Does your sign company outsource artwork/design?

[manuellynch]

I am seeing more and more that companies are listening to my crazy ideas of expanding thru partnerships and subcontracting...

Do any of you subcontract artwork or content generation and design services?

[Guest Signtiffic]

We do a lot for others. Obviously we don't contract any out but have seen a substantial increase in others using us for their design and sales presentations.

[Kingpin Creative]

My business is mostly based on designing for other companies.

The biggest reason are, they are not up on code signs or been popped a few times by inspectors or companies who have never done a complete wayfinding sign package from start to finish. The other clients I fill in when there is too much work and need to get work out. I'm at the point where I'm getting too busy.

[nategregory]

We are an outsource partner for design, production (printing & cutting), installation, project management & fulfillment services. We can screen print, digitally print, cut, finish, stock-in-inventory, create custom ordering websites for companies taking care of all order management and more. For example, if you have a company that have thousands of locations worldwide, and need to do a signage campaign, we can design, produce, kit and ship to the thousands of locations for you.

We've been doing this for the sign & advertising industry for over 50 years. We sell to all 50 states and over 11 countries world-wide. We've worked alongside tens of thousands of customers over the years. If a shop doesn't do banners, but they want to sell banners, we become their "banner production facility". If a shop prints everything but translucent graphics in house, they'll use us for their "translucent production facility". If a shop only does small cut graphics, we may be their entire "digital printing/screen printing department". If a shop that does digital printing, lands an order they can't handle, we are their partner to produce the job.

We do all sizes of orders from 1 banner, 1 sign, 1 digital print, 1 cut logo to international projects of 20,000 banners, 10,000 signs, 50,000 digital prints, 90,000 die cut logos and more. All to the industry.

If you do everything except..."?", we can fill in the blank there for you. We can design, produce, and ship the final product to the sign shop or we can blind ship it directly to the end user. They think it's shipping from the sign shop.

Our other division supplies materials, signmaking supplies, equipment and POP systems to sign shops.

Nate

Gregory Inc

nlowe@gregory1.com

[UFB Fabrication]

We wholesale work for other sign shops and our involvement is when something wont work, not be UL or done a better way. I used to try and be the design police for when something really ugly goes thru but have given up. Last week had a set of channel letters with white trim, face, and return on a off white raceway. This week did some with black returns blue trim and red face. It was so ugly I had to check but thats what they wanted. I do see more shops outsourcing many things from Install, Electric, Fabrication and Design that previously done in house. I dont know if this is economy driven or if the shops are not efficient or just plain cant.

[Source4Signs]

We do all of our sign graphic design work in house but we used to use a company to handle all the design work for billboards we owned.

SOI Outdoor Sign Company

[designstate]

Now that I am working at my place of employment we do all the design in house. They used to outsource a bunch when they were busy but I have built a department in house now. It is the only way to have consistent design and fabrication technique. When keeping things in house you can use your own file system so if the job comes back around it is all saved in the proper location with cut files for router and graphics. When they outsourced before no one saved anything correctly and so I am now being burdened by old jobs that weren't saved properly. I certainly wouldn't mind picking up freelance work to help other companies with overflow or with design in general though. It is good to know that others can survive just doing work for other shops.

We do all of our sign graphic design work in house but we used to use a company to handle all the design work for billboards we owned.

SOI Outdoor Sign Company

[bialo711]

We're a full service sign shop, we do it from start to finish.---Bialo

[matthewota]

As a designer, I prefer to work for companies as an employee. However, I do freelance work to ease the financial burden on the employer, and to make money on the side.