CUSTOMERS ARTWORK – WHAT DO YOU DO?

[Kevin.Beck]

depends upon the job.

If there is very little money in the job, I`ll use the nearest font. But always ask first. if in doubt get the customer to sign off the job.

If there is more money in the job I`ll do some research or redigitise it.

Its very easy to lose 1hrs work looking for the correct font. ( I have 1000’s) all for £30 profit. No thankyou, next customer please.

sorry but it still amases me, customers who expect you move heaven and earth for little money.

[Dave & Rob Lowery]

Ask your customer for the name of his printer and get them to e:mail the layouts to you then at least you are giving him a corporate identity straight off.

[Jon Fields]

thanks for your suggestions..as always very useful..

cheers

Jon

[David Rowland]

if it is a good reproduction onto smooth paper, it will scan very well, you then can determine if you can trace it or not, however tracing Text can be very difficult. Sometimes you can find similar fonts that just need a tweak.

The issue will be, I been doing ‘vectorisation’ for over 10 years and a lot vectorisation comes second nature and can be done in 15 minutes.

… or buy a digital printer :baby:

[Jon Fields]

thanks dave

buying a digital printer in these situations can be useful and overcome
these kind of difficultites….it’s on the cards

Jon

😉

[John Singh]

As Becky says it does depend on the job and how much your client wants that ‘font’

If he’s particular then I explain a little (not too much) the technicalities of either searching for it, reproducing it from scan, or downloading from font site. In all these cases it is going to take time (time = fee).

In most cases before I get to the end of the explanation the customer (who now realises this is gonna cost extra) says something like: ‘Oh! Just find something similar’

[Kevin Flowers]

Jon
a digital printer doesnt cure the problem if something scans badly it will print badly

Kev

[Bryan Cabrera]

If I don’t know a font I usually start by scanning or taking a digitial pic it and uploading it to http://www.whatthefont.com

It doesn’t always give you the exact font (often it does) but many times you will get something similar.

I agree that you can get caught up in trying to get the exact font, so unless the customer is willing to pay it may not be worth it.

Bryan

[Andy Gorman]

It’s funny really; I try to use the one-off expensive fonts whenever I can to stop you buggers copying, and then we all come on here and discuss how to copy artwork. 😀 😀

I do a lot of crash repairs for a local truck body repair centre and even though my digitising is pretty good I’ve got a lot quicker in the last couple of years doing work for them. When it’s too much to reasonably redraw Whatthefont comes in very handy.

Andrew (Vectorwise) is pretty shit hot at identifying fonts, I’ve found. He’s got like, some kind of encyclopaedic font brain, or summink!

[Nigel Fraser]

quote Andy Gorman:

It’s funny really; I try to use the one-off expensive fonts whenever I can to stop you buggers copying, …

Next time i get one of those weird looking fonts that I have nothing like I’ll blame you then Andy :lol1:

N

[bent]

well, personally, i’d set my head on fire and try to put it out with an axe….but if you not suicidally challanged as i am with customer files. Most customers have no idea what they want that’s why they come to us. I would buy a typeface book from Adobe, then trace their logo in Freehand if it’s lineart oriented. Or just scan the logo as lineart with really high res, like 1200 or even 2400 @ 200% size of what they want , then reduce it down and when you place lineart you can tag it with a specific color in illus or freehand. If it two or more colors, you’re going to have to request the art work or spend some time in photoshop recreating it……..which by the way is VERY billable….

good luck

[John Childs]

I plonk down four very thick font listing books in front of them and tell them that they can either sit in a corner quietly and find their font themselves or they can pay me forty pounds an hour to find it for them. It’s amazing how quickly they come up with something that’s near enough.

Obviously that only applies to the small jobs. The big companies know what their fonts are so the problem doesn’t usually arise but, on the odd occasion that it does, then the job is usually big enough for me to do it happily.

[Chris Wool]

quote :

It’s funny really; I try to use the one-off expensive fonts whenever I can to stop you buggers copying, and then we all come on here and discuss how to copy artwork.

yes it does stop the newer people in there tracks.

it could take me up to a hour to identify some fonts so ask the customer how much he charges per hour and say well there you go then and the name of the font is ? funny how they find it.

chris

[Mike Smith]

We have a very simple method, and works 90% of the time.

We offer to reproduce the artwork, save it to disk in a few formats, give them a very nice little print out, both on the Cd cover and in paper format and explain that what ever printing,advertising etc they will have done in the future will be able to use what we have done for them.

Our method will save them pounds in the future and make sure all corporate identity is the same.
we charge £25 pounds for this service and like i said 90% of customers go for it

[Brian Maher]

quote bent:

well, personally, i’d set my head on fire and try to put it out with an axe….

:lol1: :lol1:

we try and match as best as possible, other than that we charge for time spent redrawing etc…

any of you had the "my 7 yr old daughter/son drew this on the pc last night and i’d like to use it as a logo"???

(:) (<(