This is topic What have you done to improve layouts when you are forbidden to change much? in forum Letterhead/Pinstriper Talk at The Letterville BullBoard.
Sometimes, we are handed "Nephew Art", or worse- "Designer/Ad Agency Nephew Art" and told "That's our logo. Don't change it, just do it!"
Occasionally, we may choose to walk away from the job, however, that is not always practical from a business standpoint. Periodically, we get away with making a few improvements, sometimes with the decision maker's permission, other times, we just sneak in the "upgrade" because our conscience just won't allow us to to it the way they have given it to us.
Please post some before and after images showing what you were given, and what minor changes you were able to finesse through to improve the product. If an explanation of what you did is in order, please include it.
I have a few I'll post as soon as I'm done twiddling with them.
Posted by David Harding (Member # 108) on :
OK, here's my first one. We replaced a sign at The Seasons apartments. Their ad agency gave us a disk with the "approved" logo and type. A picture of the original sign is here:
The original logo in color is on the following picture of a secondary sign at the apartments. Also shown is the logo the ad agency sent us.
I told the regional manager the logo looked like something you'd see through a kaleidoscope. She wasn't going to allow me to change the concept much. I thought they were trying to portray leaves in four seasons and I came up with the following to show color changes in seasons, green for summer, yellow for flowers in the spring, silver for winter, and orange for autumn. I ditched the way overused Times Roman and used Arthur Vanson's Essendine Small Caps--thank you Arthur for such beautiful work!
We cleaned and reused the old brick and foundation and this is the result.
Posted by David Harding (Member # 108) on :
Here's the next one. This is the same management company and same ad agency. The original sign is here:
The ad agency's approved logo is here:
I couldn't stand the script font they used but they wanted a script and they wanted the initials in a box. Charles Borges designed a simply awesome script called Sarah Script, which was just perfect for this. Thank you, Charles! This is the logo remake:
Here's the finished sign:
Posted by Bob Sauls (Member # 11321) on :
David would you please share the name of the font used for The Seasons? That is assuming it is not your original work. It reminds me of some of the lettering from the old Speedball Lettering book and of the Title font of a book I bought from SignCraft years ago about sign writing in general. It was authored by a fellow from Great Britain as I recall.
Posted by David Harding (Member # 108) on :
Bob,
It's Essendine Small Caps by Arthur Vanson. He designed a family of Essendine type, which was inspired by the incised Roman lettering on Rome's Trajan column. I've used this along with the Trajan family of fonts as well.
Posted by jack wills (Member # 521) on :
I have been a child of the the "Hellvetica" era. I have seen the best and worst of design of that time. I still like that font and having to learn the nuancez of original shape, it became easy to manipulate "Hellishveticer" to the max and have a lot of fun with it. Stacking U&L on top of each other to stretching beyond repair. It sold, I made money and went home, drank beer.
The message is: "Fog it on and let it Go" Git the bread, head fer the shed. Non of my business anymore...
We din have no machines, just brushes.
Posted by Si Allen (Member # 420) on :
We e e ll ... if it is from an Ad Agency, and they have paid thru the nose for it ... I will do it and caution them to never tell anyone that I designed it.
If it is by a "Graphic Atreeste" ... I tell them to fire him because he is not a "Designer" ... just an idiot with a computer. If they say it is OK and do it anyhow, I do make subtle changes.
And if the idiot with a computer complains ....... I ask if he designed it in Illy or Photoshop .... then say that I imported it into Corel ... and you know that sometimes it will make some minor changes in the way it opens it. If they say that they used Corel ... then I say that I opened it in Illy.
Same thing when given a swatch with a PMS color to match. I mix up a color as close as possible ... then carefully paint the swatch, wne it dries, I dip it 1/2 way in my color....always get a compliment on a perfect match!
Ya jess gotta be smarter than them!
[ April 08, 2010, 12:07 AM: Message edited by: Si Allen ]
Posted by Dave Grundy (Member # 103) on :
I always believed in the adage that the customer is always right. As long as he could write the right amount on the cheque, he got what he thought was right.
And I got what was rightfully mine..a paycheck for doing the job right.
Why spend time trying to change a customer's mind when that time could be used in doing what they want in the first place?
Posted by Michael Clanton (Member # 2419) on :
"What have you done to improve layouts when you are forbidden to change much?"
If they won't let me change it, I just do it as-is... and put my competitors name on it.
Posted by Michael Gene Adkins (Member # 882) on :
I don't change a thing except a little spacing between letters if it is wrong or totally screwed up.
I learned my lesson many years ago. I'm not going to lose another job because I insulted someone's design. For instance, I personally like your seasons layout, but it is too tight, too crammed up. Should I tell you to change it? See how it goes on forever???
Besides, all of those layouts you presented were decent enuff before your changes, and nobody but us here at Letterville would notice or care. On these jobs you've mentioned, I'm just the guy being hired to put it together the way they've designed it.
Posted by David Harding (Member # 108) on :
Here's an example from the project above where we tweaked the spacing between the letters and also changed the stroke to improve the intended small caps look.
The original sign is here. To me, with that big open arch at the top, it looked like they'd forgotten to finish the sign.
We tore down the sign to a little above the second tier and then rebuilt it using brick to match the buildings. The address is Essendine, which goes so well with the Trajan lettering.
Posted by Mr Curtis Dalton (Member # 7547) on :
I strongly agree with Michael. And guys, not all "Designers" are idiots that don't know what they're doing just because they didn't start out with vinyl cutters and vector art or a brush. I've seen plenty of "Sign Guys" depend on a clip-art book because they can't draw a stick man... this does not mean they suck at signs.. just designs. Today with digital printers and cutters not everything HAS to be vector. 9 out of 10 chance if a "designer" hands you something horrid, it's because they think Microsoft Word is a design program or they taught themselves Photoshop on their own time from a pirated copy. Some times we need to ask ourselves what a "designer" is. I've seen tons of pricey Artistic Paintings that looked worse then what's left on my toilet paper after use... I'm still not gonna tell the artist to change it, unless I was asked.
Posted by Jon Jantz (Member # 6137) on :
David, I had a situation similar to this a few weeks ago. Friend of mine calls and wants to get a truck lettered. He sends over the artwork and I don't like it at all... he's a manager in this company, but the logo is a production of the owner's son and the son is pretty proud of it. They've been using it for a couple years so my friend says he thinks it'll be hard to change.
First logo they send me is in B&W, they can't get a color version around at the time for some reason...
Here it is... ORIGINAL...
They were really worried about not being able to get me the color version but I told them I figured I could reproduce it easily enough... he wondered if I could find that globe and I laughingly him, 9 times out of 10 these guys punch up Google Images.... sure enough, I typed 'earth' into GI and it was the first or second to pop up... They told me the bigger letters were blue and smaller letters green, so here's the reproduced version... I twisted their arm into leaving off the LLC.
To make long story short, when I sent this one (which was exactly like their color version the son had created), I also sent a couple other ideas of various alternatives, some with or without a globe of some kind. I threw out a lot of info about needing to be able to be simplified for embroidery, printing, shirts, etc. and explained while their original was very nice, it needed to be able to be adapted to different uses.
The son picked one that was fairly close to the original... he had a couple of other suggestions that I incorporated as slightly as possible and this is what they ended up with.
When it was all said and done, after I got it printed at ProDigital Supply on 3m IJ-180, I think it turned out looking much better on the truck than if I had gone with their original like they asked....
I'm thinking of adding this clause to my Proposal Form....
Sign Design Charge: Your sign will have a design fee included in the price. If you want to help design or have input in the design, the price of the sign will reflect this. It is based on a percentage. If it is determined you had 20% input, the sign price will increase by 20%, 40% your idea... 40% price increase. If the design is 100% your idea, the price will increase by 100%. This price increase is to compensate our company for the bad advertisement caused by your input into the design. If you reach the 100% mark we will sub out your design to another sign shop in order to remove any chance someone will see the sign in our shop.
[ April 09, 2010, 01:38 PM: Message edited by: Jon Jantz ]
Posted by Sam Staffan (Member # 4552) on :
Jon you have got to beef up the resolution on your print. What dpi do you have them phone #'s at 4,6? Posted by Jon Jantz (Member # 6137) on :
Hehe, Sam.... I was gonna blame it on my printer, but he's my bro-in-law so I better not do that.... actually, with the recent rash of people here unhappy with me, I didn't want anyone here calling my customer and telling them I'm taking on a foreign partner.... people from Alabama are funny about stuff like that.
[ April 10, 2010, 10:04 AM: Message edited by: Jon Jantz ]
Posted by David Harding (Member # 108) on :
Perhaps this thread should have been titled:
"How have you enhanced a layout while still keeping the theme of the design sent to you?"
Sometimes, I give up and become the "hired gun" to do whatever the customer asks for but what I'd hoped to see on this was the tweaks you are allowed to make to improve what you were given while still retaining the basic feel of it. What Jon submitted is what I have in mind, other than for the "fuzzy math" in the phone numbers.
Following is what we did on another job. The letters were metal faced plywood mounted on carved HDU panels on a masonry monument. The ad agency gave us something that mimicked the carved panel but was so pixelated and busy it couldn't be executed in sandblasted Granite.
The logo was two horses by a fountain, which was discernible close up but morphed into an unrecognizable blob a short distance away. I wanted to make this into a silhouette that would remain legible. I originally pitched the logo as a 3D carved set of horses and fountain but got shot down on budget issues.
We removed the carved HDU panels, redid the stucco on the structures and installed Granite faces. We were able to match the typeface from the original, which the ad agency was unable to do. I liked the original type better than the agency's choice.
Posted by David Harding (Member # 108) on :
Here's my last one... for now, at least.
The original sign was HDU letters mounted on a curved wall. Over the years, letters had pieces broken off and some had been replaced and were of a different color due to paint fading. There were numerous pieces missing from these letters. There were also many cracks on the letters since they'd been forced to follow the curve of the wall. Since this was on white cast stone, we'd have to match everything exactly or cover it over. I chose the latter. We went out and made careful measurements so I could geometrically figure the radius of the curve, then we cut a jig of that radius and checked our math (it worked).
We built an Aluminum panel on a curve to cover over all the glue and drill holes in the cast stone and cut out Aluminum plate letters to be applied to the panel. The letters were on studs that allowed me to adjust the length to carry the curve through in an aesthetic manner with the flat letters.
We installed the sign as part of a package on Super Bowl Sunday and missed the thriller between the Steelers and Cardinals--hence the night shots of the finished job. Oh well, my team didn't win.
Even though we missed the game, someone drove up and wanted a sign just like it on the curved wall at his business, and his place is in my town, not 30 miles away like SummerBrook was.
[ April 09, 2010, 07:53 PM: Message edited by: David Harding ]
Posted by Dan Antonelli (Member # 86) on :
I really like the before and afters of what was given, and what was produced. The question I have is - did you charge appropriately for that service? Or did you do it for free - to get the job.
If it's the latter - that's part of the problem in terms of the perception of your business that you put out there versus what agencies put out there. You want to give away decades of experience for free? Why? To get the job? Value your experience, and market it as such. To give it away is to assign no value to it.
And the anti-ad agency, graphic designer rants - let's not attempt to pigeon hole people and categorize them as all being terrible sign designers. There are an equal amount of clearly unqualified sign 'designers' sullying the reputation of good ones out there.
Posted by Dan Antonelli (Member # 86) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dave Grundy: Why spend time trying to change a customer's mind when that time could be used in doing what they want in the first place?
Because you're supposed to be a professional. And being paid as such affords you the time to advocate, and educate them on what's in their best interest.
So lets see some of the choices offered here.... 1. Convince them to chuck their design (which maybe they already paid another "designer" for) and convince them to pay you to do the design again. Then pay you to execute the new design. 2. Turn down the work because it's not up to your standards. 3.Hold your nose and do the job as requested. 4.Offer a alternative version of the design without getting paid up front in the hopes convincing the client that the new design is better and also getting the job.
Posted by Jon Jantz (Member # 6137) on :
quote:Originally posted by Dan Antonelli: I really like the before and afters of what was given, and what was produced. The question I have is - did you charge appropriately for that service? Or did you do it for free - to get the job.
In my case, I had given them a price before hand and had figured in some design time... we ended up going over that amount, but other side benefits resulted...
The owner liked the new look enough, he decided to replace their business cards so I was able to get a nice order out of it.
They also have now signed a contract for a brand-new sign out in front of their business...
Posted by David Harding (Member # 108) on :
I tell the customers there are two parts to the job, the design portion and the production portion and each has a price. If they want pricing on the sign, I show them photos of similar signs we have done and give them budget prices based on those.
This was a long time customer and I priced the designs and site surveys to them at $2000 each on this job and included it in the price of the sign since we were assured we'd have the job. I won't do it that way again because, until check is in hand, I don't really have the job, no matter how many assurances there are.
While we were finalizing all the details, a number of things happened. Hurricane Ike roared through and severely damaged several of the properties, trumping all of management's priorities for a few months. While sorting out all the damage, budgets came under review, necessitating some revisions. Then, the economy collapsed, forcing another close look at all the budgets. We still got the job at the price we asked but I was sweating bullets until the checks actually arrived. How much simpler life would have been to have separated the design process from the production.
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