\nSooner\n or later a business grows to a point where they need a professional \ndesigner to create everything from flyers to product logos. You pay a \nlot of money for their services and you expect to get the most for your \nmoney, but there are a lot of traps that you can fall into because you \nor your designer make assumptions that will come back to bite you in the\n wallet. So speaking as a \u2018semi-professional\u2019 designer, what are the \nquestions you should be asking me when you hire our services<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This\n might seem an odd thing to say when you are already going to a designer\n with an idea. The reality is, what you want and what you tell the \ndesigner can be two different things. Also, you might find that you\u2019re \nworking to one standard and the designer is working to another. Case in \npoint Business Cards. Being in New Zealand we use a card 90x55mm in \nsize, but the US uses 85x51mm, A7 for many European countries, and so \non. By getting things spelled out by you and the designer, you can \nensure you are both talking about the same thing, which will save a lot \nof revisions in the long run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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You\n might think this a silly question, but you\u2019ll be surprised how often \nthis becomes an issue when we are printing someone’s design work. A lot \nof designers these days are trained for digital media, and so naturally \nthe design looks brilliant on a screen but doesn\u2019t look that great on a \nprinted page. We also get stuff designed by \u2018web\u2019 companies, where the \nprinted material is a secondary concern, and it shows. So ask your \ndesigner if they can supply print ready parts of the material and have a\n friendly print company like us at Copy Express to have a look at it for\n you to say if it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Now\n you would think that you are paying for their time you own the work \nthey produce. In fact that is not the case. Most creative business have \nthe policy unless you specify it (and pay for it) then you don\u2019t own \nthe material, you have only paid for a licence to it. Legally speaking \nthat is within their rights as many creatives will \u2018discount\u2019 their work\n with the understanding that they will get future income from it. So \nwhen you hire someone find out who owns what at the end of it before \nsigning that contract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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When\n creating something like a flyer or brochure, a designer might buy stock\n images, fonts, or even templates to setup the design. Now you might get\n charged for these resources, you might not. Regardless, you might find \nyou want to use it for your own in house work, so find out if you being \ncharged for the resources, can you have them for your own use. If not \nyou might have to \u2018buy\u2019 them from the designer or the designer can point\n you to where they purchased by you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This\n follows on from the source materials question and related to the \ndesigns themselves. As a printer this is a reoccurring problem for us, \nwhen a client comes in with a design created by a designer who\u2019s \nsubsequently left the industry and now the client comes to us to update \nthe files and all we have are lower resolution proofs to work with. In \nthese cases we often end up having to recreate the designs from scratch \nso that’s additional cost to the client. So as a customer, ask the \ndesigner if you can get copies of the design files, or at least copies \nof the print masters when you contract them for work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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A\n style guide is a document that contains all the needed information and \nfiles for a company look. At a minimum it may list the logo and its \nvariations, the typefaces used, colours expressed in the different \nformats, standard backgrounds, and any other style or imagery that\u2019s \nused for your marketing material. It might only be a few pages of a pdf,\n but it means that anyone can come in and design things for you and it \nwill all have the same look. It only really applies when you are setting\n up new branding, and it will be an extra charge, but sooner than later \nyou\u2019ll end up needing it when you want to add something new and you \ncan\u2019t (or won\u2019t) go back to the same designer who did the original work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Naturally\n there are more questions to ask your designer but this is a good \nstarting point. And in respect to Copy Express: We design for print \nfirst, you own the design work you paid for, we are more than happy to \nsupply the source files on request. Style guides a separate service and \nwe are more than happy to produce them for you too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Want\n to find out how much it will cost to get something designed? Need \nadvice on the best way to maximize every dollar you will be spending on \ndesign? Need someone to take apart and rebuild a flyer or business card?\n Then see us at Copy Express, we can do all of this and more.<\/em><\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sooner or later a business grows to a point where they need a professional designer to create everything from flyers to product logos. You pay a lot of money for their services and you expect to get the most for your money, but there are a lot of traps that you can fall into because … Continue reading “Design Tips: Questions to ask your designer”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":948,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions\/948"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}