You can see that the proliferation of printer options, as well as the number of combinations of materials, can cause poor decisions to be made in digital fine art reproduction. Art buyers fear that they will pay for quality, but not get longevity. The art market loves the potential that digital printing brings, but fears that inappropriate printing practices will taint their product and reputation. This reputation is their stock and trade. Artists and Publishers work very hard to establish their collector base. Once it’s tarnished, they can’t get it back. They aren’t going to trust you twice.
We’re going on our seventeenth year of building customer confidence here at Harvest, and it’s still our biggest challenge and responsibility. We have found that the earlier we build confidence, the better. The best way to do that is to establish a rapport before we do anything. Artists and publisher don’t buy a job. They buy the right relationship. Remember, the whole reason why they look to a digital fine art Giclée printer is about quality in reproduction and the fact that they can make a few to test the market. That means that for each successful image, they come back to you for services again and again. They have many images. So, you have to genuinely understand their needs and appropriately set their expectations. They won’t and shouldn’t share that information with you unless they feel comfortable with you as their prospective vendor. It’s good to be familiar with what’s going on in the art business, because they are. To help them, you need to understand who their customers will be. A product sold at K-Mart has a much different need for quality than a product sold in an art gallery. You’re not going to be able to charge them what it takes to make a Tru Giclée, unless their customers are willing to pay for the quality you put in. You’re going to need to know the initial quantity they require. Giclées’ take a long time to make. If they need any kind of quantity, that’s going to take time.
You cannot control where your art reproduction will be displayed. The best you can do is produce the highest quality available and advise them how to protect it. It’s Art. Art has to be protected from extremes in temperature, humidity, light and handling.
Its also important to understand what you’ll be starting from to reproduce the art. Direct digital capture is always the best. However, often, artists no longer own their originals, so you must work from a transparency (4x5 is best) or slide. Evaluate the transparency correctly and set their expectations early. Check for corner-to-corner focus. Hope for a color bar. Scratches can be repaired, but computer time will cost them or you, depending on their understanding.
A great tool we have discovered for customer satisfaction, we call High Criteria. That is, we want to discover what is the most important thing to them. We’ll ask, “what’s important about this image to you”. That can be followed by “why is that so important to you”. You use your company’s skills and technology to insure that. Obviously, if you can really accomplish the thing that is most important, they can’t help but to be excited with your work.
Our years of experience certainly help, but we’re still new to the person in the lobby. We still have to earn every job, every day. Overall, we do it for the love of the art and artists. There are only a few professions you can give your heart to and say the world’s a better place for what I did today. I guess we’re really quite lucky.
Barbara Galang is the President of Harvest Productions. She started in the company’s shipping department in 1996 and is self-taught in each aspect of the Giclée production process. Contact Us
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