Build Better Customer Artwork by Asking these 7 Important Questions
12 July, 2022
BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT: Part of creating good customer artwork involves asking the right questions. Use these seven questions to narrow down what your customer needs, and use GraphicsFlow’s tools to meet all the requirements.
Customer artwork is one of the central components of producing custom-printed merchandise. But there’s more to it than slapping a logo on a shirt and calling it a day. In today’s world of e-commerce, customers have endless choices on how and where they get their artwork created and products printed, which means you need ways to stand out from the crowd.
To build the best designs every time, you’ll want to ensure you’re asking customers the right questions before you and your art department even start building a mockup. And, with the power of GraphicsFlow’s tools, you’ll have a massive library of design ideas to speed up that conversation and the design creation process.
Here are seven BIG questions to ask when creating customer designs.
What is the size of the order?
Having a rough idea of order size will help determine if your team can handle the volume for your customers. Plus, you’ll be able to gauge whether the shop has the materials you need and if you need to order anything before starting production.
How many colors do you want in the graphics?
This question comes in handy for all types of decoration and printing methods. Depending on your shop’s price structure, you can also decide if you want to charge a customer more based on the number of colors in your graphic. This is often a common pricing method with screen printing, since more colors translates to more time, labor, and ink colors.
What do you want the graphic printed on?
You’ll need to gather information on a few details for this question, including:
Product type: Is the order for apparel like a T-shirt, hat, or hoodie? Or is it promo goods like koozies, coasters, and tote bags? Depending on your services, the product categories might also include hard goods like water bottles and growlers. This is also the part of the conversation where you can recommend a bundle, depending on what your customer needs.
Fabric composition (if applicable): If it’s a fabric-based product like a shirt, bag, or hat, knowing the fabric type will help narrow down the best decoration method. Cotton works well for many standard print methods like screen printing and direct-to-garment, while synthetic fabrics can be trickier, especially if higher temperatures are involved.
Color of the product you’re printing on: If your customer knows what color products they want, that’ll help your art department as much as your production team. It’ll be easier to create designs that suit the product without worrying about parts of the graphic not showing up.
Maybe your customer wants several products, like a shirt, bag, and water bottle combo. GraphicsFlow makes creating artwork for several products easier since all the designs in the art library are scalable and production-ready. Whether you need to print on large or small objects or a variety of hard and soft substrates, you’ll be able to take your customer’s design and apply it across as many products as you want to offer them.
Theme you’re aiming for: Customers generally want their logo or design to reflect a theme, so find out what they’re looking for. That could be a retro style, a western theme, athletic vibes, or other styles. Once your customer has an idea about the themes they’re looking for, you can use GraphicsFlow’s easily searchable art library to pull up dozens of ideas quickly. The built-in search filters let you narrow your options by categories and themes, so you can find what you need and start creating.
And, if you want to give your customers some inspiration, you can use GraphicsFlow Art Portal to let them pick out their favorite ideas. Whether you embed Art Portal on your shop’s website or set it up as a standalone site, you can use this handy tool to give your customers access to the same high-quality images you and your team use.
Customers can use the same convenient search filters to pick out what they want and send your team design requests directly through the portal so you can continue the design conversation.
Who is the target audience?
Similar to the theme, getting information about age, demographic, and target audience can help you narrow down which types of designs to search for. For example, a children’s summer camp design might warrant a design with brighter, playful colors, while a corporate event will demand something more muted and professional.
Is this a one-time promotion, or is this going to be recurring/ongoing?
This can help guide your theme. Does it need a year or month attached to it? These types of elements can help you put together your customer needs.
Suppose it’s a recurring event. You can build out your customer’s artwork with GraphicsFlow’s Art Approval workspace. Once that art has been approved, you can archive that job for future use, so next year when your customer needs a reprint, you can quickly start it up. Since the designs are editable, you can modify them if necessary, updating the year or month.
Who is involved in the final decision-making process?
If you’re creating a design for another small business, it might be just the owner signing off on the design, which keeps the process simple. If you’re working with a bigger organization, like a charity, a high school, or a university, there will likely be multiple people that need to approve a design. You can use Art Approvals to communicate with these groups of customers and easily track any notes/changes that need to be applied to finalize the design to meet their approval.
Asking these questions can help determine the best fit for decoration method, product types, and most importantly, the type of designs you need to create for customers. This is a great strategy, especially if your shop prints for events and marketing campaigns. It’ll help present you as the authority on custom branded merchandise since you’ll be asking all the right questions to get your customer the decorated products or bundle they need.
Ready to give your customers better designs and stay ahead of the competition with GraphicsFlow? Contact a Client Advisor today for a 15-minute, personalized tour.
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