Good design every time

[Steven Vigeant]

Mike, Was Good design every time your first SignCraft article(Issue 31)? If so you're coming around to 20 years which is basically incredible. Thanks. Here's a retrospective question. Are digital prints really signs? Or what do you think about digital prints on the cover of SC? They must be signs. Lately I've had a spate of very acceptable client driven designs come my way and I'm forced to either print them, paint them or vinyl build them with lots of layers. I've chosen the later for several jobs in a row and they are very complicated to do and use alot of materials. I've noticed that you've written a few articles on "How to muli-layer vinyl" and the like. It's now old school to layer vinyl, let's face it. I had one guy tell me he couldn't find anyone to do his triple outlined designer logo at all! Let alone print, paint or layer. What are you doing with this problem Mike? Is it responsible business to stick with paint and vinyl techniques when people are just printing and clearing. Are these signs as good? And can we hold out with the Flatearth stuff if you will? Feel free to ask me to go away while you write 3 articles about this point.
Thanks, Steve

[Raymond Chapman]

Mike Jackson writes articles? Why didn't someone tell me?

Just kidding. I think Mike goes back further than 20 years with SC. He can fill us in on the details.

You have asked as very good question. I'm not Mike, but I'll still give an opinion. Many on this forum are still doing signwork like it was done hundreds of years ago. While there certainly are changes being made in our industry every day, there will always be a demand for quality design, no matter what the medium.

What constitutes a sign? You've opened up a whole new arena there. I'm sure that years ago someone complained because some of the newbie sign guys were buying paint in those little cans rather than grinding their own.

I'm sure Mike will answer your question a lot better than I can.

[Mike Jackson]

First, let me say people should be here this morning to look at the sunrise on the Tetons. Wow! I should be out with the camera! The mountains have a pinkish orange hightlights framed by the muted purples and the light fluffy clouds are picking up some of the pinks and oranges. Sorry about that!

Steven, as you mentioned, that article is roughly 20 years old and I can only try to recall the point I was trying to make without going back and reading it. I think the article had two catalysts. The first one was probably a banner I saw that Noel Weber had done for some sort of pancake breakfast. I had asked him why he went so "Noel Weberish" fancy and he told me because he thought it needed it, even though it was only a banner. The second probably had to do with a local "artist/sculptor" who was doing semi-mass produced framed art pieces with rawhide leather backgrounds and overlayed brass appliques. The labor and materials were fine, but the final output pieces looked a little amateurish because he just didn't spend the extra half hour doing a good design. The single short cut in effort was then amplified when he actually went into production. So, I am pretty sure the intent of the article was to frame up those two extremes, and how the design step was so important towards the end results.

Like it or not, those digital prints are now part of the trade. When I was younger, I used to drive to Shawnee, Oklahoma once a week to "cut in" some billboards for an outdoor company. Someone else came back in behind me and filled in the big areas. The guy running the place used to tell me of the old days of the company and he said it took that owner a long, long time to ever let his employees use a roller, forcing all panels to be hand painted with a brush. That's extreme, eh? But the point is the industry is in constant change, and most of my articles spanning 20 years or longer have represented myself and the insustry at those stages.

Bill Hueg used to make his living painting the wonderful pictorial billboards, but I doubt he has done any in a long time. Times change and we must adjust, too. We recently bid on a construction project sign which would have had an Edge print of the architectural rendering applied in the appropriate rectangle, with painted borders and vinyl letters for all the logos and small text. We have one like it on the bench right now, as a matter of fact. We didn't get the bank project job. I don't know if it was my price, or if it was my insistence on them supplying me with vectorized images for each of about 7 contractors logos, or what caused the contractor to go elsewhere. The consctruction project that was awarded was from out of town, so that might have been part of it. We had bid it with a couple of local firms that also lost out. I had told them it was going to cost an extra $80 per logo for me to recreate or digitize the logos, hoping that would spur them to find the vectorized ones for me.

I went by the site a week or so later and see the sign up. It was printed either directly on a piece of aluminum, or a large sheet was applied to the aluminum, then the sheet was screwed to a piece of 1/2" waferboard, set on three posts. Other than the inferior look of their installation, the printed sign looks very good. It wouldn't have looked any better if we had hand painted the entire thing, or did out combination vinyl/paint process. As I thought about it, the company that did the job could have layed out the design and simply pasted in the supplied "logos' wihtout having to vectorize them. The company that made the sign only had to do the artwork well, then the print comes spitting out of the end of the machine without the need to buy a piece of mdo, prime and paint it, tape of and paint all the rectangles, borders, and so forth. Right? They have a huge investment in equipment, and it would take a fairly large building to accomodate it, so there are differences in overhead. We work out of our home/office/shop now so we won't be buying a large format printer like that anytime in my future, but the technology is there and the inks are apparently becoming lightfast and stable.

And, interestingly enough, I am slammed here right now doing some design work for Silver Dollar City (a theme park in Branson, MO). I am designing a bunch of layouts, then colorizing them in Photoshop so they can be printed with the large imagers. I am including the AI contour files along with the Photoshop images so their contractors can cut shapes out using their CNC routers on some sections. The images are loaded with linear blends, gausian blurs, spatters, and "Eye Candy" bevels and highlights. I would have loved to make all the sign layouts in three dimensional cut out letters, panels, and shapes, but we don't have the shop, equipment, nor time within their deadline for this year's opening. Still, I am having a good time designing the artwork, staying clean and dry here in the office, and doing what I like to do, and for a healthy fee.

Back to the article, I think the final paragraph would have suggested people spend maybe 15 minutes extra at the "drawing table" to invest a little extra there to make the final sign a LOT better (regardless of the output). Over the 20 years or articles, SignCraft has always given me a lot of freedom for the topics. Still, they realize not all of us can afford to purchase the big, expensive, top end machines and they like to include articles for the small time operator. I typically approach an article with that in mind, especially knowing I can't afford many of them now either. I think you will continue to see article in that magazine that realizes most of their reader base has both brushes and vinyl cutters.

Mike

[Steven Vigeant]

Ray is right. Mike's first article was issue 7 in 1981, right after his profile in issue 6. The article was something about how to carve a moose.
Ray however did appear first in issue 2 with an article called "Quality"
Now how about that?
The last paraqraph of "Good design every time" does say that we should try spending more time on design on our next "knockout" if we want to see our profit and satisfaction increase.
Thanks for the reply Mike