Get advice to help you create your t-shirt graphics. Discuss t-shirt design software, special effect techniques, or other topics related to creating a t-shirt design on your computer. If you'd rather hire a graphic designer to do the work for you, please post in our Referrals and Recommendations section here.
Has anyone ever used some sloppy or questionable artwork a customer supplied and regretted it?
I have someone who sent me a jpeg of a logo to be printed. The resolution is good enough and the design easily printable, but the lettering, which was supposed to follow a circle, is all skewed. I only have the jpeg so I'd have to do a bit of work to fix it. This person does not want to spend the money to fix it and, furthermore, thinks the design is just fine. So should I just shrug it off and print anyway, or tell this person to find someone else?
If that's what the customer wants, then just do it. I get customers like that most of the time. I tell them the artwork needs to be redrawn or the font looks horrible and they say that's what they want. Just do it, you warned them.
This is a problem that is all too common out there. Often times I have a customer that sends print files that are... well.... not print files. They're either flattened JPEGs for a multi-colored design or they are in proper format but at very low resolution and pixelated etc. I usually start by making sure that they understand the type of files that need to be sent in to ensure a high quality finished product and usually after I let them know just how big of a deal it really is they then get that figured out and re-submit new art files which work great. But you are going to run into customers sometimes that just do not understand how important the art files are and refuse to get you proper art and in those cases I will typically let them know what it would cost to re-work or re-draw the file for them and if they don't want to do that then I politely turn down the business. We wouldn't want the shirts out there in the marketplace somewhere looking aweful and someone say - gross, where was that printed? "oh - Storenvy" -- see, bad art makes the clothing brand look bad and it also makes the production company look bad.
an example - Let's say you throw a big party and tell everyone to "bring their own meat" or whatever they want you to throw on the grill when they get there. So some people bring steaks and some people bring chicken and it's all good but then this one guy brings this nasty, old, rotten, hamburger meat from like 2 years ago and hands it to you and says here - make this into patties and throw them on the grill. It makes extra work for you and the whole time you know it's going to taste really bad anyway. Then he eats it and gets really sick and comes to you saying - what did you do to my burger? Don't eat at that guy's house - you'll end up leaving really sick!!
So yeah anyway, that was a really long, drawn out way of saying, it's a good idea to make sure to get art that is as perfect as possible before going to print with it - it may make things more difficult during the process but everyone wins in the end!!
If that's what the customer wants, then just do it. I get customers like that most of the time. I tell them the artwork needs to be redrawn or the font looks horrible and they say that's what they want. Just do it, you warned them.
and Nick - I do agree with you also. There are times where you do just have to roll with what the customer sends - it depends on just how bad it is - as long as it's within the "acceptable range" but maybe just not perfect, we often times will roll with it as long as the customer knows 100% what to expect..
If that's what the customer wants, then just do it. I get customers like that most of the time. I tell them the artwork needs to be redrawn or the font looks horrible and they say that's what they want. Just do it, you warned them.
i totally agree. we get customers like this all the time, they don't want to spend a mere $25.00 to have the artwork redrawn, and we just warn them it's not going to look good. that's about all you can do.. if they insist, just go with it.
Some things never change. My earliest recollection was in 1978, being handed a photocopy and being told, "here is my camera ready artwork". It's tough to argue with a client. The only way to protect yourself is to require them to sign-off on a proof and run with it. Make darn sure that you keep up with your proofs.
Thanks for the advice everyone. This turned into a non-issue as the person grew unhappy with her own work after a couple of days. I didn't feel right about going to print with the design "as is" since these shirts would potentially be sold to her Katate class members, two of which are my niece and nephew. So it's not someone who's a total stranger. Also, since I'm just starting up, I don't want one of my first jobs to be shoddy. Like Steve said, people may think I did the bad lettering.
Thanks to everyone too about getting customers to sign off on proofs and getting a deposit. Even though I'm doing jobs right now for acquaintances and friends, who most likely won't screw me. It's common sense stuff I'll need to put into practice soon.
Now I've learned that this person wants more lettering in addition to the logo. Lettering that goes all the way up to the neckline, down to the bottom of the shirt. Uh, yeah, I'm not set up to do, nor do I have any intention of doing oversize printing. If it's not one thing it's another
Mike! Good to hear man! Good luck with everything and feel free to post questions on here anytime and we'll all do our best to help. It's certainly an industry where you're going to have to learn from your own mistakes sometimes but anytime we can help you avoid those then I'm all game for that and it sounds like you are too!
Being a printer we seem to look more critically at the artwork, I remember before we started doing screenprinting, we'd get shirts from softball tournaments we played in and at the time thought they were really good looking. Now looking at those shirts, you start picking it apart and notice all the bad stuff on it! (lol) A friend of mine had some shirts made up for his company from another printer, I hadn't seen him for about 6 months, I noticed his company name was spelled wrong on his shirt! He has over 50 people working for him plus all the shirts he gave out to customers and nobody even noticed the misspelling!! I do all their shirts now!!
I don't like doing customer's crappy artwork, it will always bite you, they'll never take the blame if people say the shirt looks bad, they blame the printer! But, you fix the artwork for them and people say the artwork looks good, they take the credit and say they did the artwork! I had one customer do this to me, she would charge customers that came to me with her artwork, $5-10 less than my quotes for the artwork! Luckily I still had the copy of her artwork and showed them how I had cleaned it up! And it was going to cost them an additional $25.00 to clean her artwork! It's funny what some people will do to save a couple bucks, but in the long run costing them more! (lol)
Using sloppy customer artwork 
