posted
Business has sure changed in the last few years. I remember the first time I did business via phone calls and a fax machine, with the final artwork being via a courier. It simply amazed me.
I just finished up a job that used all digital technology. I had no meetings with the client and they were 300 miles away. It started with an email from them. The job was to be a rush job, something not exceptional in todays world. But the rush was on my account not the clients, as we were going out of town a few days from when I got the request.
It happened over a weekend too, but the client was a long term customer so I didn't mind. An extra thousand dollars of money for our trip was to be the bonus for working the weekend.
We chatted briefly on the phone and then I got to work. I was to design a logo, with little direction from the client... they wanted something origianl and they had total confidence in my abilities.
But I was stumped... mostly because I was already in vacation mode... only two days away.
But our digital age proved to make my job much easier. I did some surfing for ideas... too easy these days. And my research sparked an original idea I liked.
So I did up a few sketches - first in my trusty sketchbook and scanned these into the puter for revision and refinement. And then I hit a wall once again... I needed a special font. An online search and download (for a fee) got me what I needed in a hurry.
My customer wanted HANDDRAWN so after laying out the type I traced it by hand using my digital pen and drawing pad. Color experimentation and adjustments were a snap with the digital technology availble with Photoshop. It all came together in a couple of hours.
A flurry of emails and phone calls Monday morning approved and transmitted the ideas to my client. Simple as that I was done.
On my return they emailed me the proofs from their printer. A couple small issues and suggestions were sorted out in minutes via emails and one phone call.
The end result is a very satisfied client in a time frame that would have been impossible using conventional methods. I still had the pleasure of creating original artwork by hand using modern digital tools.
The client is an accountant and wanted to portray that they had answers to solve clients needs.
Here's the final image....
-dan
-------------------- Dan Sawatzky Imagination Corporation Yarrow, British Columbia dan@imaginationcorporation.com http://www.imaginationcorporation.com
Being a grampa is one of the the most wonderful things in the world!!! Posts: 8766 | From: Yarrow, B.C. Canada | Registered: Nov 1998
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posted
I couldn't agree with you more Dan. Acrobat distiller has made working digitally a lot easier for us. The ability to securly send a proof to a customer is fantastic. While Coreldraw does a great job of publishing to .pdf, with distiller you can lock a document/design up tight. You can assign to a file the right to print or not, the right to edit or not, the right to copy/paste or not, and the right to edit job notes or not.
-------------------- Mike O'Neill
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value. - Arthur C. Clarke
posted
That was really slick Dan! I am curious about the digital pen haven't seen anyone use one, from what I hear they are pretty neat. Great design!
-------------------- aka:Cisco the "Traveling Millennium Sign Artist" http://www.franciscovargas.com Fresno, CA 93703 559 252-0935 "to live life, is to love life, a sign of no life, is a sign of no love"...Cisco 12'98 Posts: 3576 | From: Fresno, Ca, the great USA | Registered: Dec 1998
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This reminded me of the day my brother in law needed a logo for his new consulting firm. The trick was, he was here in my office, one partner was in North Dakota, the other partner was in California.
I had already finished a few preliminary designs with him before really starting, but we had the partners call here(on their nickel), and we rifined the logo through e-mails and telephone. All 4 of us agreed on a final log in less than 1 hour. We went through 7 different versions. Imagine sending these by snail mail, and waiting for replies where one partner says, "I like that one.", and the other says, "What if we changed the color of that elipse?" Faxing would not work, because they all had to agree on colors as well.
Lon, and I worked on this for a while by ourselves, then we started the e-mail flurry with the other 2 partners. In just under 2.5 hours, he was headed down the drive with their new logo in print and 4 types of file formats, and I was standing here in my shop with a check for $400.00(after the "brother-in-law" discount) in my hand.
-------------------- Don Hulsey Strokes by DON signs Utica, KY 270-275-9552 sbdsigns@aol.com
I've always been crazy... but it's kept me from going insane. Posts: 2318 | From: Utica, KY U.S.A. | Registered: Jan 1999
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posted
Great, Dan! I look at designs like that and think about them in the form of a sign. Usually something dimensional with a cut out shape and double faced. Put that puzzle together.
-------------------- The SignShop Mendocino, California
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. — Charles Mingus Posts: 6823 | From: Mendocino, CA. USA | Registered: Nov 1998
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