[Mtnview]

Just venting at the weekend warrior graphic designer that knows just enough to be dangerous. I have a customer that submitted some artwork they wanted me to use on a 4 foot tall banner a couple months ago. It contained a couple different low resolution bmp (96 dpi web images) blown up with the jaggies and you could see where an eraser tool had been used to remove a background. Arrgh!.

Someone else from the same club submitted artwork for t-shirts a couple days ago. Once again the graphic for the back contained a couple of web images with eraser marks. Printing the back graphic means the onetime web images would now be over 5" tall. One of the front chest graphics started out low resolution (jaggies, blurriness) even though it read as 300 dpi. Someone thought they could pull a rabbit out of the hat with some hocus pocus and magically turn a 72 or 96 dpi image into 300 dpi.

Like I can afford to lose anymore hair.

 

[Blue92]

I drove an hour round trip to take a cell phone picture of a logo on the side of a building so I could re-create it for a banner......

Fun isn't it?

 

[dennyk671]

Oh yeah. We get people who send us Microsoft documents that have low resolution graphic elements. They think All we need to do is print it. One time we had someone come in looking for a job as a graphic designer. He didn't know how to use Adobe and said he can design anything in Microsoft Word and he stuck by it. oh boy.

 

[Beaker]

I see the eraser traces on white regularly (I work in print, not tees though).

Designer can't see 'em on their super-bright 27" Mac display, but I can on my old Windows PC, and you can be sure the ink, toner and paper will see them.

 

[gorilladiver]

Dealing with the wanna be designers is my biggest source of daily frustration.

I very rarely get to do any actual design work anymore, most of my day is spent vectorizing low res logos created in someone's bootleg copy of photoshop, or dealing with word docs, power point or publisher files.

 

[treefox2118]

I reject bad artwork and charge a fee for it.

 

[Beaker]

BTW, when faced with lo-res logos I first try searching Google for the company name along with filetype:pdf, you can often find a decent vector logo embedded in their brochures, newsletters etc. from a time when they employed actual designers, and not let the intern to have a go. This can't help you when presented a 'logo' designed from scratch in MS Paint of course...

I agree, Microsoft has done a lot of damage with the rubbish it has enabled people to produce, particularly Power Point and Publisher.

 

[Mtnview]

Ah yes. The Microsoft word and publisher artists. Had one of those in February. Designed his own 2 sided rack cards in publisher with background graphics right to the edge (no bleed) and 3 across so I could print them on an 8.5 x 11 sheet. I told him the graphics were lower resolution than the 300 dpi I needed but he insisted they were 300 dpi. They may have started at 300 but MS reduces dpi.

 

[Mtnview]

...I first try searching Google for the company name along with filetype:pdf, you can often find a decent vector logo embedded in their brochures, newsletters etc...

I have also done this. Seems more and more of those lately someone just plops a jpg in the header.

 

[treefox2118]

I created a really nice and simple PHP file checker for people to upload their artwork to. It checks resolution of JPG and PNG, and if it's a PDF it'll check the resolution of any rasters within that PDF.

Then, it'll ask the submitter what the final size of the item is (business card, postcard, t-shirt, etc) and it'll give them a nice checklist of problems.

If they try to submit that file for printing, it'll even warn them: "This file has problems and fixes will be billed at a rate of $xx per hour."

I am setting up a little kiosk workstation in the storefront for people to use with the artwork they bring in.

 

[TYGERON]

I am setting up a little kiosk workstation in the storefront for people to use with the artwork they bring in.

Nice.
So they can actually see why the crap they bring is crap

 

[StarDesigns]

I have too many of these to even begin to complain about just one! However, I will brag on a client we recently picked up owns three and opening a fourth tattoo shop. He called and wanted to talk about printing his own line of tshirts to be sold in his shops and at festivals and bike rally's. I was afraid he would bring in a bunch of hand drawn art to our first meeting but nope he came with a Zip drive containing all six designs in .eps format!! All I had to do was resize the graphics and add in some half tones then print the films! He was happy and I was ecstatic!


Mitchell - Star Designs
Sent from my iPhone using TShirtForums app

 

[Comin'OutSwingin]

Mitchell, I for one am glad that you see the positive from this particular client. Oftentimes a client brings in bad files (ie. small raster images) because they just don't know or understand the way the print process works and what's needed by the screen print shop or graphic designer in order to get an image print ready. In the beginning I had no clue, either.

Now, I provide my screen printer with print-sized, color separated tech packs in vector format for every design that gets printed. Each design has a job name and number. My printer doesn't have to do anything but print the separations to film. Sometimes all it takes is a little education of the client, and you can get what you want. I doubt that many in the screen print or graphics industry could just step in and provide some of their clients with the tools necessary to do their client's various jobs.

It's part of being in the service industry. Sometimes you need to communicate your needs/wants to the customer/client. It's really not their fault that they don't know what you need, and if you took the time to tell them, you *might* be surprised...

 

[miktoxic]

I reject bad artwork and charge a fee for it.

exactly. no two ways around it.

I created a really nice and simple PHP file checker for people to upload their artwork to. It checks resolution of JPG and PNG, and if it's a PDF it'll check the resolution of any rasters within that PDF.

Then, it'll ask the submitter what the final size of the item is (business card, postcard, t-shirt, etc) and it'll give them a nice checklist of problems.

If they try to submit that file for printing, it'll even warn them: "This file has problems and fixes will be billed at a rate of $xx per hour."

I am setting up a little kiosk workstation in the storefront for people to use with the artwork they bring in.

you should sell that little piece of software you created in PHP. i for one would buy it!

 

[smonster50]

Oh yeah. We get people who send us Microsoft documents that have low resolution graphic elements. They think All we need to do is print it. One time we had someone come in looking for a job as a graphic designer. He didn't know how to use Adobe and said he can design anything in Microsoft Word and he stuck by it. oh boy.

I know that type of guy, it is absolutely amazing isn't it?

 

[smonster50]

It's part of being in the service industry. Sometimes you need to communicate your needs/wants to the customer/client. It's really not their fault that they don't know what you need, and if you took the time to tell them, you *might* be surprised...

I definitely don't have a problem educating my customer, but 9 times out of 10 when you start talking technical, their eyes gloss over and you can tell they don't understand a word your saying. So you dumb it down and they still don't get it. So then you find yourself explaining everything from vector vs. raster to 300 dpi vs. web images. Then an hour later they still want to hand you the 72 dpi image they got off of google image search. Some people don't get it or don't want to get it, and that's fine, that's why I have a job. But managing customer expectations when it comes to garbage files they create, can get extremely frustrating.

 

[drdoct]

Well, since we're on it I'll add the 'vectorizer'. They will drop a 92dpi object into illustrator and save as .ai. Instant vector file as needed! Most of the people I work with will use my art. It's cheaper for them normally.

 

[BrianB]

One customer asked me if a PDF would do for the artwork he needed screen printed. I said yes. He then sends me a PDF of a screen shot of his desktop with the image he wanted opened in Word.

 

[Viper Graphics]

One customer asked me if a PDF would do for the artwork he needed screen printed. I said yes. He then sends me a PDF of a screen shot of his desktop with the image he wanted opened in Word.

LoL no way!!!! that musta been the customer I fired a year ago!!! Too Much!!