Printing side of the sign industry

[149motorsports]

Well I pretty much mastered the vinyl side of the business and now everything is being printed with less cut vinyl. How did everyone learn the printing side of the business especially with the software,colors, taking images off the internet/clip art printing them,ect. I have Flexi Cloud and have been just messing around with gradients, swatches, ect. Is there an tutorials about this stuff. I will mainly be doing wraps.
Thanks all!

 

[jtinker]

My first experience with a printer is going on my first job and getting a whole 15m of training and being told if I mess anything up I would have to pay for it lol.


You have two options you can go with for design. Photoshop or Corel Draw, My dad got me a copy when he sent me off to college in 04. I been using it ever since. I have used Corel Draw but only for spot tasks like setting up cutlines or importing pallets to send to the printer for white, reflective etc.

The learning curve for both is fairly high but after a couple months of consistant use you will get the hang of it and after a year or two you will surpass all boundries and just be worried about "what does my customer need" not "how do I do this".

Corel Draw is more attuned to the print industry I would say, whereas photoshop is geared the entire imaging industry and is more of a wide cannon in terms of getting to learn exactly what you need to for specific industry tasks.

My best advice would be to go to Lynda.com and get some training or atleast youtube and search for the program you are interested in. There are tons of resources that are just a click away, they just take practice.

http://www.lynda.com/Photoshop-tutorials/279-0.html

 

[squishpot]

I would go with Adobe Illustrator over Photoshop. When working in the huge layout sizes most sign shops do, you should be working in vector format rather than pixels. Unless of course it's certain textures/photos etc. In those cases, I muck around with my jpg, tif, bmp, whatever... and then bring it into illustrator to sort it out with my overall design layout.
Corel Draw is the other vector based program you can use. I've only ever properly used illustrator, but from what I can see Corel has some amazingly simple and brilliant ways to do things in comparison. If I had the time I would definitely make more of an effort to learn Corel.

Edit: Vector also gives you the 'Lines" needed when sending things to die cut. Same way a vinyl plotter works.

 

[rjssigns]

Find your local tech college and get a couple night classes. A tiny bit of effort will reap huge dividends for you. I know this for a fact because I did it.

As far as software here is what I know.
Do not get wrapped up in the Adobe vs. Corel vs Flexi vs whatever battle. And don't think you need to have the latest version of anything either. Everyone has a preference and yours will develop with time. Use what is easiest for you to turn a job quickly. I do.
Take some time and look at what Joe Diaz does with Corel. Amazing!

When wrapping you will need to combine both vector and raster images at some point. You need to be well versed in operating the software needed to do this. For example I did a partial wrap where I built all the shapes in Illustrator then rendered them in Photoshop. Other times I've used our ancient version of Flexi Pro since it was the fastest way. At times we'll even dip into Xara and our Corel 3.

Final note: If you think you need the latest software you should see how my wife rips around in CS2.

 

[Rick]

A few questions:

I noticed you have been here for 8 years, so you have
been doing vinyl for at least that long. In all that time, did you
design other things like business cards or marketing
materials?

How are your design skills?

In all this time, how efficient have you gotten with Flexi?

What type of wraps? Race Cars? and/or business wraps?

The idea of getting images from the internet to piece wrap
layouts together might not make for a good wrap. I would
think studying good wrap design, branding and layout would
do you a world of good.

That being said, ever since I've been using a computer, I
have suggested never to design in a sign program, especially
if you are doing more than signs. If you insist on designing
in Flexi, do yourself a big favor and save a copy as an .eps or .ai
format

I would look at wraps online, race graphics of the big design firms
who specialize in that, Signcraft, and Dan Antonellis book
"Building a Big Small Business Brand"

With your vinyl/vector experience, then you have most of the
technical skills required, learn Photoshop and Illustrator (or Corel)
especially if you are working on other collateral design (like business
cards, flyers etc)

If you are designing the same way you were when you started, learn
how to design. i know sign guys with 20 years in the business who may
know the software well, but can't design themselves out of a bag.

I learned by observing designers better than me. I also learned to stay
away from clip-art. It has it's place, but most people use clip-art as a
crutch. When you are making "custom" design with clip art...
how "custom" is it really?