posted
A vector file is not a logo or an artwork. It is 1's & 0's, a toolpath, a jig. A vector file is a work product, and it is owned by whoever created it.
-------------------- Steve Purcell Purcell Woodcarving & Signmaking Cape Cod, MA
Instagram: Purcell Woodcraft
************************** Intelligent Design Is No Accident Posts: 902 | From: Cape Cod, MA | Registered: Oct 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Doug Allan: judging by all the corporate clients that can't even dig up vector artwork for me to make them a sign of their own logo... I wouldn't hold out much hope for a few line drawings I might have created over the years.
...maybe others have had beter luck with Ford, or Anderson windows... but Kissy's scenario is more typical of my experience. When a new Harley-Davidson/Kawasaki bike shop opened up I could not get squat from them... I got it here in letterville (under the radar) but grumbling out loud in front of my sympathetic peers... no reason I should have to vectorize it again & no reason I should have to pay to buy a copy of David Dachs version thast he doesn't own... unless I run out of preferrable options. "My client should pay" you say?.. well of course... they did!! ...but still, I was able to sell a sign of another "wheel" without having to reinvent the wheel first.
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Uh Fred - I'd do the math before shooting from the hip - -wait on multiple E-Mails ?- or use your skills to git the job out the door - let me git this straight - first you politely request art work, -almost!!!you get the ansering machine first - then maybe 2 days later customer returns your call - -day 3 - do you have a vector file of that logo? Customer - a what? Nevermind, just send me what you got - I'll try to work with it. Day 4 begins. . .search Google, Dogpile, BOTW, Etc. for Logo to no avail. . .more time wasted. Call customer again because they never E-Mailed art . . .what day is this now? I'd rather just spend 15 or 20 minutes re-creating it to my standards - which are usually superior to what customers send anyhow - over & out - Carl
-------------------- Carl Wood Olive Branch, Ms Posts: 1393 | From: Olive Branch,MS USA | Registered: Nov 1999
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You can go to Staples and get about 2 million clipart files from their shelves and at very little cost. Most of it is junk as far as the sign industry applications go, but that hasn't stopped sign makers (usually bad ones) from slapping this garbage onto signs, displays, logos and coffee cups.
Go to a local flea market and you can readily be surrounded by the number 3 in Microgramma Italic, Harley-Davidson logos on damn near anything it'll fit on, digital prints of realistic fire patterns and more. Does anyone here honestly believe that all those were vectorized, created by, or even paid for, by the people retailing this stuff?
Let's face it, the sign business has been devalued with the inception of vinyl graphics, but it certainly wasn't because of the technology itself. Early cutters were expensive and fonts cost a lot of money. You had to be a computer wizard to vectorize artwork and got top dollar doing it directly for the corporate companies.
It's when all this artwork became readily available that the tide turned. People who could draw a design and paint it by hand were quickly outnumbered by people who couldn't draw a straight line with a ruler, but had 300,000 clip art files and 800 fonts they bought at the local computer store. As the demand grew, the technology became less expensive and collections of clip art exploded along side it becuase of the increased demand for it. As the internet has grown, the availabity of clip art became global and, as Peter has eluded to, overseas websites like BOTW are not restrained by Amercan copyright laws. Throw in today's P2P file sharing technology and even the best graphics programs are available for the cost of an internet connection.
Many people who create clip art collections in the hopes to make a profit from sales often wind up with a bad taste in their mouth after it has been swapped, shared and plagerized for a couple of years. Fonts get renamed and wind up on free font sites leaving the original designers without credit for them, much less any payment.
The problem doesn't lie with the files, but how they are distributed. Once they are in a format that can be replicated or transferred by anyone with a computer, they are no longer realistically protected from copyright and trademark infringements. It's gotten to such a scale that persuing legal channels isn't worth the expense. That's why some companies look the other way so easily. The rest just see it as free marketing and increased brand recognition and let it go at that.
As long as there is a demand for it, clip art's future is secured, but the most demand has always been by sign shops that have long since closed because they did not seperate themselves from the pack of sign shops surviving on ONLY clip art.
There's a saying..."If you can't run with the big dogs, stay on the porch."
There's a lot of these "dog-eat-dog" sign shops who fail because they continue to rely on the same "art" as the shop down the street and when the other guy starts working cheaper to stay afloat, the lowballer food chain catches up with them both in the long run. They'll always be stuck "on the porch" because relying on clipart usually clips their legs and there's no way to run.
Soapbox now put back in closet... Rapid
-------------------- Ray Rheaume Rapidfire Design 543 Brushwood Road North Haverhill, NH 03774 rapidfiredesign@hotmail.com 603-787-6803
I like my paint shaken, not stirred. Posts: 5648 | From: North Haverhill, New Hampshire | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote: I would say that with the internet at your disposal you would first ask for the CD, or the correct file by email, and if they can't find it then ask for permission to supply a non-authorized version. Then download if from the supplier of your choice.
Obviously either is preferable to scanning a brochure or other printed art source and using that.
Carl I don't understand where there is any math to do or that I'm shooting from the hip in my post. The balance of my post was quoting Kissy's post. Perhaps you didn't see that. My post is shown above this paragraph.
All I was saying was to ask for the authorized digital artwork and then they either supply it or you ask for an okay to supply substitute artwork yourself before proceeding.
If you feel that vectorizing it yourself is somehow superior from either a business or a quality perspective, then go for it. All things being equal, I'd rather spend five minutes finding, downloading and comparison inspecting the artwork than twenty minutes doing my own version.
[ July 26, 2005, 08:49 AM: Message edited by: Fred Weiss ]
-------------------- Fred Weiss Allied Computer Graphics, Inc. 4620 Lake Worth Road Lake Worth, FL 33463 561 649-6300 allcompu@allcompu.com Posts: 427 | From: Lake Worth, Florida | Registered: Feb 2003
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Charge a hefty fee that makes it worthwhile to recreate the artwork and you'll be amazed how quickly customers will jump into gear trying to locate what you need.
20 minutes to redraw a logo? No big deal with a $60 minimum on redrawing artwork.
-------------------- "If I share all my wisdom I won't have any left for myself."
Mike Pipes stickerpimp.com Lake Havasu, AZ mike@stickerpimp.com Posts: 8746 | From: Lake Havasu, AZ USA | Registered: Jun 2000
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Fred - There is mucho math to do - compare apples to apples - jacking around for several days waiting on a customer to supply the art or do it myself in between other tasks; i.e. waiting on hold on the phone - eating breakfast - -it's a TIME thing - please re-read my post - - a lot of people promise to supply art & make an honest effort to do so, however the Devil is in the details . . .
-------------------- Carl Wood Olive Branch, Ms Posts: 1393 | From: Olive Branch,MS USA | Registered: Nov 1999
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