Glowing (mostly) Praise for JR's Decals
10-01-07, 10:59 PM
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Glowing (mostly) Praise for JR's Decals
I just got decals I ordered from JR (the "new" decal guy) and as promised I am giving him the praise he deserves: they look great! I supplied him with Illustrator files (so I'm mainly responsible for the quality, good or bad, of the art itself), but he translated it to Oracal® vinyl which is way beyond my skillset. I was very impressed with his professionalism, he communicated very extensively via email prior to accepting the job, so I was pretty sure I gave him exactly what would print well. Once he got the "final" version of the art and my OK to proceed he emailed me a PayPal invoice so I had the exact amount in writing to pay him.
Based on what I paid Greg Softley for a similar set, JR's prices are very competitive...though it's not a really fair comparison since I didn't supply artwork to Greg. Anyhow, I felt the price was very fair and the turnaround time very reasonable, too. He made the equivalent of two 8.5x11 sheets of 3-color and 4-color art for an Allegro and a Merlin, the Merlin head "badge" was particularly detailed (and looks outstanding)...both sets used metallic gold ink which came out great.
Now...I have a couple nits to pick, but I do this so others may benefit from my lessons: It appears that the printing process JR uses has trouble holding detail such as type outlined with a line-weight less than 1 point. I supplied art for one of the Allegro decals with a .9pt. outline and it is noticeable "wobbly" on the small letterforms. To JR's credit, he saw this problem too and gave me extra prints of that particular decal. However, I think he also reworked the art cause there is a large Swiss cross that had no black outline on my original art but has one now. This is a very minor point, I'm certainly going to use the decal anyway, but if you are super anal-retentive about "correct" details, keep it in mind. Another error which is really MY mistake is a typeface was automatically substituted on the Prugnat Lugs decals he printed: I should have (and you should too) made the type into OUTLINES and this substitution would not have occurred. Again, it's a minor thing that won't prevent my using the decals. One more kudo to add: JR did some die-cutting on some of the large Allegro decals that features very nice radiused corners, very much above-and-beyond what I paid him for and a really nice gift!
Full disclosure requires me to say that I was trained in the Graphics Arts industry and have attended more presschecks than I can count, so it has been my JOB to find tiny errors and make the pressmen fix them. There was no presscheck for this job, so we must rely on the decal-printer to check the details against the original art and for quality control of the print itself.
All in all, I give JR a "thumbs up" and am glad we have him as a decal resource.
I'll be posting picks of this decal work on my Allegro and Merlin frames (as these projects proceed) so you have some visuals to see for yourselves.
Based on what I paid Greg Softley for a similar set, JR's prices are very competitive...though it's not a really fair comparison since I didn't supply artwork to Greg. Anyhow, I felt the price was very fair and the turnaround time very reasonable, too. He made the equivalent of two 8.5x11 sheets of 3-color and 4-color art for an Allegro and a Merlin, the Merlin head "badge" was particularly detailed (and looks outstanding)...both sets used metallic gold ink which came out great.
Now...I have a couple nits to pick, but I do this so others may benefit from my lessons: It appears that the printing process JR uses has trouble holding detail such as type outlined with a line-weight less than 1 point. I supplied art for one of the Allegro decals with a .9pt. outline and it is noticeable "wobbly" on the small letterforms. To JR's credit, he saw this problem too and gave me extra prints of that particular decal. However, I think he also reworked the art cause there is a large Swiss cross that had no black outline on my original art but has one now. This is a very minor point, I'm certainly going to use the decal anyway, but if you are super anal-retentive about "correct" details, keep it in mind. Another error which is really MY mistake is a typeface was automatically substituted on the Prugnat Lugs decals he printed: I should have (and you should too) made the type into OUTLINES and this substitution would not have occurred. Again, it's a minor thing that won't prevent my using the decals. One more kudo to add: JR did some die-cutting on some of the large Allegro decals that features very nice radiused corners, very much above-and-beyond what I paid him for and a really nice gift!
Full disclosure requires me to say that I was trained in the Graphics Arts industry and have attended more presschecks than I can count, so it has been my JOB to find tiny errors and make the pressmen fix them. There was no presscheck for this job, so we must rely on the decal-printer to check the details against the original art and for quality control of the print itself.
All in all, I give JR a "thumbs up" and am glad we have him as a decal resource.
I'll be posting picks of this decal work on my Allegro and Merlin frames (as these projects proceed) so you have some visuals to see for yourselves.
Last edited by unworthy1; 10-02-07 at 12:12 AM.
10-02-07, 07:57 AM
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I'd love to see the results, especially the Allegro...
