My first challenge was to find a printer. I sent e-mails to several, clearly stating what I wanted, asking for a quote. One never responded to my enquiry at all. The quote from another was so outrageously high priced that I did not even bother to acknowledge it.
The ones that did respond could not understand the concept of what I wanted. I was pretty clear, I thought....a 2.5" wide X 3.5" long card, with my company logo, company name and website printed close to the top, with the bottom part blank so I could punch holes to hang pendants from. I absolutely could not get them to understand what I was trying to accomplish. See below...
To top it off, all the printers were open Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. - 5 p.m. only, no evening or Saturday hours. So, I couldn't even go in to see them in person to show them exactly what I wanted because my 'day job' is from, you guessed it.....8:30 a.m. - 5 p.m. *big sigh*
I have a CD with all the artwork for my logo in numerous formats that I received from the artist who created it. None of those are what they are looking for though. Does anyone know what vector art with outlines in a CS2 version is? I haven't got a clue.
The worst part of all is that I've allowed my frustration to stall my progress....to keep me from trying to accomplish that which I really want to accomplish. It's blocked my ability to move forward with my plans. I've got to shake myself out of this funk.
Oh, no, Bonnie... so sorry for your troubles. Let's see what we can do - as far as I see it, a normal business card is very close to your size (it's only 2" wide, instead of 2.5") - if you could 'miss' the 0.5" you'll save yourself tons of troubles (since it's a standard size everyone understands, and the cost will be considerably less than the one for custom orders).
ReplyDeleteAs for orders themselves - VistaPrint does a wonderful job (and they have the best prices ever).
Re: artwork - if you already have the artwork from someone, it'll be much, *much* easier to go back to them and ask for the format the printer is asking for (graphic designers are very familiar with vectors :) and for them to provide you the proper format will be a matter of a few clicks, don't let anyone charge you for vectorizing the work, they should already have it!)
Hope it helps!
Bonnie,
ReplyDeleteYou could talk to my daughter. She knows a bit about this.
Wayne
Bonnie, Alicia's 100% correct. If you can do standard business card size and go to Vistaprint.ca, you can "do it yourself" for a fraction of the cost of going to a printer's, in full-colour. If you don't NEED job lots of 500+ cards, why not consider purchasing a cheap ink-jet printer and good quality do-it-yourself business card blanks? For the initial cost of about $80, you could have 100 cards, then you'll just be replacing ink and cards as you go.
ReplyDelete