Black Duck Blog » Specials and Discounts!

3 Ways to Reduce Art Costs

Erich Campbell — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:46:19 +0000

Sometimes we have to charge for the creation or revision of your source material to get the clean art we need in order to create the most eye-catching printed and embroidered garments. Though art preparation services are part of what we offer as a complete decoration and design service, the truth is that though we love creating art and making your own art look its best, there are a few labor-intensive tasks that we would love to do less often, and the omission of which, with a little effort on your part, may lead to reduced fees and a quicker turn-around for your job.

This is what we see when we zoom in- It's a lot harder to redraw that Raster file!

1. Get the best source material you can! Though the best art is in a vector format (think Adobe Illustrator, or Corel Draw) we want the best, highest resolution graphics you can get. If you’ve had paper printing or a sign created for you, your paper printing company may already a vector file prepared! Don’t despair if you haven’t had anything digital produced, or if your art is only on paper. Simply bring us the best, clearest, largest (within reason) version you can find. What many customers don’t know is that images from company websites are almost always far too low in resolution for us to use, and even if we must use them, that the lower the quality of the image we have to work with, the longer and more expensive the drawing process will be.

2. Know your fonts! Even if you don’t have the most wonderful source material in the world, make sure that if you want a specific style of type that you know at least the name of your font. You would scarcely believe the number of hours our art department spends in a week tracking down beloved fonts for our customers. Even if you have gotten us your vector art, often the fonts aren’t embedded in the document. If you’ve created the document yourself, or you are asking your print artist to send us a vector file, having them convert the text to outlines/curves will save us tons of time and effort, helping your bottom line. If you don’t know your vector from your raster and have typed something up in Microsoft Word, don’t worry, just make sure you tell us any font names you can.

The logo looks great on paper, but which shirt do you want?

3. Design for your garment! If you’re designing from scratch, make sure you take into account the color and size of the garment on which we are going to print or embroider your image. Check that your design looks good on the garment color you’ve chosen, or that you know what sort of color changes/alterations you want to make if you can’t make them yourself. Likewise, you should avoid making the details of your design too small to reproduce cleanly on your smallest garment. We can adapt the art if we need to, but changes take time, and time is money. Seeing your art on the right background and in the correct size ahead of time can save you a lot of headaches. As I discussed in our last post, 3 Tips for Headwear Design Domination, garments like caps and likewise promotional products like pens and mugs have some real size constraints that could make your art ineffective at getting out your message unless you design for the area available.

So there you have it- 3 top tips to save yourself time and money, and to give our art department more time to do the important work of making your design look its best. As much as we’d love to have great source art come in with every job, there’s no need to feel bad if you have the old ‘sketch on a cocktail napkin’ or even just a good idea when you walk in our doors. The secret fourth tip is this: have us design the art for you entirely! Rather than pay for round after round of beating a piece of art that you aren’t happy with into shape, you can have our veteran art staff create you something brand new, or to update your original concept. It might not be as inexpensive as coming in our door with a nearly finished vector file, but in the end you’ll have clean, professional art that you can be sure is ready for your garment and for anything else you can imagine embellishing, and the value of that is far more than our very reasonable pricing might lead you to believe.

It might seem counter-intuitive that a company might offer to help you save money on their own services, but that’s a big part of what we do for our customers; we educate. One of the best reasons to choose Black Duck centers on our experience and willingness to try new things, and nothing says more about our knowledge than how free we are to share it with you. Ultimately, even if you know nothing about your art and you’d just like to hand off your job to a professional, we’ve got the staff that can make things as easy as picking out garments, sharing your goal, and picking up the finished product.

Give Gifts for Morale and More Business

Erich Campbell — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:10:04 +0000

Promotional items can have a huge impact on your customers.

In times when we are forced to scrutinize every penny we spend for the immediate return it can bring, it is hard not to groan at the upcoming season of gift-giving, holiday parties, and the promotional push that precedes our customers’ busiest shopping months. Some business owners look at diminished profits, throw up their hands, and decide to slash promotions, cancel get-togethers, and leave their employees entirely without reward.

We are here to tell you that there is a better way.

First, remember what you’re cutting. By not giving company gifts or recognition, you cut morale. What is more important than morale among your employees, especially if you have had to let someone go? By not giving promotional gifts to your best customers, you cut loyalty, mindspace, and recognition. What can be more important than cementing relationships with your best customers in a time when they become the backbone of your economic survival?

These self-destructive cuts stem from a problem of perception. You may feel that previous extravagance renders smaller gifts less palatable. You may think that your smaller budget makes it impossible to purchase a memorable and high-quality gift. You may simply be unaware of your gift options, believing that gifts don’t make much impact on their receivers or aren’t really easy to make identifiable with your company. In all of these cases, it is your perception that needs adjusting more than your budget. Smaller gifts need not lack quality and compared with giving nothing, a small gift becomes much more attractive. You can use this season to your advantage, no matter your budget. Remember that even in corporate gift giving, it’s often the thought that counts.

To that end, here are 5 ways to give gifts make an impression no matter your budget.

1. Put your logo on everything - This almost goes without saying. If you do this for your employees, it gives them a sense of belonging and builds company identity and pride. If you do this for your customers, it keeps your name current in their minds through the continued presence of the gift, especially if the gift is useful or novel. This doesn’t have to be expensive: there are logoed promotional items that are within almost any budget.

2. Tiered Gift Giving – arrange your best customers according to some useful metric for your company. You might arrange them by how much they spent with you for the year or how long they’ve been a customer. Then, set up a hierarchy of how much you will spend on each level, this way your top customers can be afforded a more extravagant gift with the savings on the smaller gifts afforded the lower tiers. If you are very restricted by your budget, make the bottom rung of this ladder a hand-written, logo-emblazoned thank you card.

3. Keep your gifts novel – Sometimes an inexpensive gift really makes an impression if it is fun, strange, or otherwise noteworthy. We once did a promotion about “building up business” for which we created a logoed construction-helmet stress ball. They were universally loved by the customers and, years later, those little helmets still grace many desks, silently keeping our logo and name in view.

4. When you give less, say more – The inclusion of a handwritten note that personally thanks a customer or employee by name and highlights their relationship to you will help any gift mean more. This is especially true in these times when we pull our companies and their supporters closer together to weather the financial storm. Select a gift that helps to convey this message, and it will become a symbol of that relationship.

5. See an expert - I’m sure you were waiting for the promotion for Black Duck, and here it is. We sell promotional items and make gifts for people all year round, and moreover, we’ve handled company parties and gifts for decades. We can help. Seeing someone who keeps themselves constantly aware of new items and methods of decoration means all you have to have is the desire and a budget in mind to end up with a great gift solution.

Whether you are looking to reward your employees or strengthen bonds with your customers, remember that even a small gift says a lot, especially in these tough times. Give quality even when you can’t give quantity, and give from the heart. You will find the reward is more than monetary.

If you are in or around the Albuquerque area, be sure to come to Black Duck’s open house on holiday gift giving this November 3rd from 12 – 6PM. We’ll have samples of all the best promotional products, snacks, door prizes, and the most knowledgeable staff to help you choose the best gifts for your budget. Please call us at (505) 884-3656 to RSVP.