Artwork Approval

[Nicola McIntosh]

if you sent over the email to be proofed first time, I wouldn’t have printed it until some sort of price was agreed for printing the banner again, (especially on larger jobs) but if it was a small job, its best just to put on a smiley face print it again, just to keep the customer happy so they tell friends and come back again 😀

nik

[Martin Pearson]

I don’t very often have to email artwork for customers to see as most will pop in the workshop to see it but on the odd occasion that I have done it the artwork is sent as an attachment but in the Email I normally ask them to check not only the design but any contact details are correct and names spelt correctly. I am pretty sure they only look at the layout to see if they like it so adding that makes them look in a bit more detail. I am sure it wouldn’t be difficult to incorporate a form for them to complete to say they have proof read the artwork and all details are correct. That way if there was any mistakes it would be easy to point out to the customer that they had approved the job and any mistake were theirs.

[Harry Cleary]

Before I hit the Cut button I will always ring any number. Takes two seconds and saves a lot of hassle changing and faffing about.

[John Gregson]

Yes, you did ask for confirmation but the phone number would have been your error – I’d have done the same and reprinted for free, then slapped the person who did the artwork. :lol1:

[Denise Goodfellow]

quote John Gregson:

Yes, you did ask for confirmation but the phone number would have been your error – I’d have done the same and reprinted for free, then slapped the person who did the artwork. :lol1:

All printed for free and collected. Not worth an argument.

I will have to put a comment as Martin mentioned when I email approval.

I gave myself a good talking too, I didn`t slap myself as I thought that was going too far……. 😀

[Lynn Normington]

Denise I think we can probably all admit to the same 😀

Lynn

[John Gregson]

Its easily done, like you say, its not worth the argument – and another happy customer that passes on your name/number.

[Dave Harrison]

Reminds me of a customer I had few weeks back who gave us the wrong street number for her shop. She insisted that she’d given us the right number until I showed her a printout of her artwork with her signature on it.
Lucky for her it was cut vinyl so an easy fix.
I didn’t charge her for her mistake as I put it down to good customer service, but I let her know it wasn’t my fault and she should pay more attention.

I might not have been so accommodating had her sign been a fret cut tray ! ! !

[Daniel Evans]

Hey guys

I’ve just come unstuck myself but i’ve learnt and won’t make the same mistake.

I done a couple of boards using vinyl text on yellow foamex, needed it to be yellow and this is all i could find plus don’t have a solvent printer yet, anyway it was a basic design arrow with large black text, gave a print out to the customer as no email access and he said yep fine go ahead and gave me a deposit.

I made the signs up, delivered them and he went mental, not what he wanted, text was not big enough etc etc etc, i said that he agreed with the printout i showed him and that nothing had changed, but he was having none of it, i agreed to give him back his deposit as a good will gesture and that i will bring it back over in a couple of weeks when i am back that way.

I’m a new business so can’t afford to go wasting money on materials and not get paid, anyhow i agreed so no bad words against me.

What do you write on your proofs so it states that the customer must check the spelling etc etc etc and that once he has signed off the deposit is non refundable etc?

[Kevin Flowers]

We use the attached direct from Flexi, but feel free to adjust the PDF for you own use

Kev

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Attachments:

Approval.pdf

[Daniel Evans]

Thank Kev, that is perfect, i’ll adjust it to my colours etc but that will work perfectly.

[Kevin Flowers]

Daniel
not a problem hope it helps you out. 24 downloads it must be popular thanks for taking the time to say it was of help

Kev

[Peter Mindham]

Nice one Kev. Simple but to the point. Sometimes clients must understand they are responsible adults who have to admit they make mistakes sometime.

Thanks for posting.

Peter

[Ian Johnston]

quote Kevin Flowers:

We use the attached direct from Flexi, but feel free to adjust the PDF for you own use

Kev

Like the wording but you need to change an "as" to " has"
😀

Ian

[Neil Davey]

quote Ian Johnston:

quote Kevin Flowers:

We use the attached direct from Flexi, but feel free to adjust the PDF for you own use

Kev

Like the wording but you need to change an “as” to ” has”
😀

Ian

Thanks for posting Kev, I checked it out to see if it was the same as I’ve got from Flexi.
Ian, in this case I think "as" is correct.

[Phill Fenton]

Actually, The correct spelling is OK Bejasus 😕

[John Gregson]

I would say "has" too!

[Martin Pearson]

Daniel, I have found that if you show a customer a visual and then tell them the letters will be 50mm high it doesn’t really mean anything to them. I have a board with letters on it cut at different sizes so I can actually say to the customer your letters will be this size. Just has a couple of letters at each size, starts at 25mm and goes up 25mm at a time up till about 200mm.

If your customer had signed a proof you might have got paid but he would still have blamed you for the letters being to small and maybe bad mouthed you.

[Neil Davey]

quote John Gregson:

I would say “has” too!

No, surely it’s "as is" 😀 although Phill probably has the right answer "has always" 😉

[Daniel Evans]

That’s a great idea, i think i’ll make one for myself to show customers.

The thing was, everything on the proof was to scale although downsized to fit on an A4 sheet, board included, so it looked identical to what was made.

My guess is that the customer changed their mind or was being awkward to get money off, I don’t want anyone bad mouthing me but i’m not gonna last long in business if i redo things after they’ve signed a proof to say it’s fine, where do you draw the line?

[Peter Normington]

quote Neil Davey:

quote Ian Johnston:

quote Kevin Flowers:

We use the attached direct from Flexi, but feel free to adjust the PDF for you own use

Kev

Like the wording but you need to change an “as” to ” has”
😀

Ian

Thanks for posting Kev, I checked it out to see if it was the same as I’ve got from Flexi.
Ian, in this case I think “as” is correct.

I think you got the wrong "as" Neil, the one in question is "When production as begun"

[Denise Goodfellow]

Thank you Kevin, I down loaded it and will adjust for my business.

I have just got to add a small section relating to idiot tax. LOL

I think some customers you cannot win, they will argue till the cows come home.

[Neil Davey]

😳 😳 😳

[Kevin Flowers]

Neil
i created this in Flexi in the template section if you want the Flexi file let me know. Obviously in Flexi it automatically scales & inserts your image into the template when it is selected.

Kev

[Chris Windebank]

Cheers Kev, very useful

[John Harding]

yes thanks like mine but better in some ways so time for some revision me thinks – thanks for sharing 😀

[Martin Pearson]

Daniel, that’s the point I was trying to make, when the customer sees the visual on an A4 sheet everything looks fine and how they want it but some seem to have trouble imagining how big it will actually be once it is made up.

The customer you had may well have been like that and expected the lettering to be much bigger than it was rather than just looking to get some money off.
Point is that a proof helps you from a legal point of view so you get paid for the work you do but it doesn’t always help with customer relations so anything you can do to make things easier for the customer to understand is going to help.

Just to give you a quick example I once had a customer that was looking for a projecting sign with their company name a minimum of 4 inches high.
I had a real problem trying to explain to them that it couldn’t be done as the sign would end up being 12 foot wide :lol1:
They couldn’t understand how I couldn’t make the text shorter and still keep the same text height. As I was told by the customer " Your suppose to be a signmaker, it’s your job to do this sort of thing"

[Phill Fenton]

quote Martin:

Just to give you a quick example I once had a customer that was looking for a projecting sign with their company name a minimum of 4 inches high.
I had a real problem trying to explain to them that it couldn’t be done as the sign would end up being 12 foot wide :lol1:
They couldn’t understand how I couldn’t make the text shorter and still keep the same text height. As I was told by the customer ” Your suppose to be a signmaker, it’s your job to do this sort of thing”

That’s because we’re conditioned to believe in the conventional experience of euclidean geometry. However, Einstein taught us that the space time continuum is curved which allows us to cram more letters into a given space if we choose to (and you of all people should now all about cramming stuff into small spaces having lived half your life in a submarine) . Try and be a bit more helpful next time Martin 😕

[Harry Cleary]

quote Phill Fenton:

That’s because we’re conditioned to believe in the conventional experience of euclidean geometry. However, Einstein taught us that the space time continuum is curved which allows us to cram more letters into a given space if we choose to (and you of all people should now all about cramming stuff into small spaces having lived half your life in a submarine) . Try and be a bit more helpful next time Martin 😕

😀 😀 😀 made my day, that did!

[Craig.Tiley]

quote Daniel Evans:

That’s a great idea, i think i’ll make one for myself to show customers.

The thing was, everything on the proof was to scale although downsized to fit on an A4 sheet, board included, so it looked identical to what was made.

My guess is that the customer changed their mind or was being awkward to get money off, I don’t want anyone bad mouthing me but I’m not gonna last long in business if i redo things after they’ve signed a proof to say it’s fine, where do you draw the line?

I think you are right mate. Kev’s form is great but there are some assholes out there that would complain even if it was perfect and exactly as he had pictured. Word of mouth is a very powerful thing and most of my custom is based on it but if i had a guy like him i wouldn’t move mountains for him because i wouldn’t be arsed if he never came back again. He is the sort of guy that could go back to his pals and say "look how cheap i got this for because i winged about it" Next thing you know they could all be at it! Not what you need when starting out.

An interesting read and thanks for the download Kev – never noticed that before! 😀

[Larry Brady]

Here is a good laugh for you guys i once done a proof with my mobile no.
on it for the customer as he was waiting on a new no. He ok,d the proof after a few days and gave me the new no. which i forgot to put on his sign.I supplied him with his sign complete with my no. which he didnt notice until he got to his business with it.