I know you took a lot of heat on the other post and it's quite frustrating getting responses to a question that you didn't even ask. I'm guilty of that too but I was trying to respond to the responses (!?!?) and meant no offense to you.
That being said...I probably would charge $ 125-150 per door for these doors as-is. Or I might have tried to up-sell the job with a gradient fade or an outline or a shadow.
It's really a pretty good job for your first truck. There's a little too much space between the letters and the punctuation - but it's a little crowded with your secondary copy. I think you could have dropped the Burbank, IL down about an inch and the same with the DOT numbers. Or better yet, put the DOTs an inch or two from the bottom of the door. The have no significance to the name of the company and, in my opinion, take away from the design of the graphic.
Here's a tip on how to handle excess negative space from the computer generated kerning that is the default in graphics programs.
In the default font..this is what you get...
With a little kerning and reducing the size of the punctuation gives you this...
There are many ways to look at this one - but you are definitely off to a good start.
quote:Originally posted by Nevman: Here's a tip on how to handle excess negative space from the computer generated kerning that is the default in graphics programs.
No offense taken BTW
I understood everything in your post but this line. What is kerning?
Answered my own question. After you edited your post it became clear what you meant. Thanks.
[ April 20, 2007, 09:12 PM: Message edited by: Mike Normington ]
-------------------- Mike Normington Custom Graphics Burbank, IL
"The only thing permanent is change." Posts: 43 | From: Chicago, IL | Registered: Apr 2007
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posted
Sorry Mike - I hit the ADD REPLY button instead of PREVIEW POST button before I finished putting up the pics...
Kerning is the spacing between letters and characters. As I believe that you can agree, there is a lot of wasted space in your design between the letters and the periods. Tightening it up like I did makes it more appealing and readable.
Hope this makes sense...
-------------------- Pat Neve, Jr. Sign Man, Inc. 4580 N. US 1 Melbourne, FL 32935 321-537-8675 Capt. Sign
posted
Sure does! I agree with you on the spacing with the permit numbers too. I originally laid it out for ont of those hatches on the side of an international sleeper. The guy wanted it all to fit on there so it got scrunched. I could have changed it for the door I guess but I got lazy. excellent suggestions. Thank you.
-------------------- Mike Normington Custom Graphics Burbank, IL
"The only thing permanent is change." Posts: 43 | From: Chicago, IL | Registered: Apr 2007
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posted
Typical tractor lettering is $200 or so... give or take... for a basic job. Price goes up for better stuff or specialty vinyls.
-------------------- Bruce Bowers
DrCAS Custom Lettering and Design Saint Cloud, Minnesota
"Things work out best for the people who make the best of the way things work out." - Art Linkletter Posts: 6451 | From: Saint Cloud, Minnesota | Registered: Jun 1999
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You've got some legibility issues going on. The splitting GD into two colors hurts the contrast and therefore the legibility. Placing carriers over the light blue also kills the contrast. Look at the lower photo. You can't read carriers but Burbank can be easily read
-------------------- George Perkins Millington,TN. goatwell@bigriver.net
"I started out with nothing and still have most of it left"
quote:Originally posted by George Perkins: $200-$225
You've got some legibility issues going on. The splitting GD into two colors hurts the contrast and therefore the legibility. Placing carriers over the light blue also kills the contrast. Look at the lower photo. You can't read carriers but Burbank can be easily read
I agree that the white on the light blue is hard to see from a distance...
So what color would you do the lettering in to improve the visiblity? Navy blue outline around the white copy?
-------------------- Mark Kottwitz Kottwitz Graphics Ridgely, MD www.SeeMySignWork.com -------------------------- Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein Posts: 746 | From: Ridgely, MD | Registered: Oct 2000
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posted
Hiya Mike, Did you crunch your numbers and determine hourly rate yet? Going by the prices that the others provided, you now have to decide if you can charge $200 or so and be profitable. If not, you'll need to charge more. There are a couple of things I want to mention about design. While yours could use a little tweaking, it's not bad. Anyway, the most obvious way to set yourself apart from your competition are you designs. So, be sure to work on improving your design skills. Another thing I think you should practice is to charge seperately for your design time. By doing this, it shows the client that there is value in the finished product, plus,the original idea too. So, while you may charge more than competition, your invoice shows that you are providing more service to the client.
Havin' fun,
Checkers
-------------------- a.k.a. Brian Born www.CheckersCustom.com Harrisburg, Pa Work Smart, Play Hard Posts: 3775 | From: Harrisburg, Pa. U.S.A. | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
Oh come on.....Now for some real world critiquing. The design is not so good and that's being nice. It's looks like you tried to cram 10lbs of crap in a 5lb bag. It reads like a newspaper at best, not a good idea for a truck lettering design. The relation between kerning and line spacing is horrid. Oh, but the letters look nice, yea, real nice, thanks to the vinyl cutter.
How can you not know what Kerning is? This is kind of like going into the pizza shop business and saying what's pepperoni?.
This is what irks the hell out of me with the sign biz anymore: $400 PC, $400 Corel Draw, $400 Chinese vinyl cutter, come to Letterville for a free education and start sign business, PRICELESS.
Now for the good news.....You said you have mostly airbrushed. maybe you're an excellent illustrator but a designer NOT. Go take some graphic/commercial design, night classes at the local University and educate yourself, if you haven't already became too lazy, you won't regret it!
I just wonder what this job would look like, if done with a set of lettering quills?
Now for the best news......With a better design, (in our area, for a basic 2 color design) you could have got $250 if the truck #s were included and not to mention, I just took the heat off of ya. Now I'm the goat
posted
Burbank IL is right in a densely populated part of Chicago Il, and there is a ton of competition in that area.
A lot of the trucking companies slap $10 printed retangular stickers on the door of their trucks, or the die punched graphics (those old machines are still out their working and I saw one in operation at Zero-Nine up in Woodstock I (yes, those guys that provide ribbons for your Gerber Edge)
While I think $200-$250 is fair for a one time trucker, that price wont fly for a fleet of trucks, from the Client's point of view.
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