Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Why graphics artists don’t necessarily make good embroidery digitizers

Numerous times, I’ve either read or hear about some graphic artist who decides to hang out their “digitizing shingle” since they know Corel Draw so well. To me, that’s like deciding to open a hair salon since they’ve used scissors before.

True, the creative side of digitizing benefits from someone who can be artistic but the digitizing process serves the technical side of embroidery and without the knowledge of how the machines work, production, pathing, fabrics, hooping and the mechanics of needles, thread, bobbin and tension, being able to create or manipulate a graphic is only a very small portion of prerequisite knowledge.

More painfully obvious are the graphics I usually get from customers who paid a large sum to their graphic artist to create a logo for their company, only to find out that it is all but unusable for the medium of embroidery. That’s because the graphic people don’t take the time to learn at least a cursory amount of information on the requirements of embroidery. They are selling a graphic after all and not concerned about their customers need or use of other mediums for marketing.

Digitizing is an art that is mastered over time and has a large learning curve. You can’t buy experience and there’s no “national school of digitizing”. In order to understand embroidery and punching designs, you’d have to have had some experience running an embroidery machine, dealing with production and some kind of guidance actually learning to digitize. If they’re expecting to use an “auto-digitizing” software (or digital to embroidery converter) that creates professional grade designs, there is no such animal. (And, truthfully, if they don’t understand digitizing, they wouldn’t know what buttons to push and settings to use in the “auto-digitizer” anyway).

Graphics people are great at what they do…. Graphics. NeedleUp Digitizing is great at what we do….embroidery digitizing! Leave the digitizing to the experienced. Call us: 303-287-6633

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NeedleUp Digitizing LLC is owned and operated by Donna Lehmann, a 20yr veteran of the digitizing world. She can be reached at the above number for digitizing, consultation and classes M-F.