Just Follow The Template

If you were going to be attending an event at someone’s house and they provided directions, you would think that those directions would be accurate, right? I mean, who knows better than the owner/host the best directions for making the journey?

In a similar way, a vendor selling a customizable product will often provide a template to use in creating designs to print on their product. Because, like the homeowner, who would best know what is needed to customize their product? Surely, they would know how everything needs to be set up… right?

It turns out that’s not always the case.

Looking through the vantage point of our recent experience in working with a vendor template, we’re going to look at how to vet 3rd party templates and also share steps to take to minimize potential issues that can either compromise your work or hinder your timeline.

Addressing Template Concerns

For the past several weeks we have been firmly entrenched in the process of putting together some products using Rebecca’s artwork. If you haven’t checked out the artwork she’s been creating for the past 600 days, please do yourself a favor and have a look (Instagram, Website).

Regarding products, we started in our wheelhouse by working with paper to create prints, but are now expanding into other formats. The first of which has been coffee mugs. (Spoiler Alert: t-shirts are next.)

Start With A Review

While you may primarily work in traditional paper formats, starting with an initial review of a template can be illuminating. Start with what you know about the end product and apply what you know about bleed, trim and safe area in order to make sure that the template addresses those issues. If something doesn’t seem right or is missing, don’t dismiss what you are seeing. Instead, trust your gut and inquire with the vendor about those issues.

Get Your Hands on Existing Samples

When working with a template one of the best things to do is get your hands on actual physical samples. Oftentimes, a vendor will have sample of products they can send out that make use of the template. If you have a template and a physical sample, that can alleviate many problems because it gives you a good idea how artwork is going to print and you can see potential limitations.

Ask How Long the Template Has Been in Use

Obtaining information about the amount of time that the template has been in use can also be helpful. If a vendor has had a template in place for an extended period, most of the problems or errors have most likely already been addressed. Conversely, if a template is newer the vendor may not have had time to work out all the kinks.

Trust Your Gut and Ask Questions

We are firm believers that there is no substitute for intuition and paying attention to the feeling that something doesn’t entirely make sense. If there is something that doesn’t logically make sense or feels “off”, then absolutely ask questions and get clarification about concerns. Most of the time vendors have had to answer any question at least once. If they have a ready answer to a question or concern, that’s often a sign that they are already aware of your concern and have addressed it.

However, if something doesn’t make sense, there is nothing wrong with asking for additional follow-up.

Order a Prototype Using their Template

This step may feel like overkill, but there may certainly be projects where it might be feasible or necessary. However, for long-term uses or large quantities getting a prototype with your artwork can be the final step in making sure all issues are addressed and ultimately could save you in the long run from costly errors.

Looking at a Test Case

Now that we’ve done an overview, let’s show these steps in action, but sharing our real-life example of printing our artwork on coffee mugs.

Compare the Template — In looking at the different print-on-demand vendors, we saw a variety of templates which were all unique to the specific vendor. Mugs are apparently as unique as snowflakes. There was one vendor in particular that seemed to fit our needs the best (Vendor A), but it was clear that something wasn’t quite right with their template.

 

As you can see, Vendor A had a their artwork guidelines set up equidistant, which would be fine if the transfer material wrapped around the entire mug. Unfortunately, the wrap only wraps around most of the mug, which means the front and back art would be off center. Looking at the template for Vendor B, you can see that they are accounting for that shift in size.

The solution seems easy; simply use the template from Vendor B. Problem solved, right? Not exactly.

If the mugs that each vendor used were exactly the same, then we’re good-to-go, but we don’t know if that is the case.

Put a pin in this point for a moment.

Get a Sample — The only way to get a sample was to order (and pay for) a mug from the vendor, so that didn’t seem to be a good solution at this point. Ultimately, we needed to get a sample that used a viable template. In some cases, this may be a good option to pursue. However, in this case, in would be of limited use since we wouldn’t be seeing the implementation of the template.

Ask about Template Age — If the template from Vendor A didn’t have some seemingly obvious problems, we would certainly have asked more specific questions about the template. We did voice our concerns and ask about other companies having concerns, but with limited data at this point we had little to support our analysis.

If the company has been using a template for a while and have either had no (or few) complaints AND have samples that can back-up their process, that can often alleviate early concerns. Nothing demonstrates success like success.

Trust Your Gut — At this point we were still pretty sure that there was a problem with the template. If we had other doubts about the vendor or they weren’t the clear frontrunner aside from the template, we would have probably moved on. We were pretty sure, with our concerns on record already, that if there were problems, we could get reimbursed. With that thought in mind, we decided to order some samples using a template… but what template.

Order a Test Sample — Because we were fairly certain that Vendor A’s template was faulty, we decided to use Vendor B’s template measurements for the sample, figuring that they would be more accurate. Plus, this would give us a safe way to verify that the print quality and process were acceptable.

When the sample order came in, we were thrilled with the quality and the turnaround (you can see our initial reaction here), but did see a couple subtle issues with the positioning of the artwork.

BUT, now we had a sample in hand to get some actual measurement data (remember that earlier pinned point about no two mugs being equal?). Using the mug samples (11oz and 15oz) we were able to get the circumference of the mug, calculate the actual right and left locations and develop an accurate template for all future mugs.

This may be good time to mention that I’m a big ol’ math geek.

Now What?

Not wanting to be the only one who benefited from these learnings, I recontacted Vendor A to let them know that I solved their problem and wanted to help them out by providing updated templates for them to use. In their defense, while initially a little hesitant, they ended up reviewing my analysis and revised templates, and starting next week are updating their online templates with my corrections.

Now I know how Sherlock Holmes must feel.

As always, we love to hear your feedback and want to know your thoughts. Have you had a similar experience? How did you go about addressing it? How did it work out?