Hey
@nazimcricket, I know we have spoken before about this a while ago but did you contemplate fading an area for the guys to sign in so it looks more signature official? I’m loving your work and been buying them all but not a fan of IP sigs and think if you designed them with a specific area to sign it would make the cards look more official and less like an IP sig. Not a criticism but thinking of how a great product could appeal even more. And maybe a nice big SIGNATURE up the side would look great too. Great work by the way.
Hi Darren,
I did actually test that out on a prior occasion and what I found is that some players, Botham may be the classic example here, don't seem to use the signature areas as they were intended and that really mucks things up. You may have noticed in this case, he even signed across his face a bit. Jones on the other hand was very meticulous with where he signed but he has a large signature which I was mindful of and was concerned that it wouldn't fit nicely in a box.
The trick is to also ensure that the signature doesn't take away from the artwork. In this case I have to confess the artist produced a slightly different style than what I had requested and my original request - which was going to be a torso rather than full-body caricature, the signature box would have worked much better - but far be it for me to second guess someone who has just won the Stanley Award for Caricaturist of the Year
Having said all this, for the next one, if I have the right player with a signature of the style of Chappell/Border/Hadlee/Manou etc who are known to be very neat and compact, I will certainly do some more fine tuning of my design as I do agree with you
Always room for improvement.
One of the most disappointing things for me this time around has been the pen used. I did a lot of testing and found that a specific model of Staetdler pen dries the fastest on the laminate my printer uses. The issue which I didn't find out about until after the signings were done is that Staetdler decided to change the formula of their ink to make it so it doesn't dry out if the lid is left off and this latest version of their pen is significantly lighter than the previous version. If I had known, I would have tried to track down the previous version of their pen, which I actually have several of all lying aroundbut are all fading by now - d'oh! An alternative would have been to go with a thicker point Staetdler which I used for the Lynn cards but it is harder for people to hold - especially when they are signing 50 cards. So much thought and work goes into these things and it's annoying when little things don't go to plan - but hopefully I will get a few more opportunities to improve things.
Foil printing was another option that I was toying with but the cost due to low volume would have meant I would have to price these cards a lot higher and I didn't think that was fair on collectors, especially the younger ones who have to rely on mum and dad to buy these as Christmas presents etc.
Thank you for continuing to support my cards inspite of the things that don't quite appeal to you. I truly do appreciate it. I will do better in future!