The Path Best Taken

Pathing is one of the most important elements to master in the process of digitizing. Quite simply, pathing means the order in which the design sews; what sews first and what sews second plus the progression of the design from first stitch to last. Efficient pathing is a design with the fewest trims possible and minimal color breaks. An optimal one color design would have only one trim which is at the end. This would mean that everything was planned or pathed so that all parts of the design were sewn without stopping. To do this, all stitches traveling between elements of the design are covered by the later parts of the stitching. The best way to start digitizing a logo, is to plan out the design in your head before you begin.

Along with pathing, color breaks go hand in hand. Generally, the design will need to be digitized from the background to the foreground so that elements of the design on top fall in front of parts that should be behind. The idea is to only visit each color of the design once if you can. (Some designs may require you to revisit colors later in the logo). A 3 color design that has 52 trims is a very poorly pathed design. Each trim is another possible thread break or pull out and slows the machine down. As an old boss of mine used to say, “We aren’t making money if the machine’s not running .”

The efficiency of an embroidery design is most apparent at the machine. If you are an embroiderer, it will be the first thing you notice and the first thing that will make you crazy if it’s not right. If the machine keeps stopping throughout an order making the job take longer, you may need to charge more for production. A poor design can make the job take 2 to 3 times longer.

If you’re a promotional products salesperson, the first thing that you’ll notice is how much hair your embroiderer is losing. This is where a quality digitizer breaks out front of the “cheap” pack. It’s great to pay only $25.00 for digitizing until your embroiderer has to charge you for editing and longer production times. Your embroiderer may even refuse to sew a design that’s really bad. If your embroiderer cringes every time you walk in the door, you may be using the wrong digitizer.

NeedleUp Digitizing is the “right digitizer”. We have the experience and knowledge to create consistently great designs that are beautiful and efficient at the machine making your run times minimal!

*****NeedleUp Digitizing is owned by Donna Lehmann. You can contact Donna by email: donna@needleup.com or call us at 303-287-6633 M-F. Visit our website for pictures of some of our recent work: www.needleup.com *****

Embroidery Digitizing - Customers - Changing Their Minds (Like changing their underwear)

We’ve all been there: Customer calls multiple times, either changing their order, adding to it or just altering the design or placement.  You can’t seem to get to “Final Answer” but they still want their job by the original deadline. Only that’s getting closer and closer….or worse, you’ve already started the job.  Now what?

You must draw the line in the sand. Small hurdle or huge ordeal?  Take a minute to access the situation.  Is this latest change something you can reasonably do?  Can you keep them happy and still meet your deadline?  Will you need to charge more for this addition? Of course, you want to keep the customer and you should absolutely do anything that you can to make them happy in the name of customer service, right?  Right!  ...... sort of.


Resist the urge to tell them that anything can be done for a price. While true at times remember that you cannot buy more time, so it’s up to you whether you’d like to place your sleeping bag in front of the machine or pay for overtime to get the job finished. Then there’s the fees that may be required for the change including the possible editing of the design, more garments, more supplies (thread, backing toppings), rush fees, more shipping or pick up fees, etc.  In the case of design changes, you need to go through the approval process again so there are no surprises or issues on what the customer expects.  Failing to get the new version of the design pre-approved before production can bite you in the butt, even if it’s just for a slightly different size or color. All these things eat up time, time you don’t really have if you are to meet the deadline.

Specifically, with regard to the digitizing, as always, get as much information as possible about what the customer now wants, what’s been changed and get an idea of how much time it will take to edit the design and if there are fees involved.  If the change is size related, have an idea of what size they now want.  Telling the digitizer, “I don’t know, just smaller” doesn’t help either of you to be timely. Be specific and you can get back on track to the deadline faster.

Finally, be up front with your customer and let them know as soon as possible if there will be any costs because of the changes they’re making.  Give them a choice so they are not surprised when the bill comes.  Be honest and realistic about what you can get done in the time you have and whether you can still meet the deadline. If you say you can, then you definitely need to!  Maybe your customer can take a partial order at deadline and receive the rest after;  let the customer decide.   That’s how you cross the finish line!



***For more information on NeedleUp’s digitizing services, visit our website at http://www.needleup.com or contact Donna Lehmann by email:  donna@needleup.com

Embroidery Digitizing - Hats - New Placements, Old Problems

Hats are a very popular item to embroider but a stinker on the production: Not all designs are created equal when the customer decides they want hats. For a little while now, I’ve seen more of a trend towards different placements that I want to address.

Most hat jobs are the usual front design with maybe a back design arced over the keyhole or straight for flex flit type styles. Customers are trying to come up with new spots to embroider that stray from this by embroidering a design on the side of the hat or placing a design on the front panel to one side within the two seams. I’ve even seen a “bug” style logo squished down into the bottom right side of the left side panel. Limitations include the kind of hat frame used for the job but for the most part, you have approx. 3” of sewing space between seams (on a six-panel baseball type cap) and around 2” tall for height on the front two panels and 1.5” height on side panels.  These are very small areas and not every design will be able to shrink to those dimensions. 

You’ll need a simpler design with minimal or no text to fit those spots effectively.  Font style and size are very important, not too fancy and not too small.  Even ¼” text, which is normally considered minimum for flats, is too small for hats without a fill of some kind for support underneath it. Of course, there’s a gray area depending on the brand and fabric of the hats as usual.

While I understand the appeal of doing an alternate placement to make the hat different than the mainstream, you must understand the limitations of embroidery and your customer’s logo and be able to explain it to them and come up with an option that works for both of you.

Know your hat frame and sewing fields/available area so that you have that information for the digitizer.  That way, the design can be created at the correct size and without secondary editing and resizing to get it to fit.  Educate your customer to be flexible and realistic about what will fit the area to be embroidered.  Know that the same issues with registration on hats still exist and be mindful that you are sewing up and away from the center seam whether you will be crossing the seam or not.  This means that the design is not interchangeable should the customer change their mind and decide to sew it center front after all. 

If you talk to your customer and spend a moment to describe the issues and get to final answer before the digitizing, you may avoid costly edits and restarts to get to the finished order.  Hats are one of the most challenging garments that we embroider on but spend the time to understand the issues at hand and what your hat frame is capable of doing and you’ll be on your way to more hat jobs with happy clients!

**For more information on NeedleUp’s digitizing services, visit our website at http://www.needleup.com or contact Donna Lehmann by email:  donna@needleup.com

New Year’s Business Resolution

Warning: Somewhat of a rant coming down the pike)

  

Sometimes, in the course of doing business, you have those days (or customers) that make you want to grab you keys, lock the door, get in the car and drive til the gas runs out without looking back. Of course you don’t but it isn’t because the fantasy doesn’t occur to you.

Our business is creative and technical and wonderful and hectic.  In this new year, I’ve made a few business resolutions that are intended to preserve my sanity while dealing with customers, deadlines and being pulled in different directions.

I have a tendency to skip over my own rules and procedures that I have in place sometimes causing issues that are the reason I created them in the first place. You know…. When you trust a customer  (or employee) and they disappoint.  This makes me my own worst enemy.

I also sometimes allow people to talk me into (or out of) things I know better than to do… either a heavily discounted price for a sob story or including multiple versions of a design without charging an editing fee for my time.  I can be a bit “lax” about invoice collections, late fees or allowing customers to go past their terms. All this does is teach customers that your time is not valuable and, believe me, they rarely appreciate it and expect it from then on.

 Lastly, I sometimes let customers dictate things I KNOW won’t work in the name of service to appease them and prove it. Customer asking for lettering that’s too small for the application or fabric type or trying to cram WAY too much text into a tiny area of the design will demand that I try it any way and then say, “Oh yea, that’s too small” or ‘That doesn’t work”.  *eye roll*  Of course they expect me to redo it at no charge that way it should have been from the beginning.

You know, I’ve been digitizing commercially for over 22 years and I can tell by looking at a design what will work and what will not.  I know better than to let customers run me, but we all want to please our customers so we deal with it and call it service. 

This year, my resolution is to follow my own rules and stand firm on the procedures I’ve set in place.  Work smarter, stick with my pricing schedule and stop being a pushover with my time. If I have to “fire” a few customers, then so be it.  After all, It’s not personal, It’s business.

Rant over!  Off the soapbox now!  Onward and Upward!

Any of these issues sound familiar?   Do you need to organize better?  Stick to your prices?  Stand by your procedures or create some? 

What are your business resolutions for 2016?  Do share!

Sometimes you just have to say “No” - Embroidery Digitizing

All kidding aside, nobody wants to turn a customer away or tell them “No” but there are times when being honest about what they’re asking for is better than not being able to deliver a promised product.  Those of us who have been in the industry for a while realize that customers really have no idea what is possible and what is not when it comes to embroidery. 

As a digitizer, I work with promotional sales people that I hope, have at least a running knowledge of embroidery, how it works and what is unreasonable to expect.  They are really the ones who should begin the conversation with their customers about things like lettering getting too small and logos getting too big, gradients in areas too small to do them and 3 or more borders/outlines that simply are too small and/or won’t register properly.

All too often, they say nothing to their client except “yes” and then leave it up to me to be the “bad guy” and tell them their design won’t work for embroidery.  What’s worse, they tell me, “I already told them it was fine” or “this is the way they have to have it, no changes”  which sometimes results in less than optimal designs, high stitch counts and bullet-proof embroidery with too much detail, too small lettering or bigger designs than they should be for the area they’re being sewn on.

Once the customer has brought their art in and had their initial consult with the promotional person, unless they are told at that time that there could be an issue, they have their hopes up and leave that meeting thinking that’s what they will get.  Anything after that is a frustration to them.

If you’re selling embroidery, always be aware of what can be done and what cannot.  Ask questions of the digitizer if you’re not sure and then get back to your customer. Be proactive.  If the customer is buying royal shirts and their design is royal, talk to them about what they plan to do about the colors.  Most times they haven’t even thought of that. It will make a difference in the digitizing and it will save the customer an edit fee most likely.

Lastly, help your customer be flexible and suggest other options that will work. If the customer is steadfast, suggest other decorating options for those designs that are simply too small and detailed for embroidery.  Help me out with what your customer wants instead of tying my hands and leaving me no other choice than to say “No”.

Formats, Formats everywhere! - Coded files vs Stitch files

Here’s how digitizing works with regard to formats.  Embroidery software manufacturers are very proprietary so every software has a native format that can only be opened by someone with that same software.  These native format files carry the program codes that define densities, trims, color breaks and a multitude of other functions that tell the machine how and where to sew.  This is the master digitizing file or coded file that is created when a new design is digitized.

Embroidery machines run stitch files, created from the coded files, but with different formats.  The difference is, stitch files are really just a list of mathematical points on a grid that tell the machine where to put the stitches. Commercial stitch files carry no color information or codes of any kind.  (Home stitch file formats usually carry thread color information.)

For this reason, the master coded copy of a design is always saved. Whether you digitize yourself or have an outside digitizer, editing should always be done from that original to keep the integrity of the coding and to be able to edit the original wireframe of the design.

These days, most high end embroidery softwares have stitch processing.  What this means is that you can open a stitch file in the program and it will analyze and detect densities, stitch lengths and other properties. It re-assigns codes and tries to rebuild wireframe pieces so you can edit and resave the design in your native format. This process is automatic. So basically you’re able to open a non-coded file and edit, enlarge or shrink and the software will (for the most part) retain the densities intended in the design. It does an OK job. In the past, if you enlarged or shrunk a stitch file, the stitch count didn’t change, so larger files didn’t have enough density while smaller files got too dense.

Stitch processing is handy but not perfect.  Since the software is essentially choosing a density that is close to the original, it can be off slightly. It tries to detect where the trims are and does rebuild wireframes however, they are in pieces. It also cannot recreate complex fills and will break them into straight flat areas of fill losing any patterns and sometimes travel stitches.

You wouldn’t notice it the first or maybe the second time, but if you keep opening and processing the same uncoded stitch files for editing, each time the file will deteriorate further.  Your design will have missing stitches or broken and crooked letters and the quality goes down due to re-processing the file multiple times. This is why you always return to the master coded file to edit designs or create new versions from them.

Another benefit to editing only the coded files is that you can save multiple elements of different versions of a design such as taglines or phone numbers, and the art the design was created from, all in the master file.  Instead of deleting the previous tagline, for instance, you are able to simply turn it off within the file before you save your stitch file. If you need it at a later date, it’s still there and you can simply turn it back on.

Once you understand the difference between coded files and stitch files, you can see the reason for keeping both formats of your designs, what the formatting does in each file and why you need to go back to the original to do the editing.

 

**For more information on NeedleUp’s digitizing services, visit our website at http://www.needleup.com or contact Donna Lehmann by email:  donna@needleup.com

Punch Drunk - Embroidery Edition

Have you ever heard the term “punching” in regards to machine embroidery?

If you’ve been in this crazy business for a long while, you know exactly what this refers to.  If you’ve only been in it for even 10 or 15 years, you may have heard the term but aren’t sure what it means. Less than 10 years, you might not have even come across the term.

I started digitizing over 22 years ago. Back then we called it punching because designs were saved on paper tapes much like the old tele-type tapes (you may even have to look that up J).  These tapes were created on a reel to reel machine that punched holes into the tape which corresponded to stitches in the embroidery software.  Each tape held a design and some designs that were really big, like jacket backs would consist of multiple tapes. When you wanted to load a design, you had to run the tape through the reader and the software would read the holes and bring the design up on the screen, stitch by stitch. Hence, the act of programming embroidery designs was called punching and the people who did it, punchers.  It was nothing to tell customers they’d have their design in 2 or 3 weeks.

Later when technology came forward a bit, we became digitizers.  Design were plotted out on a tablet or large board resembling an architect table and stitches were input directly into the computer. You had to path the design out before you even started because input began with the first stitch and ended with the last, in the exact order it was to sew. If a mistake was made or something was left out, you had to erase everything back to the point where the error or omission was and do it over again. Editing afterwards was limited, at best, and it was confined mostly to moving stitches one at a time. Seems archaic now, right? It kinda was…

We were still a few years away from being able to bring the artwork up into the software to digitize over it. Now of course, everything is done on screen, full editing capabilities and many automated features like complex fills and keyboard lettering that the software does for you.

We’ve come a long way in this industry. I’ve seen all the changes but I’m really glad the process has gotten easier with the advances in embroidery technology.  Even after all this time, I still catch myself using the term punching.  My customer may not know what I’m talking about but it always makes me smile.

What the Font are we talking about? - Embroidery Machine Text

People ask about lettering all the time.  Minimum sizing, font styles, keyboard vs. digitized, are all valid questions.  Here’s a quick primer on machine embroidered text.

Most embroidery designs with lettering are company logos of some sort, which is mostly what commercial embroiders do.  Lettering is important because it carries the pertinent information the client wants people to see, marketing the company name and other business information.

I only use keyboard lettering if it is an exact match to the design (or in the case of multiple names for personalizations) and even when I do, I always have to edit or “clean” it to ensure that it will sew properly and have correct pull compensation.* The rest of the time, it’s more effective to digitize the lettering by hand. It almost takes more time to edit the “canned”* text and the customer gets lettering that exactly matches their art.

That being said, customers will sometimes tell you what font they want on their designs naming a print font they like.  You should know that some embroidery fonts are named the same as their print counterparts but many are not.  Likewise, different embroidery softwares may have different names for the same font.  Certainly, not all print fonts make good embroidery styles.

You should also know that not all embroidery softwares do a great job on keyboard lettering. Many do not, therefore, you should understand what good lettering looks like and how proper characters are pathed and formed to determine if your software is creating letters correctly.  No software is perfect which is why there will always be things you will and should adjust. This is one place where it becomes apparent that all embroidery softwares are not created equal and the cream rises to the top. (IMHO Wilcom has dedicated more time and years of experience in creating their algorithms for lettering and consequently has some of the best keyboard lettering results on the market;  Melco a close second. ) (and yes, I used the W word and the M word in the same sentence)

You can purchased additional coded fonts to add to your keyboard lettering from the manufacturer of your software. These have a specific extension and are created to work with your software program.  (You can also purchase stylized “fonts” online which are really just separately digitized letters that can be used for monograms or to spell words and names.  Each letter is a separate file and you must paste them together to do so)

When using keyboard fonts, follow the software creator’s parameters for each font including size range and join method.* There is a reason they give you that information; you’ll get much better results. Not all fonts can sew effectively at a minimum size of ¼”

Remember, much about the way lettering sews has to do with the fabric also. Nylons and twills can handle smaller text better than knits and denims, sewing the exact same size and font. Be sure to use the correct densities, underlay and traveling stitches for crisp letters.

In the end, “canned” fonts can save you time if you get familiar with the ones in your software and understand their limitations. Oh, and one last thing. Many softwares have a true type font conversion which sounds great in theory but don’t bother. I haven’t seen one yet that didn't suck.

·         “Canned” fonts – slang for keyboard created, pre-digitized coded text

·         Pull compensation – a setting related to stitching that increases width to compensate for the pull of the fabric which draws inward due to thread tension.

·         Join Method – how the software configures the path of the letters and where the crossover stitch between letters will be.

Donna Lehmann has been in the commercial side of the industry for 22 years.  For more information on NeedleUp’s Digitizing services, email Donna at donna@needleup.com or call 303-287-6633 for info and pricing.  Visit www.needleup.com/gallery  to see some of our most recent work.