shoresigns said:
It's the printer's job to know how printing works, not the client's graphic designer. Print shops shouldn't need to make clients produce files to a spec. If you have a competent designer or prepress operator, they should have no problem dealing with all the examples you mentioned.
Um, it’s not that simple. First, I sure will never buy this popular American mindset that
anyone can be a graphic designer or artist. That’s part of where this scourge of DIY design originates. They figure since computers are involved and you supposedly don’t have to do any manual drawing or painting by hand then
anybody can do the work. They don’t consider the fact art and design talent is a lot like being able to sing. Most people can’t sing well at all. But these people want all the “glory” of doing the design work themselves anyway. Worse, they usually make zero effort to learn any of the technical issues that go with the job. That includes understanding things like gamma limit differences between RGB and CMYK, or just making the stupid design legible to passing motorists.
We just completed one anger inspiring project with a lady opening a health oriented grocery store. Of course she insisted on designing her own logo. I got second guessed thru multiple revisions on the building sign and street sign face. The problem was her brand didn’t mean anything and the important “grocery store” lettering was really tiny in relation to it. I tried adjusting around that by creating some new lock-ups that fit the existing sign cabinets much better. Same fonts, just different arrangements. She wanted it looking like her logo, regardless how tiny the vital lettering might be or just how much negative space would be left on these faces. And she wasn’t even buying new faces, just sticking some vinyl graphics on old existing faces. To top it off, her artwork was RGB-based, using a max gamma bright green color. So she wanted to gripe about how the green vinyl we spec’ed wasn’t as bright as her green, nor was any attempts to print it.
Let’s face it. Many customers doing their own DIY design work don’t know what they’re doing and bake all kinds of stupid, unworkable garbage into their “art.”
GAC05 said:
”Let me show you the design I have made - do you have PowerPoint.”
Way too many people in the military think PowerPoint is the only “graphic design” application that exists. We do a lot of work for the Army. PPT files come with the territory. At least we get paid for the raster to vector conversion jobs.
