• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

Need Help pricing question??

purebrilliance art

purebrilliance art

New Member
I painted by hand a 3"x6" metal sign and wondered how should I go about pricing hand painted design work? this my first work, I have no software or equipment and in a small community. Incase I get another request for a sign? How do you price it.
I have approx. 25 hours in time creating this. Oh and it is double sided. pics may be too big? Thanks for any input!.
lrvx3c2a.png
sign side 1 crop.JPG
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Do you really mean 3' x 6' double-sided ??

Well, there are so many places to start. Way too many mistakes to be selling this as finished artwork/signs. Lettering is all over the place and those kinda split letters with tabs are not really for signs. One phone has dashes..... the other doesn't. Letter sizes are too over and undersized within the same word. Far too many crooked letters. Colors are kinda awkward. Kerning is very bad.Negative spacing is out the window.

I'n trying to be nice, but around my neck of the woods, no one would pay for those.

What substrate did you use and what kinda paint ?? Did you do this on an easel or flat on a table ??
 
purebrilliance art

purebrilliance art

New Member
Gino said:
Do you really mean 3' x 6' double-sided ??

Well, there are so many places to start. Way too many mistakes to be selling this as finished artwork/signs. Lettering is all over the place and those kinda split letters with tabs are not really for signs. One phone has dashes..... the other doesn't. Letter sizes are too over and undersized within the same word. Far too many crooked letters. Colors are kinda awkward. Kerning is very bad.Negative spacing is out the window.

I'n trying to be nice, but around my neck of the woods, no one would pay for those.

What substrate did you use and what kinda paint ?? Did you do this on an easel or flat on a table ??
Click to expand...
Gino said:
Hi, WOW good points, good to know my first as I said neighbor asked me and design is from his business card, I meant to do dashes on both, that can be fixed, yes 3x6 ft metal sign going in a rack , letters are measuring same size in each word?, I appreciate the feedback, Guess its a start over, although the customer liked it?, I will add dashes and seal other side and consider this a learning adventure, I know nothing about signs, guess a class is next option before I try another and if it's that awful I will just give it to him. I used outdoor acrylic paint designed for metal, pretreated primed the sign and painted flat table. Now I may have to start all over. REALLY GOOD POINTS!! thanks
Click to expand...
 
purebrilliance art

purebrilliance art

New Member
Not sure how to use this, sorry about that.
Hi, WOW good points, good to know my first as I said neighbor asked me and design is from his business card, I meant to do dashes on both, that can be fixed, yes 3x6 ft metal sign going in a rack , letters are measuring same size in each word?, I appreciate the feedback, Guess its a start over, although the customer liked it?, I will add dashes and seal other side and consider this a learning adventure, I know nothing about signs, guess a class is next option before I try another and if it's that awful I will just give it to him. I used outdoor acrylic paint designed for metal, pretreated primed the sign and painted flat table. Now I may have to start all over. REALLY GOOD POINTS!! thanks
 
JBurton

JBurton

Signtologist
purebrilliance art said:
Guess its a start over, although the customer liked it?
Click to expand...
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, if the customer likes it, sell it as is. If it's something you find disappointing, it's on you to redo until you'd be satisfied passing it every day.
Props on taking one on the chin from Gino and not bellyaching, I believe he cut his teeth on hand lettering, he is a great resource. Not sure about the best way to go about learning hand lettering any more, but there are more than a few old salts on here that may point you in the right direction.
 
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Totally, if the guy like it and will pay ya, by all means, take it and move forward.

I was only trying to be helpful.

All flat letters will be the height setter, but the 'rounds' will be slightly above the height lines and below the bottom letter. It's an optical illusion. Most of your letters have completely different weights within the same word, let alone in the same line of copy. Some to most of your letters seem to be pointing slightly up, down, straight ahead and somewhat different heights. Look at the #2 in the phone. They're all different sizes and the bottom dash is different in 2 of them. The 0's are different weights and the 8 looks like it has scurvy. Tanks, chambers & pipes runs uphill and almost off the paint band. Your tabs within the lettering is missing at a buncha places and the period in St. is outta proportion. Ya probably should have something between the 3 words to define them better.

Pure..... there's more, but try to digest this and we'll move forward later, if ya wanna.
 

Attachments

  • st johns.jpg
    st johns.jpg
    471.9 KB · Views: 59
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Oh, based upon your hours and adding in the metal, we'd be around $3,57.00 Back in the day, we could do a 4' x 8' double sided by hand, in either a long day or 2 of them in about 3 days Remember shop rates were like $12 and $15 bucks an hour. Times certainly have changed.
 
White Haus

White Haus

Not a Newbie
Gino said:
Do you really mean 3' x 6' double-sided ??

Well, there are so many places to start. Way too many mistakes to be selling this as finished artwork/signs. Lettering is all over the place and those kinda split letters with tabs are not really for signs. One phone has dashes..... the other doesn't. Letter sizes are too over and undersized within the same word. Far too many crooked letters. Colors are kinda awkward. Kerning is very bad.Negative spacing is out the window.

I'n trying to be nice, but around my neck of the woods, no one would pay for those.

What substrate did you use and what kinda paint ?? Did you do this on an easel or flat on a table ??
Click to expand...

Not just your neck of the woods, Gino. I'd love to meet the client who will hand over money for something like this.

Thinking this has to be a joke.
 
White Haus

White Haus

Not a Newbie
Texas_Signmaker said:
He probably painted that better than most people on here... including myself.
Click to expand...
At first I was going to agree with you, and I will be the first to admit I've never tried hand-lettering to avoid myself the embarrassment.

That said, if you're going to use some sort of stencil font, use an actual stencil that should (theoretically) result in consistent letters.

I dunno.....if this is a legitimate attempt at hand lettering....and the OP only came here to find out what to charge..............I dunno. 25 hours? Painted on "metal"? Was the metal found in a pile at the scrap yard or recovered from a demolished building? Come on.

My money's on it being Mosh with a new fake account.
 
Johnny Best

Johnny Best

Active Member
It is his first sign hand painted, it looks beautiful. Need to learn to work a little faster, it takes time to learn the trade of sign painting.
Charge the guy $500 and that should put a smile on your face.
THe customer is in the septic tank business, he is use to seeing “shit".
 
  • Agree
Reactions: bob
Gino

Gino

Premium Subscriber
Ya know, just for sh!ts and giggles, I looked into this one. There is no St John Septic with that area code. Also, there are other things which don't quite jive, either.

Unless this person comes forth, I believe I've been suckered.
 
bob

bob

It's better to have two hands than one glove.
Trying to decorate stencil lettering is not a sign. Nonetheless, as Sr. Best noted, charge him $500 and try to keep a straight face. If you want to hand letter, it takes no small amount of practice learning to pull and terminate lines.
 
JBurton

JBurton

Signtologist
White Haus said:
At first I was going to agree with you, and I will be the first to admit I've never tried hand-lettering to avoid myself the embarrassment.
Click to expand...
I don't need to try, every time I try to write large to label something, it runs off one side and my letters are either crowded or off center.
No give me a knife and I'll make 10 straight cuts in a row, but with a pen or pencil and I'm on par with my 7 year old.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top