~The Speth Family~: The graphic design saga...

Saturday, June 4, 2011

The graphic design saga...

What a stressful experience! I really don't get too stressed - hardly ever really, but OOOOOOOOOH this was stressful! I decided I needed some way to advertise the preschool - a sign to stick in the grass out front or something.... And then we signed up for the Heritage Days parade (being in a parade is about as far out of my comfort zone as I can get- almost). I decided on a banner. A really big one.

I was actually really excited about it! I called and found a place that would make it for a decent price, and they even had a graphic designer who, I was told, could probably whip it out in just a half hour (which is important if you are paying by the minute). I ran up there as soon as I could and gave the designer my sketch - I knew exactly what I wanted!

She was super fast to e-mail me the proof. And ooooooh - it was terrible. I was trying to think positive and decided maybe it was just me, so I e-mailed it to a couple of people, one of whom assured me that it was, in fact, awful. That's where it all started. For three days I e-mailed back and forth with that graphic design girl. I sent her lots of new ideas - can you change the look of the kids (because I am not teaching preschool in Norway)? Can you boost the color a bit? I want it to look like a lovely spring day! Can you brighten it up a bit more? Change the font? Try this font... Can you find stick figure kids? I really don't like those flowers, can you find something else?

It just kept getting worse and worse! I could see that she was doing what I asked her to, but not in the right way! Then she sent me another final proof. It still had the awful flowers in it, but she added a sickening rainbow- and the colors.... I can honestly say they made me nauseous. I don't want to say anything bad about this girl becuase really, she was very professional and SUPER nice, but she just COULD NOT read my mind and it was so FRUSTRATING! And SHE was very frustrated with ME and I felt really bad.

And so finally in a fit of desperation I decided to take matters into my own hands. I called a graphic designer who lives around the corner (who I had tried to call three times already) and finally got her on the phone! She explained a little about graphic design to me and suggested that I check istock photo for my own graphic. So I spent hours looking through those istock files and found sooo many cute things! By bedtime I had sent the graphic design girl a VERY specific e-mail with EXACTLY what I wanted her to do - which background to use, the font, the colors, the kids and where to place it all... and she whipped it out in no time! Settling on the graphic design time was touch and go, but she was generous and we agreed on something we could both live with and this is what I bought...

What do you think? I should post the other proofs so you can see the difference, but it just doesn't seem right to broadcast them. As a bonus I got to keep the istock file (since I paid for it) and John (who knows zilch about photoshop or adobe illustrator) played around with it last night and made this for our website:

Isn't he brilliant? It baffles me- the computerific things that come so naturally to him. And that program is pretty cool too! Each of the individual flowers, grass, kids, words, background color... was put on the page one layer at a time. So here is what I have learned from this: Check out the designer's work before you agree to pay per minute and take them an idea board with very specific details of things you like! I have to say the people at the store, while terribly frustrated with me, were very nice, gave me a GREAT deal and charged me waaay less for the design time than they could have. AND they offered me an extra discount because it was for a school. So I would in fact recommend them (with some advice attached), if you ask.

2 comments:

HeidiJune 4, 2011 at 4:24 PM
Wow, very nice. I'm so impressed with your ambition girl! Hugs!
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JulieJune 5, 2011 at 8:45 AM
I love the end result! It looks amazing! Good luck with it all!
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A Future of Peace
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