1 Thou shalt present thy graphic designer with a well-thought-out brief, considering target audience, likes and dislikes, brand guidelines if relevant, photography & illustration commissioning budget, amount of text and schedule. Thou shalt have this sorted before requesting a quote. Thou shalt present the same brief to all the designers from whom thou art requesting a quote, so that thou art comparing apples with apples and not oranges.
2 Thou shalt consider all the time, thought, hard work, expensive hardware and software, training, skills and creativity involved in the commission before whinging about said quote, sayingst things such as 'my nephew said he couldst design it in MS Paint for twenty quid'.
3 Thou shalt not supply photographs or graphics in Word, Powerpoint or any other Microsoft package. Thy designer has the right to the soul of thy first-born child if this Commandment be broken.
4 Thou shall supply high-quality, high-resolution images if thou requirest that thy publication not look like the dinner of a dog. Heed thy designer's advice on this, for verily, s/he is learn'd. Be prepar'd to pay for such venerable things from istock and such like for they are not that expensive really when thou thinkest about it.
5 Thou shalt NEVER request that thy designer use the typeface known as Comic Sans, for it is the work of Satan.
6 Thou shalt not ask for work to be done for free, on the off-chance that thy bizarre business idea takes off and thou becomest a millionaire.
7 Thou shalt appreciate that now and again thy designer might declare a day off, of which thou willst be told well in advance, and thou shalt not bitch about this. Thou shalt especially not bitch about this when thou decidest to bugger around with thine own schedule and thus suddenly discover that thy designer is busy surfing/snowboarding/knitting kittens whenst thou finally decidest that thou wouldst like to go to press.
8 Thou shalt know that thy designer does not, and will not, use Microsoft Publisher. Requests to do so will be met with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the star Wormwood shall fall from the sky and poison one-third of the land and one-third of the oceans and the seven-headed serpent of Babylon will arise and everyone shall be made to listen to the Lighthouse Family for thou hast Sinned Mightily.
9 Thou shalt check all proofs very carefully for spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes, as thy designer is employed to make thy marketing materials and so forth look pretty, and not to check whether thou is able to tell the difference between their, there and they're, or indeed if thou hast the presence of mind to correctly use a possessive apostrophe.
10 Thou shalt pay thine invoices on time and thy loins will be sure to bear much fruit*
*not guaranteed
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3 comments:
I disagree with 3. It's easy enough to extract images at source quality from microsoft packages since office 2007. Rename the file to .zip and open it up. Most people are phenomenally computer illiterate, but many of those that are do know how to use word. The alternative is you'll just get sent FUCKING MASSIVE BMPs FROM PAINT, or worse. Your client does not have the talent to understand that GIFs are 256 colours and lossy, and that JPGs are not suited to graphic art. Working within your client's limitations when you're the expert is a Good Thing(TM). For what it's worth, I have received **email replies** from a client that have been printed out, written on in biro, and scanned in again before being pasted into Word and emailed back as an attachment. Consider yourself lucky.
True, Leon, but there's very little chance that an image supplied in Word will be of good enough quality - in composition and resolution - to be printed. EPS logos cannot be sent this way and remain vector, to my knowledge. JPG files can actually be worked with if they aren't too highly compressed. Images sent RAW straight from the camera are like nectar - civvies seem to think I *want* them to fanny about with their pics in some amateur photo editing suite and then embed them into Word - this is the most common problem- and they are always surprised when I want the originals, just as they are *sigh*. Just trying to get people to think about the images they're supplying and how they will affect the final design.
S'all about communication, innit.
I always work within the clients' limitations - it's just some things come up again and again - supplying bad photography and then wondering why the publication looks a bit shoddy. If you wanted to build a house and you gave your builder plans drawn in crayon he'd laugh at you. Praise the Lord upon High that I've never been sent a Paint file.
Totally fair comment. Only thing I'd add is that if your client has EPS files at all, you're probably in fairly capable hands.
I'm not a graphics guy but I've been responsible for website odds and ends plenty of times. Almost without fail there is no style guide and only an old PDF from which to render vectors into Photoshop. It's their own fault really.
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