work order, make a few different layouts and try to use them when someone comes in. If you realize you need to change or ad something do it, then print out a couple more. you will never think of everything the first run. once you get it to the point where you think its perfect, you can order a stack of them glue bound and keep them at every desk so you dont have to go searching for legal pad notes anymore. every time you rip one off, it goes directly in to a file folder with any additional notes and then it stays at your desk to be filled with proofs and emails until its ready to go back up front and get invoiced. Thats how we do it anyway. My most recent addition is the print spec sheet. depending on what colors I am trying to hit, I will change color profiles and resolution wich can cause problems 6 months down the road and one of your wrap customers needs a panel replaced and you end up reprinting 3 sheets cuz you dont remember what settings you used.
 
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VitalSignsInc

New Member
thats what i am aiming for luckily i never change my print mode for everything thats a nicer sign/graphic i print in one mode then i have a speed mode. and pms colors are such a breeze to hit. I did have a terrible time when i switched from corel (cmyk) to signlab (rgb) the color shift just about killed me
 
ucmj22

ucmj22

New Member
it goes against all of my graphic design training, but I now design everything we print inhouse in RGB. you get much better colors in the blue/red spectrum that way. if I need a bright blue I print in MaxImpact instead of Prepress US and if I am trying to get a good red I use SignAndDisplay.
 
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VitalSignsInc

New Member
What graphic art training :Big Laugh I do alot of design in rgb photoshop and signlab but i always convert it and then print that way i dont have some crazy shift
 
ucmj22

ucmj22

New Member
on most new digital printers if you Design and print a RGB file you wil have a larger color gamut than even a professional CMYK offset press. End result = brighter colors
 
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