Art Department Efficiency // Adam Wold of Creative Sign Designs / Better Sign Shop

00:00:00Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: Learn how to build a better sign and print shop from a few crusty sign guys who've made more mistakes than they care to admit conversations and advice on pricing, sales, marketing, [00:00:15] workflow, growth, and more. You're listening to the better sign shop podcast with your hosts, Peter Kourounis, Michael Reilly, and Bryant Gillespie.[00:00:30]

00:00:37Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Before we jump into the episode, I'd like to give a shout out to our sponsor, GCI digital printing, grand format [00:00:45] printer to the trade. GCI is not your average print shop. They pride themselves on providing you a fast, stress free experience when outsourcing. Their no excuses mindset means no matter the job, they'll have it done [00:01:00] every time.

00:01:15 TJ Bedak about top tier customer experience. If you're looking for a high quality trade printer for banners, mesh, Coroplast, and more, TJ and his crew will have your back.

00:01:30 Check them out at PrintGCI. com. Hi guys, and welcome to the next edition of the Better Sign Shop podcast. As always, I've got my co host, the Sign Shop Yoda, Mr. Pete Karunas.

00:01:43Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: Happy to be here. [00:01:45] Happy to be back. That's right.

00:01:47Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: It's been a while.

00:01:50Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: Yeah. I forgot how to do this.

00:02:00 is, I think I got a couple of new cool features where if I go like this, like it'll, Hey, and I get some really nice fireworks and stuff like that, but I've disabled all of that for today.

00:02:11Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Oh, well, I'm sad. We're not going to get to see that. I talked [00:02:15] with Michael. He is in the middle of a terrible sinus infection. So we're not going to have him today, but we do have a special guest. I'm a little raspy because my daughters like to cough in my face all week. So we'll just have to [00:02:30] contend with it.

00:02:45 next episode? Did we just kind of took a nice little summer break that extended a little past summer?

00:02:52Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: Yeah. I mean, it's, it's been a great summer for me.

00:03:00 clients, some new sign shop owners around the country. I'm, I've had some time to get over, you know, my, my baseball team, not making the playoffs. This year now, I'm at the hockey season, so I'm, I'm enjoying the start of something new to take up my [00:03:15] personal time, but, you know, like, look, it's been, it was great to take the summer off.

00:03:30 enjoy next summer because we'll probably be doing a lot more podcasts through the summer. But Brian, what you've been working on, man, what you've been doing since the last time we spoke,

00:03:40Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: too much to recount. Like, I've got a lot of cool things coming out soon that I will share. [00:03:45] We've made some updates to our platform, which are are really nice, but I don't want to keep our guests waiting. Too much longer. So what do you think? All right, I've been

00:03:56Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: well, let's bring them on. Let's let's get this going [00:04:00] All right, transition.

00:04:02Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: back. We have our very special guests Adam Wald from creative sign design Designs, I'm sorry Adam is super nice to have you this has been many months in the making. Yeah for sure [00:04:15] Yeah, I want to apologize first and foremost for getting you on but we're excited to have you here.

00:04:20Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: And yeah, I make Oh, I'm excited. I'm excited. I'm excited to be on the show, uh, after a long hiatus, uh, and excited to, to share with you, uh, some [00:04:30] of, some of the background that I have and some of the tips and tricks that I can, uh, benefit the, uh, the listeners with.

00:04:36Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah. So before we dive into the topic at hand, which is going to be managing and running an efficient art department, why don't you give us a little [00:04:45] backstory on you and the

00:04:46Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: company?

00:05:00 you can remember that. And, uh, you know, me and my friends had some fancy cars and, uh, there was a small speaker shop, um, and a, and a small guy that had a very small closet that was doing vehicle graphics at the time and, uh, developed a good relationship with him.

00:05:15 go to the sign company up. you know, up the street and learn how to, you know, weed and tape vinyl and lay vinyl and then come back to me and I'll give you a job. Um, and, uh, you know, I, I ended up staying at that place for about, uh, five years, um, and, uh, learned a lot. And that was kind of my first foray [00:05:30] into the sign industry.

00:05:45 different experiences, you know, from, from, from production, installation, the customer service aspect of things, design kind of in that small, uh, group setting.

00:06:00 how I got into the design arena is we had a designer on staff and, uh, that designer was probably sick of me doing the same thing, but I was also sick of waiting on that. Designer to do recuts for vinyl and things like that.

00:06:15 know, technology is kind of a passion of mine. Uh, why don't you sit down with me and show me how you're doing it? Right. And, uh, we had a separate, uh, machine and, um, he showed me how to do the recuts of the vinyl. And, uh, that's kind of just where I started in the industry as far as design is [00:06:30] concerned.

00:06:45 plethora of different things just kind of exploring my, uh, the industry, uh, within that particular franchise.

00:07:00 Um, and, uh, uh, did a number of years as a project manager, I'm sorry, as a, as a production manager at a small franchise.

00:07:15 local commercial sign shop that did national accounts. And, uh, that is what really kind of opened my eyes to what a sign company could be, um, you know, things like pan form faces that a pan from face oven, you know, giant paint booths, you know, people actually physically [00:07:30] manufacturing and building the signs from, you know, uh, you know, angle and tube and things like that.

00:07:45 uh, world know that the turn times are much more aggressive than more of a commercial sign shop. So, you know, I was running laps around everybody in the, in the vinyl shop and literally getting all the work done for the whole day for vinyl by noon.

00:08:00 had the opportunity from that point forward kind of twiddling my thumbs for the rest of the day. Uh, to experience things like, uh, going out on installs and, um, and, uh, you know, doing service work and things like that. Uh, but ultimately it kind of got to a point where that company just couldn't keep me busy in the way that I [00:08:15] wanted to be busy.

00:08:30 and how to kind of better your workflow day to day. You know, whenever I first started working there, a majority of petroleum gas station work are components based, meaning you kind of have a brand standard and you're going to have, you know, multiple different sizes of different signs or different [00:08:45] graphics, depending on the existing site conditions or even the new build site conditions.

00:09:00 working there, we had a two person design team. And, uh, uh, it would take us anywhere between six to eight hours to design a, a, uh, a petroleum gas station start to finish.

00:09:15 signs, all the canopy graphics, all of the pump graphics, any sort of, uh, Graphics that might be around the area and those types of things, we would develop that from scratch and I worked there for about 6 years. [00:09:30] And by the end of the by, by the time what we would do during that time period is every time we would do a 1 off, we would save it as a template.

00:09:45 things like that. We would save it as a template and there would be chances that we may never use it again. But there are that 1 off chance that we did use it again. We already had. We've already done the design work, right? We can essentially just kind of pull it.

00:10:00 so by the time that I left there six years later, we could turn full sites worth of design work within 30 minutes to an hour.

00:10:09Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: So, so it was in more than half. So it was like eight hours. Yes. To start with [00:10:15] and down to like 30 minutes or less.

00:10:17Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: Correct. Correct. Obviously all of that's pending on good survey information and things like that and assuming that the information is correct. So that particular business, um, much like a lot of national account businesses kind of put all their eggs in [00:10:30] one basket or a couple baskets, um, and, uh, um, had a couple accounts Go south on them.

00:10:45 And, uh, you know, eventually, uh, that business ended up, uh, kind of closing and I moved on to creative sign designs. Um, uh, I've been with creative sign designs for 11 years.

00:11:00 beginner project manager and quickly within the first two years moved into a leadership role and I managed our project management team and from there I moved into managing our product management team and our estimating team [00:11:15] and And basically, for the last 6 years, I have been managing our design team at the organization and my background has been in design.

00:11:30 of wanted to be in this position. And, you know, 6 years ago, there was a need at the time. I was actually managing estimating and design and those of you that kind of Work in the industry, kind of understand how those two can really kind of collaborate and produce [00:11:45] something rather efficient if they're communicating and collaborating on a daily basis.

00:12:00 uh, in 2018, we, uh, developed, uh, environmental graphic design studio, uh, within our organization also, uh, which is basically our fee for service business.

00:12:15 marketing and branding ideas of architectural renderings of your building, your interior design renderings, and we will basically come up with everything for you start to finish both interior and exterior graphics, all the location planning, message scheduling, you know, and some ancillary [00:12:30] items, things like master sign plans, retail, tenant criteria and things like that, uh, creative sign designs.

00:12:45 business is architectural custom, uh, interior and exterior signage. Gotcha. What set, what sets us apart is we're, we're a turnkey organization. Uh, a lot of larger companies either do exterior signs or interior signs, um, and, uh, we do it all.

00:13:00 in-house. Um, we manufacture all of our own, own interior signs in house, and we do, uh, the vast majority of all of our design work as well. Wow.

00:13:08Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: The quintessential one-stop shop. Yes. All right.

00:13:11Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: Oh, I think it's a lot more than that. So let's kind of [00:13:15] hit pause on that. Thank you so much for giving us that really nice introduction here into the eyes of what our listeners are listening to.

00:13:30 you know, okay, so you're well rounded. Started as a vinyl applicator, you know, you know, that, you know, that business, you know, that side, you're not a business owner, but correct. I want to 1st, I want to 1st kind of get, I want to 1st ask this question and then I want you to kind of get into it a little [00:13:45] bit, but why with so much experience with so much, um.

00:14:00 departments. Why not get into owning your own

00:14:01Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: place? You know, the ownership team at creative sign designs. Um, allows me to develop my personal skill sets and the skill sets of the people on my team and allows me to develop processes and [00:14:15] procedures outside of just not only my design team, but across the rest of the organization will help financially back that if I want to play a little bit for lack of a better term, um, and, and experiment a little bit, you know.

00:14:30 president of human resources, and they both allow me with the relationship that we've developed over the past 11 years and some of the sex successes that we've seen together to develop. Different aspects of the business and create processes and [00:14:45] procedures that help things run efficiently and things of that nature.

00:14:58Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: Sounds like it sounds like, you [00:15:00] know, you're comfortable putting on your, your director hat, your manager hat, having a voice and really being able to collaborate with such a wonderful ownership team that allow you the freedom to kind of branch off and explore other [00:15:15] opportunities, which, you know, as an owner, you might not actually have those benefits, right?

00:15:30 but I want to bring us back here for a moment now that we kind of have a little bit of a baseline to what you do. You mentioned your team, your team, your team.

00:15:45 We love design, right? Recovering, recovering designer, recovering designer. Yeah, sure. Uh, one might say that. Uh, this is the foundational brick that this entire industry is built upon.

00:16:00 there is sales, there's customer service, right? There's the survey, there's the production, the fabrication, the install, the service, etc. But all of this is built on the foundation of design, right? That's the element that you can build a business off of. [00:16:15] If you remove that, you know, it kind of like, it's like a house of cards.

00:16:30 there? Give me a lay of the land of how many designs you guys pump out for 28 million dollars.

00:16:41Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: So, um, we have seven people on our, uh, what, what I would [00:16:45] consider kind of our architectural design team. That is kind of our day to day, uh, uh, Q design process for various different projects. It could be bid spec work. It could be designed build work from scratch.

00:17:00 designers on our environmental graphic design studio, and those are the more consultative design professionals. Um, those are the people that are consulting and interacting with clients directly on a daily basis, interacting with municipalities to find out what's possible and things like that.

00:17:15 team would probably do anywhere, roughly 50 projects a year. Uh, start to finish. Um, but on our architectural side of things, uh, we are on track this year to, uh, and, and, and Brian, I know when we talked about this last time, I gave you some data from last year, but we [00:17:30] are on track to do over 5700 design requests.

00:17:45 Right. Just because the scale at which that we're trying, uh, the scale at which of the, which the projects we're doing right now, the complexity, the, the, uh, the coordination with our senior project management team, the coordination with our estimating team requires that [00:18:00] much detail to be put on the job, you know, on the drawings to be able to be successful with the installation team and, or when we're shipping it out to an end user.

00:18:08Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: you said over 5,

00:18:10Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: 000, is that what you said? 700, over 5,

00:18:14Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: 700. [00:18:15] Over 5, 700. Okay. I'm going to do the

00:18:17Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: calculations here. I'm trying to do the calculations. And

00:18:20Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: that is 814 design requests per designer. You have seven designers, 5, 700 requests. [00:18:30] Correct. Over 800. That's a pretty prolific,

00:18:35Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: efficient. Yeah, let's break that down.

00:18:43Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: design, what is it [00:18:45] like 251 working days a year?

00:18:48Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: Right? Bear with me. I'm just going to, I'm going to pull up some statistics. I can't give you, I can't give you necessarily broken down by day, but the way that we, uh, the way that we, um.

00:19:00 design thing as we use on architectural design nomenclature. So we'll we'll do schematic conceptual designs and then we will move into design development and then we'll move into fabrication level drawings between those different larger kind of phases. [00:19:15] We have, you know, customer revisions and things along things along those lines.

00:19:30 to have. So bear with me for just a second.

00:19:33Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: That's true. That's fine.

00:19:45 that, that, that's, uh, that there's two different avenues for that. Right? So, uh, I'd like to know if you have, um, and just for our viewers and our listeners out there to give a little bit of a context here, seven designers, right?

00:20:00 our shops have, or owners have seven designers, let alone two designers. Um, You have some that are allocated to certain specific types of designs, and then you have others that maybe handle a wider range gambit [00:20:15] of of design requests right now, we'll be through that for a 2nd before we get into the number per day, which to me kind of sounds like you're doing like 3 or 4 requests per.

00:20:29Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: at a minimum. [00:20:30] Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

00:20:32Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: so without really getting into the numbers, I mean, let's agree. It's like, for design requests per designer per day. So. You know, some that that's a lot, that's[00:20:45]

00:21:00 more detail about your team and their talents. So are you hiring the type of designer that's, uh, Experienced, are they design like, do you have rap specialist?

00:21:15 designer straight out of college high school? Tell me a little bit about your recruiting. Great question, Pete. Yeah. A little bit about your recruiting. Tell me about how you hire. Tell me about the type of person you look for. Go.

00:21:27Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: So I primarily hire people with, [00:21:30] uh, a large amount of architectural design experience, uh, specifically signed design experience.

00:21:45 somebody that's new. Most of the people that I hire have this architectural signage design background, meaning they either come from a background where they've designed. You know, uh, smaller or large scale interior sign packages, but have a basic understanding number one of [00:22:00] curl draw, which is the primary software that we use number to understand basic things like, uh, 80 a code requirements, building, you know, building code requirements and just a very general understanding of way finding theory in general.

00:22:15 navigate a place and and and. How to think about how to navigate a place and put that on a sign. The other side of it is people with this longstanding knowledge of how to build a sign and have been in the industry from quite for quite some time, working in various different areas. Maybe they came [00:22:30] from a fabrication fabricator at one point and had a desire to move into to, um.

00:22:45 uh, span of the people on my team ranges from, you know, lower 20s up into I have somebody that's, uh, in their mid 60s, you know, and, uh, but their backgrounds range from having, uh, you know, different backgrounds, um, but I'm not hiring at this point in time, uh, people who do not have those [00:23:00] experience.

00:23:15 finding resumes and people that are interested in on deed.

00:23:30 they're interested in talking, uh, and we kind of go from there.

00:23:33Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: Quick follow up for me really quick just on the type of candidate type of designer. Are you doing any outsourcing remote designers in your business?

00:23:41Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: We do not currently, um, we entertain that from time to [00:23:45] time. We are in this transitionary period from an organization. Um, you know, when you kind of get to this scale, uh, really the next step is to start developing more of a design engineering team.

00:24:00 AutoCAD and solid works and things like that. It's kind of going beyond just the general, uh, limitations of, of Corel draw, you know, those pieces of software. Um, uh, so. At some point in the future, we're going to shift in that direction.

00:24:15 from an efficiency standpoint, there's a lot of efficiencies as far as, uh, fabrication is concerned, but when you start going down those, uh, uh, paths of AutoCAD and SolidWorks, the efficiency from a design standpoint starts to trail off a little bit because something that you could put together in a matter [00:24:30] of a couple hours in CorelDRAW, Could take you a week or two to put together in solid works.

00:24:45 work that we do right now.

00:24:46Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: Well, I love it that you are a CorelDRAW firm.

00:25:00 Illustrator versus Photoshop, whatever you want to do. It may not work for you, but this software is very powerful for the type of shop that you want, you may want to become when it comes to sign design.

00:25:15 apply for a position with your firm and know and jump right in. To your environment and not skip a beat.

00:25:22Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: So if he would have you Pete, if he would have you,

00:25:27Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: if you would graciously [00:25:30] accept my resume, yes, I would be your base designer.

00:25:34Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: a, Mike's a CorelDRAW guy too. And unfortunately, Adam, he couldn't, he couldn't make it today because he's got a terrible sinus infection. That's fine. I think one of the things that stood out to me of [00:25:45] what you just said, and like, how many times have you heard this, Pete? It's hard to find good people.

00:25:53Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: to work in my shop. Every Tuesday and Thursday. Every Tuesday and Thursday. Every Tuesday and Thursday. Yes, approximately at 8 30 in the [00:26:00] morning. Yeah.

00:26:01Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: I mean, what I would say to those people personally is you're not looking for them. You're waiting for them to come to you. That's yeah, that was

00:26:07Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: gonna be my point.

00:26:11Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: Yeah, I don't put an ad. I don't put an ad out or anything [00:26:15] like that. I go and I prospect the exact person based on their background that I want. And then I and then I go from there. And that's that's that's what I tell everybody.

00:26:30 need on my team and then I go after that person.

00:26:32Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: That's a very unique approach. Definitely something that a lot of our viewers and listeners here can take, uh, take away from. If you're a shop that you're looking for a graphic designer, if you're, if you just fired a graphic designer [00:26:45] and you need somebody to replace that person, it's so easy to get sucked.

00:27:00 somebody that can be your guiding light in this in this business that we call the sign industry and. There might be a different way about going after that person.

00:27:15 working for me. Instead of putting an ad out and, and fielding and farming resumes, you're going after a specific type of person based off. I'm assuming you're using LinkedIn for something like, Yeah, it's, it's,

00:27:27Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: it's, it's between LinkedIn and, um, you know, there's a [00:27:30] pay tier of Indeed, you know, where you can.

00:27:45 worth the very minimal cost, uh, for Indeed to, to at least explore it for a month and, and see what kind of net benefit you get from being more aggressive and trying to reach out to those people that you want on your team, rather than, you know, put out an ad and get, and field a bunch [00:28:00] of.

00:28:03Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: right. Well, that's a huge takeaway. That's a huge takeaway for our, our listeners. So Brian, go ahead. What's,

00:28:10Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: what's the average turnover for you and your art

00:28:12Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: department? It's pretty low. [00:28:15] Um, you know, I, I am, I am going through, I have one person leaving me right now, but, uh, as far as across the organization, um, it is probably the lowest turnover outside of our current sales

00:28:25Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: team.

00:28:30 type of hunting recruiting strategy for a 28 million operation that has a seven designer design soon to be eight designers on your team, on their team. Amazing. Amazing. So tell me a little bit more about your [00:28:45] prophecies. I let's dive into that side of this coin here a little bit.

00:29:00 that coin works. So kind of walk us through the beginning and the front end of your workflow for your business

00:29:04Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: or you. Yeah.

00:29:15 conversation is more on our design build. So our customer doesn't really have anything right? They might have some brand assets. It's.

00:29:30 a fairly elaborate process, a fairly elaborate process, but it's lean at the same time, because if it's too elaborate, people aren't going to follow it.

00:29:45 creating and developing design team processes without interaction from the other departments that have to interact with that team. Right?

00:30:00 production teams and even installation teams to develop a process that we feel like works best for our organization. So as far as going through the process, we, we, uh, from start to finish, we use smart sheets.

00:30:15 Um, and, uh, I have developed a, a simple way to queue our tasks, uh, for the entire team. It also lets me develop metrics for individuals and for by different phases that I described earlier on in, in, uh, our conversation, uh, but [00:30:30] essentially our account management team and our project management team have a digital form that they can fill out.

00:30:45 the customer name, the address, the, uh, the, uh, a very brief description of the scope of work, because that's not really where we're describing what the designer needs to do to do the value potential of the project or a budget that might be in mind.

00:31:00 and then we have the account manager involved and then who might who might request because it could be an account manager, or it could be a project manager. That's requesting that particular design. Uh, task to be done, so I guess people are asking, well, why do you need all that [00:31:15] information?

00:31:30 get updates if I decide to change the date or there's updated information, you'll get a notification regarding what that, that what information changed during that time period.

00:31:45 notified that the job is complete also. So, and it's all real time too. Any questions on that so far?

00:31:51Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: No, I like smart sheets. I'm familiar with it. Yeah. I haven't dove into it very deeply, but I know some people who have.

00:31:59Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: [00:32:00] Yeah. I mean, we, we, we decided on smart sheets as an asset because it creates a lot of flexibility for us to do what we want to do. Right.

00:32:07Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Now, does the, the whole organization use Smartsheet as well, or

00:32:11Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: just your department? So as of right now, our, our project management [00:32:15] team, our permitting team and our production team all use Smartsheets currently.

00:32:30 organization, and allows us to do all that stuff in an automated way on the back end.

00:32:45 designer by design phase. Also, I just set that all up at the beginning and now it just kind of does the work for me in the background.

00:33:00 and a lot of, a lot of people can kind of relate to this is okay. Well, how do you manage the quality of the information that's coming in? Right? I think it's very important for anybody in the role that I have at an organization, or even smaller organizations that just have an individual designer to you to understand.

00:33:15 review the information as it's coming in, right? So, uh, uh, I am reviewing every single design request as it comes in. What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to set that designer up for success when they actually get to it. So there's various different things that I'm doing. I am [00:33:30] reviewing the quality of the request and making sure it makes sense.

00:33:45 I will rewrite it in a way that I feel like is going to make the most sense to my designer, right?

00:34:00 or at least providing a description of where that designer might be able to access them via Adobe fonts or one of those types of things.

00:34:15 recreate it ourselves. If it's a more corporate brand, and I know that they probably have the logo somewhere, I'll kind of push back on the requester to go get the actual vector artwork.

00:34:30 between an hour or two hours to recreate, I basically outsource the vectorization. I like to think of my design team in the same way a lot of sales teams think of their salespeople, as what can they generate per revenue hour.

00:34:45 that could produce 5 million worth of designs in one year, that's an X amount of a value per hour to me. And if our client isn't paying that amount to do that vectorization, then it's better off that a vectorization company does it for the minimal cost that they can do it [00:35:00] for.

00:35:02Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: up your team on stuff.

00:35:03Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: That's not right. Right. Right. Right. Um. So once I've basically identified that the information is either of a quality nature, um, and or in or provided assets required to successfully do [00:35:15] that, I will then go ahead and schedule it. And I aggressively schedule my team.

00:35:30 are they quick at? And then assign the work according to that, right? Um, so like, for the most part, um, I can, I can schedule my team within the hour kind of thing.

00:35:45 hours a day. There's two other jobs that I know I can squeeze in that are going to take them anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour. I'm going to go ahead and schedule those jobs for that, for that same day.

00:36:00 two, two business days from a design standpoint. There are, there's obviously different circumstances where the project is larger, uh, but across the different, um, uh, uh, phases of design that we do, we turn most jobs around within two days.

00:36:15 fabrication level drawing, a conceptual drawing, or what might be. So as a designer, as you're getting that notification and now you're starting to work, how do you work efficiently when you get that information? Well, we've created a lot of assets at us as an organization. You know, we do, like I [00:36:30] said, we do interior and exterior signage.

00:36:45 know how much they're going to have to spend.

00:37:00 wants, but we've done enough interior sign jobs to be able to, to, to develop, you know, some full design packages of all the sign types that might be required for different market segments.

00:37:15 So our sales team could sell that number. And then what it does is it puts guardrails from a design standpoint on the types of materials, the sizes, things like that, that they have to design with them. Right. So that's one of the tools that we use to help kind of the sales process be a little bit more efficient and then [00:37:30] provide us essentially kind of an outline scope of work as far as materials and sizes that we can design within.

00:37:45 I just can't think of anything right. Um, what we do or what we try and do is we try and collect assets that weren't used in the past.

00:38:00 one selected, and then those other two just kind of go by the wayside, right? So what we try and do is we try and collect those options and potentially utilize them on other jobs that might be applicable and using different finishes and things like that.

00:38:15 inspirational, uh, assets, um, for interior signs, exterior signs, and things like that to help, uh, inspire the design team to create something unique based on, uh, what other, um, you know, uh, other inspirational images, things like that.

00:38:28Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: I like the fact that you [00:38:30] are like constraining the design process, because that's really like, Hey, when I look at design, like that's a challenge in signage, is it like you're.

00:38:45 design is like, it works best when you're constrained to something. So, like, when I was in the print shop, like designing a T shirt take me like 20 minutes, right? Because it's like, Hey, I've got a [00:39:00] 10 by 14 area and it's got to be 1 to 8 colors, right?

00:39:15 just for

00:39:16Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: every sign. Yep. Yeah. Well, essentially what I'm trying to do from managing the team is I'm trying to take the scenario where a designer is sitting there trying to figure out what they need to design and they can actually spend the time designing it, [00:39:30] right?

00:39:45 sitting there and, and, and really trying to figure out what they need to design to begin with.

00:40:00 the design requests, all the assets are going to be exactly what they're expecting. And they can just move right into design.

00:40:04Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Gotcha. Now, like some of these templates that you've developed, like, are you including that? When you schedule that request or they're like going and hunting that down. Like

00:40:13Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: we have, we basically have it [00:40:15] as a, a, a global template that everybody kind of knows about our sales team is using it when they're doing their account take us on the very, on the very front end of the project.

00:40:30 and to design within those constraints. Right. Gotcha.

00:40:33Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Gotcha. So like, what does the, what's the day to day look like for you guys within the department? Like, is it, I

00:40:40Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: mean, it's pretty chaotic as you can imagine.

00:40:45 um, it is, uh, lots of manipulating the schedule. Um, I am, I am. In the schedule all day, every single day. Um, and I, I basically have some, uh, conditional formatting that allows me to visualize things as they come in. And, uh, you [00:41:00] know, depending on the scale of what the request is, you know, as of right now, and really kind of since March, I've been basically designing all day, every single day, just because of the volume of work we have going on.

00:41:15 designers out of it and have them working on the more elaborate, longer scale, longer term projects, then I'm going to do it myself. So I, as that information comes in, I'm immediately reviewing it. If the assets. Or the information isn't clear.

00:41:30 immediately getting with the person that requested it. So I can attack it right away, right? We attack our design queue on a daily basis. And, uh, you know, if you spoke to the people on my team, sometimes, you know, it's, it's a little overwhelming for them, uh, but, uh, they do a great job of staying ahead and, [00:41:45] and, uh, in my opinion, from a creative standpoint, if you can stay ahead and you don't have this burden of just this backlog of design work to do, you can be your most creative and, and, and, and produce the best quality product.

00:41:56Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah. One question I've got that's came up a lot for [00:42:00] our folks that are, they do everything like you guys do. How are you juggling? Like this, this request is going to take 20 minutes and I've got 12 of those that need to go out in the next six hours versus like, Hey, this project is a longer [00:42:15] project.

00:42:22Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: timelines. I think it's, it's, uh, obviously this is where kind of manipulating the schedule and having a team that is on board with potentially doing [00:42:30] other people's work.

00:42:45 have, I have a particular designer right now.

00:43:00 job done so I can't put her on any large project right now. So she just basically fills in smaller things from time to time.

00:43:15 her schedule and any projects that I would normally have her work on. I've basically either delegated to the rest of the team or I'll knock them out myself, depending on the complexity of it.

00:43:24Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah. So having, well, you guys have seven designers, but essentially like a, like the six [00:43:30] man on a basketball team or something. Yeah.

00:43:34Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: That's

00:43:34Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: smart. Um, what's, uh, do you have any other like tips and tricks that you would like? Like what, what would your advice be to somebody who maybe has [00:43:45] one or two or three designers, you know, they've got a small design team, which is, I, that's probably the

00:43:49Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: average.

00:44:00 to be able to be successful and efficient, right? So we have developed, um, design manufacturing standards for a lot of the common side types that a lot of people are using an architectural side edge.

00:44:15 thicknesses and things like that? Um, channel letters, pile on signs, monument signs. Having a standard to start with, in my opinion, is the best way to Uh, manage the fabrication level drawing process, which [00:44:30] tends to take a little bit longer than some of the other processes are concerned and having buy in from your manufacturing team or in the cases where you might be outsourcing fabrication, developing and coordinating with them.

00:44:45 manufacturers are going to be interested in that because they're the net result of what you're producing. Right? So if they have their own section views and things like that, that you could be. Borrowing from them to include in your drawings.

00:45:00 um, also is communication across the whole organization. Um, like I said, none of the processes and procedures that I that I'm describing to you today work unless you have buy in from the sales team. The account management team, or even if it's not a team, if [00:45:15] it's just a sales person in general, you know, developing a good workflow between design and sales is a key part of your process and the growth and development of your, of your sales team and the growth and development of your design team, your design team [00:45:30] understands why sales, you know, the types of.

00:45:45 feedback on specifications that we're including, uh, or not including, and, uh, uh, can help us fill in that gap and create a better standard so that we don't either keep making the same mistake, or we're creating a more streamlined design environment, um, then it's beneficial for everybody as well.[00:46:00]

00:46:15 spicier ways to, to, to enhance and embellish, you know, your, your kind of basic boring interior sign, uh, project that, that most people are just doing kind of one color backgrounds, you know, one color tactile copy on, you know, we have the ability to go in and out of these.

00:46:30 know, uh, stock photo websites and get. You know, textures and different vector art, stock vector artwork and things like that, and apply them to our designs to really embellish them. Um, and we've, I've created a couple of assets to, to really show our design team, how, you know, here's how we were doing things in the past, [00:46:45] you know, in the past with just kind of basic solid colors, and here's how you can really transform a design using some of these very basic embellishments that we are able to pull from these, uh, different assets that we can, that we have unlimited access to.

00:46:59Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Um, I think, I [00:47:00] think we actually had, what was the. Was it communication breakdown, Pete? Like, one of those episodes that we had, like, the biggest drop is usually the handoff between departments, and it seems like you guys have mastered it. Like, what are the specific things that you guys [00:47:15] are doing to facilitate that communication across departments?

00:47:19Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: um... We do we do a number of different things. Number one. I basically coach my team that regardless of how simplistic the design request that's been written to [00:47:30] you is I want you to call the person and verify that that's exactly what they want, right? Um, so that helps break down some of the initial assumptions, regardless of how simple it is.

00:47:45 designs. Um, and I don't know if I share this with you, but yeah. The vast majority of our design team is remote, and so we are interacting with our sales team and our product management team, you know, through teams calls and on a regular basis.

00:48:00 40 or 50 calls a day to people to get clarification, just make sure I'm on the right track from a design standpoint, because we are reading and interpreting something that's something that somebody else Throat. Right. Um, and it could be something as simple, you know, I, I had a conversation on [00:48:15] just a very basic 18 inch by 24 inch aluminum sign on a post and panel sign this morning, and I was like.

00:48:30 for. Now I can close out the design request and send them the proof and I'm done. Right? So that's 1 aspect of it.

00:48:45 team or a project manager that's been assigned to the project. Representatives from the production facility that might be involved in the manufacturing of that, uh, the estimator that estimated the project and then the assigned designer to basically sit down together and say, how do we want to accomplish this?

00:49:00 And, uh, it could be in the form of here are the value engineered options that were offered during the estimating period. Um, or here are some technical difficulties that we might experience during this process. And we need to we need to work together to develop solutions to make this actually successful.[00:49:15]

00:49:30 process and then it.

00:49:45 proceed with, but we don't have the capabilities internally to do and decide where we want that capability to go to from, you know, from an out plant standpoint, uh, to outsource that particular manufacturing method.

00:50:00 Parts of trying to prevent news communication. Um, but I would say just the key takeaway in general is just the collaboration of the person that might be requesting that. And in those cases where you don't have that kind of buffer zone of somebody requesting that getting on a [00:50:15] team's call or a zoom meeting with the client and just saying, hey, look, I.

00:50:30 thing.

00:50:31Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: I think you might've mentioned the remote thing to me previously.

00:50:42Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: as well? It [00:50:45] is. So, you know, like I said, Melanie and Jamie have been. Very trusting in my, uh, methodology as far as recruiting is concerned. Um, we've had a lot of success for, with it.

00:51:00 area, there is a ton of sign shops. I think, I think the last time we looked, it was probably, it's probably well over 200, 200 sign shops. Uh, there's a plethora of different people to, uh, choose from, but not with the very niche type of business that we're involved with right now.

00:51:15 I can find, uh, you know, a plethora of different people to do, um, you know, vehicle wraps and things like that. But, um, the, the, it starts to get a little bit nichier when you need somebody to build a monument, uh, signed from scratch, uh, on, on, uh, you know, in Corel. [00:51:30] Sure. Absolutely.

00:51:31Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: So as we try to bring this one to an end and I feel like we could probably talk for hours, man.

00:51:45 like the last six months and like things are like starting to go at a way faster rate than what I thought they were. Are you guys leveraging any like AI day to day or anything like that?

00:52:00

00:52:00Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: So, so I, I mean, for the first time with some of these new features, um, and I was on the beta for, for Photoshop and Illustrator where they started to integrate some of the generative AI. Um, I found like actual useful purposes for the AI. Um, and that is [00:52:15] essentially, you know, when you're doing like wall graphics or something like that, and your client is providing you like kind of a low resolution JPEG and you want to blow that up to the best of your ability.

00:52:30 area that you're trying to, to, to, to fill in. Right. Um, and also when you're trying to edit photos and things like that, and you're trying to get very complex objects out of it.

00:52:45 blowing for their ability to do stuff like that. And I know Illustrator has just started to dabble in it, and uh, I haven't personally had any, uh, useful success with it. But, uh, you know, uh, Illustrator has come a long way from some of the initial [00:53:00] betas, even when they had kind of some of the initial measuring tools and things like that.

00:53:15 Yeah.

00:53:15Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Like, Hey, what are your thoughts? Just like, you know, being a student of design and like a lifelong lover of design.

00:53:25Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: I don't, um, I think if we were probably more in the [00:53:30] graphics world and things like that, um, and a good chunk of our business was more on kind of that printed graphics world. I, I, I might be a little bit more concerned, just more from a design standpoint, but, uh, with the complexity of things, I mean, I, I would, I would, um, Some [00:53:45] AI tools to be able to develop the ability to, you know, uh, space out angle and a monument sign and stuff like that.

00:54:00 or you get like a bigger company, like AutoCAD or solid works. And, you know, one of those companies starting to integrate some of that into what they're doing.

00:54:13Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, that kind of lines up with [00:54:15] my thought. Like, you guys are like, so far on the like, specific, specific, like, niche scale that it's like, yeah,

00:54:21Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: he just, he just poked the bear, you know, he just poked the bear.

00:54:30 said, get your AI shit together. Yeah. And, and,

00:54:33Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: and, and, and, you know, I, while I love corral, I wish they did more development in that area. They, they tend, they tend to. They tend to not play around as much as an, you know, as much [00:54:45] as Adobe does, you know what I mean?

00:54:54Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: And for the work that you guys do, especially like on the fabrication side, it's like, I wouldn't trust [00:55:00] the AI enough to like, maybe, maybe give you a concept to like look at and design off of, but yeah, like it's still too.

00:55:10Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: everything. Knowing how long it took CorelDRAW to come up with a Mac version after saying that they would [00:55:15] never have a Mac version, I'm pretty sure that that's like 20 years away.

00:55:20Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: Sure. So, so the one, one last final thing, and this is one of the reasons, Bryant, why, why I reached out to you from the last automation.

00:55:30 we talked about AI, but I just want to cover this piece because I think it's a pretty big game changer for a lot of organizations. And, uh, you know, my company would probably kill me if I told you this, but. Bear with me for just a second. So one of the things that you guys complained about last time, and this is specific to interior signs is having to [00:55:45] type all the signage out, right?

00:56:00 for those particular jobs, not going to tell you the particular. Um, plugin, but there is a plugin for Corel that allows you to tie an Excel spreadsheet to very individual pieces of your drawing in Corel and have it type everything out for you automatically.[00:56:15]

00:56:19Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: We'll have to look that up and put it in the show notes, Pete. Yeah. So we can't get Adam killed, obviously, but

00:56:26Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: so basically you got 1700 signs. You [00:56:30] can basically make Excel spreadsheets by individual sign type, assign those specific messages to a type field, um, and corral draw and then just click a button and it'll type out everything in the same font, the same height, the same message.

00:56:45 for those sign types that require a multi line, a drawing set. Um, so that, that to us has basically saved a three person hiring, um, for our design team from an efficiency standpoint.

00:56:55Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Yeah. That's really nice. I didn't know those tools existed. And I [00:57:00] used to have, um, when I would do, uh, booklets and things like that in the print shop.

00:57:15 they were never available in illustrator, which is what I was in 90 percent of the time

00:57:18Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: anyway. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're on the right track, uh, as far as that's concerned.

00:57:30 there's a particular tool within that plugin suite that allows you to do this. Um, and it's a pretty big game changer. Sweet.

00:57:38Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: Adam. Wow, man. This has been a great episode. Um, a good episode for Pete and I to get back in [00:57:45] the saddle.

00:57:52Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: designs? Yeah, I mean, so we're sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So we are, we, we continue to grow. Um, you know, we are, uh, [00:58:00] we were tracking to be 28 percent ahead of where we were this time last year.

00:58:15 business all over the United States, but we continue to, we want to continue to expand from a shop standpoint outside of, uh, you know, all over the United States.

00:58:30 position that I described earlier in the business, you know, where somebody that is doing more detail work, um, right now, kind of it's spread across the rest of the whole entire design team, uh, but having really a department that's dedicated to doing, you know, fabrication level detail, um, and details.

00:58:45 that are on my, uh, regular design team that are more creative, don't have to worry about those types of things anymore. And, and bit more utilizing things like AutoCAD and Solid Works in our shop day to day. Nice. Yep. Love

00:58:56Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: that. Pete, any closing [00:59:00] questions, arguments, comments?

00:59:04Peter Kourounis: #de4a1d;">Peter Kourounis: You kind of took the wind from my sails there.

00:59:15 resume to your shop here today. Okay. I look what you guys got going on. I love that. You're. You're involved with some really interesting tools, smart sheets. I'm familiar with it. I think it's a great tool, a [00:59:30] collaboration tool, team communication tool.

00:59:45 jumping on here and giving our audience a little bit of a sneak peek into what their shops could eventually be by just learning a little bit about what you have got going on there at creative design.

00:59:55Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: want to say, I appreciate you guys having me on. Yeah, absolutely. Excellent. [01:00:00] All right. That's a wrap. All right. All right. Thanks, guys. All right. See ya. That's the episode.

01:00:04Bryant Gillespie: #6600cc;">Bryant Gillespie: I hope you enjoyed it. I'd like to give one final shout out to our sponsor, GCI Digital Printing, grand format printer to the trade.

01:00:15 average print shop. They pride themselves on providing you a fast, stress free experience when outsourcing. Their no excuses mindset means no matter the job. They'll have it done every time. No other vendor will go to the [01:00:30] lengths that GCI does to ensure you're a satisfied customer. To hear more about their approach to business, hop back into the archives to episode 9, where the guys and I interview owner TJ Biedakt about top tier customer experience.[01:00:45]

01:00:59Adam Wold: #72b372;">Adam Wold: you [01:01:00] liked this episode, make sure you hit subscribe to get all the latest episodes. And check out our website, BetterSignShop. com. Get free resources and helpful tools on growing your shop.

01:01:15 listening.

Art Department Efficiency // Adam Wold of Creative Sign Designs

GCI Digital Imaging