Can you design artwork before placing an order?
Yes, we absolutely can create your artwork before placing your order for production – with our Artwork Design Package discounted for our customers. We keep our art costs separate from production, to keep our costs low for all our customers.
What if I want to see my artwork without placing any order?
This is called "Spec Work" which is a significant problem in the art world – whereby the idea is to not compensate designers to "try before you buy". Essentially, it relies on designers completing artwork to prospective clients before securing any equitable fee. In order to keep our costs at the absolute lowest for our clients, we charge separately for artwork and design services, that are not built into the production costs. Where many of our customers have designers they work with or are in-house, they're able to get our lowest production costs by providing production ready artwork we can simply to go production with.
Can't you just quickly setup a mockup, it's only a business card?
Our customers that require a design setup, by hiring our Design Team with our Artwork Design Package – get a low cost solution to working with our talented, metal card specialists. The reality is, there is no "easy" or "quick" solution to creating profession metal business cards with numerous manufacturing techniques – it's a lot more complicated than paper printing. Where other companies will "bake in" a margin for production costs to cover the design costs only some clients need – we can give bare bones productions costs as ultimately, if you need talented production graphic designers the cost has to come from somewhere. This allows us to fairly pay our talented, in-house design team what they deserve.
We keep our production costs low by excluding any mark-up for clients needing art – and so clients requiring art must have an active order arranged before our team can create designs and mockups.
What is spec work?
Spec has become the short form for any work done on a speculative basis. In other words, where a client requests work for which a fair and reasonable fee is not guaranteed for the work.
What is wrong with that?
In a nutshell, spec requires designers to invest time and resources with no guarantee of payment.
Isn’t it wise for a client to try before they buy?
It may seem that way, but the reality is in this day and age, seeing quality design examples in a portfolio is enough where you should be able to decide if it's worth investing in something similar. Professional graphic design is about creating custom solutions rather than cookie-cutter concepts – and to have the right solution by a real professional, this costs money.
But, with today’s computers and software, how long could it take?
This is a common misconception for those who confuse a professional, with his or her tools. The design process is more than simply tapping at a keyboard or clicking a mouse. Often, we go out of our way to provide free recommendations to art and simple changes and solutions for free – but for each customer we work with, often creating a design is very complicated and requires hours of time. Our artwork costs are not baked into our production costs to keep those costs low for all our customers!
At the end of the day, there is a certain irony in the scenario. A prospect requesting spec work is ultimately saying, “My project isn’t important enough to hire a real professional who will take the time to understand my situation and goals and invest the time needed to create a suitable solution.”