Educating clients in what is and isn't high quality artwork.

[heyskull]

Hi all I am really struggling with this issue at the moment.
A lot of new (and sometime old) businesses have sprung up since Lockdown/Covid and they seriously have a problem with supplying artwork that is no bigger than 2" wide and about 50dpi.
They expect this to be adequate for large format printing.
I am sick to the back teeth withartwork that is low Kilobytes instead of high Megabytes.
God forbid anyone having a useable vector file?!

How does everyone educate their soon to be ex-clients on what is quality and what isn't high quality artwork?

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[Gino]

We have a few samples of what a file looks like at full size, then blown up to various sizes. The full size file is usually a postage stamp sized picture and they want it up to 3' square. So, we have it in various increments, so they can see the deterioration as it gets larger. This is a very logical approach, but when they see their picture on the screen, they still expect you to work miracles.

Did a banner for a psychological therapist company. They gave me the file and I told them, explained to them and showed them what would happen when blown up to the size they wanted. The guy said, that's alright, for the temporary banner it won't matter, we'll worry about it when we put up the main sign. I said, Oky, just as long as you understand. He picked up the banner and b!tched about the fuzziness around his logo. I re-set all the other copy and he wanted to know why I didn't fix that, too ?? I told him, his file was uneditable. Now, suddenly, he didn't understand. Yeah well, trying to educate people........ ya can only go so far..... consider what/who you are trying to educate.

 

[gnubler]

Don't even waste your time. It's gotten worse and worse over the years now that everyone "designs" their own logo and graphic designers have been rendered obsolete. On the rare occasion a customer sends me vector artwork I tell them how much I appreciate their knowledge. The other 99% don't know/don't care. Often I can find a better quality logo on the internet, it's easier than trying to explain it to people.

 

[heyskull]

SCREAM!!!!!
I had a client yesterday who sent me a jpg the size of a low res. thumbnail.
They have sent the same files this morning in a pdf.
I want to strangle someone!"!!!!

I give in.
You would think with the advancement in tech it would get better, but it has become worse.

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[garyroy]

It's good to know that you have a steady flow of customers.

Just tell them the cost of redrawing the artwork. If they don't opt for that, then they opt for the low rez print.
You can't educate non graphic people about the graphics business.

Just don't do any low rez car wraps.

 

[Stacey K]

I have one customer with a brother who is a graphic designer. He's opened 3 businesses in the last couple years. I love his brother. He is the only GA I've worked with that actually gives me perfect vector art, everything is in cmyk. I just designed his newest sign...in under a minute. Opened the email, downloaded the file, swept it to Flexi and plopped it in the sign box...then sent it back. He texted me back "OK to Print" within seconds. My response was, "Tell your brother I love him" LOL

Back to your point. In some cases there's people you can just tell it's going to take too long to explain. When they ask for a quote I just add on a "set-up" fee and it includes the cost of me sending it out to get vectorized plus a couple bucks for my time. Especially if it's going to be a $15 vector, 1-2 colors, simple design. Even if you charge them $25...and it cost you $15...you just saved 15-30 minutes of extra explaining, emails, phone calls, etc. I do a lot of baseball signs and I don't waste much time looking for good art because there's a middle man. They get one shot then I send it out.

This one I would just send out and tell them there's an automatic logo set-up fee of $25. You will save yourself more time by doing that than you will explaining it to them then charging them $50. The second example you would need to charge correctly for, there's shading, etc. which even after you get it vectorized you will still have some clean up and touch ups to do. That I would explain to the customer and make sure you charge enough to cover your time and add $5 for every time they send it and you have to tell them it's not right LOL

 

[petepaz]

"i don't understand, when i look at it on my computer it's fine?".....and this is one of the many reasons i don't have hair

 

[WhiskeyDreamer]

when doing estimates, i'll include a line item for tracing a logo if the artwork they provided isn't vector. base pricing is $115 to trace and i'll give them a PDF at the end of the job. if they supply a vector file, it's stated that part of the fee will be waived as we'll still need to set it for production.

sometimes having that line in there scares people into getting me the correct file. if it doesn't, it covers my time to trace or cost to send it out and i'm still making money off it.

 

[Solventinkjet]

Blow it up to 100% of final size, set your zoom setting to 100% and send them a screenshot of the result. If they still want you to print it, the customer is always right yadda yadda.

 

[Gino]

when doing estimates, i'll include a line item for tracing a logo if the artwork they provided isn't vector. base pricing is $115 to trace and i'll give them a PDF at the end of the job. if they supply a vector file, it's stated that part of the fee will be waived as we'll still need to set it for production.

sometimes having that line in there scares people into getting me the correct file. if it doesn't, it covers my time to trace or cost to send it out and i'm still making money off it.

Its not surprising, if you make your fee to re-create their lousy artwork into usable files kinda high...... how fast they find the person with the correct files..... every stinkin' time.

Oh mr jones, that's gonna take between 2 and 2.5 hours to recreate properly. Our hourly cost on that stuff is $145 an hour. Hold on............ an e-mail an hour later with the nicest piece of artwork you'd ever find. , follows with..... how's this ??

 

[WhiskeyDreamer]

Its not surprising, if you make your fee to re-create their lousy artwork into usable files kinda high...... how fast they find the person with the correct files..... every stinkin' time.

Oh mr jones, that's gonna take between 2 and 2.5 hours to recreate properly. Our hourly cost on that stuff is $145 an hour. Hold on............ an e-mail an hour later with the nicest piece of artwork you'd ever find. , follows with..... how's this ??

EXACTLY, and when they still don't have the file, i'm okay with taking the time to properly trace it and have a good production ready file.

 

[Johnny Best]

Your not going to educate customers without taking away your valuable time doing it. You could spend that time fixing it yourself or just telling them, like I do, "that is not going to look good, to pixelated". Thats when you do the selling of your talents to fix it and make it look good.

 

[jtiii]

They have sent the same files this morning in a pdf

OH MY GOD THAT IS THE WORST

 

[jtiii]

With new businesses, when they bring me whatever crap their buddy put together in Word, I have had great success blowing it up, showing it to them, and telling them "for $X I can clean this up so your sign looks great AND give you copies of the right files so you'll have good clean art for everything you do going forward"

 

[jtiii]

Also when all else fails take it into Photoshop, flatten it if it's got transparency, make sure there's a little white space around the logo (Image/Canvas Size) and then Image/Image Size. Resize it using Preserve Details 2.0. For things like sponsor signs that people aren't right up against it's practically magic -

Usually if I'm doing say golf sponsor signs I can get over half of the otherwise unusable logos good enough to use in about 30 seconds per logo.

 

[Billct2]

With crappy text/line art it's easy enough to tell them if I don't get the right file it'll be $xx extra but I will give you the file for future use.
If it's a photo/gradients I do as suggested above sending a close up screen shot. If they still want it I hit print.

 

[Stacey K]

Here's a screenshot from someone's phone from a few minutes ago. I should blow this up for a 2'x4' banner and remove the watermark. NOT.

Boudica ...here's your screenshot, she literally sent me this as a screenshot from her messages, didn't even bother to save the photo and send it. I cropped it and sent her a screenshot of it actual size. I said it's very pixelated and I cannot remove the watermark. I told her to ask the photographer, they are pretty good about sending me jpegs for senior banners. On the phone I gave her my email and told her I needed an original jpeg emailed, not texted. She acted like I didn't know what I was talking about LOL

 

[Boudica]

Here's a screenshot from someone's phone from a few minutes ago. I should blow this up for a 2'x4' banner and remove the watermark. NOT.

There's no screen shot, ya big tease

 

[heyskull]

I had another yesterday.
He sends over the artwork but it is low resolution file of his website header.
After a conversation and a number of emails with more of the same artwork but n different files.
I said "we will have to recreate your artwork and the cost will be however many hours it takes to redraw it"
Strange that once he had been told my hourly rate he found the original artwork that he had already paid for of his previous sign guy.
It is as almost I was just joking about his crappy artwork, but once he found out it was going to cost he miraculously found missing artwork.

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[Stacey K]

There's no screen shot, ya big tease

Ha Ha!!! It's on there now, just for you!