But the general lack of experience in the disciplines of print pre-press and the peculiarities of designs that work equally well in print and embroidery (and Tampo printing) are causing your clients to hemorrhage money unnecessarily.
Cost Cutting and More Bang for your Buck are popular topics these days. Let me share a story with you. A client of ours - a multinational with its head office in London - redesigned their corporate ID recently. The new logo was a thing of great beauty. The design work was undertaken by their UK agency. Our task was to supply a range of below-the line branded merchandise for the South African launch.
Aaah, the logo: cleverly designed with just a touch of retro (highlighting the organisation's long history), but with a modern, almost tactile flair - on sight you wanted to reach out and touch it - (a bit like compulsively popping bubbles on bubble wrap). Oh Boy! The fallout could be heard from as far away as Glasgow: "What do you mean you can't embroider the new logo?" When I went on to explain that we probably couldn't brand their coffee mugs either - needed for the SA head office - the silence literally thundered down the telephone line.
You see, so often design work is undertaken by designers who are creatively brilliant. The problems creep in when that wonderful 3D design - with spot metallic - needs to be rendered in any format other than that needed for a corporate letterhead. Embroidery cannot deliver shading or deep etching like a litho print can. Printing onto mugs is another ball game all together. The special inks used, are baked at very high temperature to ensure durability. When the inks get hot, they run or bleed into each other. Not by much. But enough to ensure your spiffing new logo, designed by your London agency, looks crap on the coffee mug. And on the boss's golf shirt.
Embroidery just cannot render proper drop shadows or 3D effects either. When one colour embroidery thread ends, the next one starts. No blending. No shading. Nada. Again the design looks terrible. Enter more Bang for your Buck. When commissioning design work - for that next product launch or media presentation - spend some time thinking through every conceivable substrate your design might have to appear on. (Incidentally the new logo for our UK client was also completely illegible when faxed). A four-colour print job with one metallic spot costs substantially more to reproduce than a three-colour process print. You can still have great looking artwork - just stretch your designer - but think of the saving on future business cards, banners, flyers, embroidery - and yes - coffee mugs. Limit colours and simplify design.
Limit the Brief:
And while we're talking about cost saving, think how many times each year your client pays to have their logo or artwork redrawn, positives made etc. This continual duplication of design costs is often unnecessary. Simply keep a library of your client's artwork. Every time you pay for Positives, or Cromalins or an embroidery tape or die, insist that it is returned with the job. A friend of mine in the industry makes sure he sure he gets back all his artwork. He simply will only trade a cheque for work done on receipt of every single Zip disc, CD, Positive etc. that he has commissioned. Over time he has built up a substantial library of positives and designs (on Zip and CD). He also has his client's positives in most usable sizes and formats (Silk screen and Litho). Be it for business cards or banners, over the years you will save your client many thousands of Rand (and be able to turn jobs on quicker) by putting a stop to unnecessary repro.
