Re: Tileable Linen, Sanity heading out the window

Dear Eve & Friends,


It amused me to read your experience Eve!  As a signmaker by trade, having
to deal with the variety of customer character types is a part of the job...

Ideally, the customer would come in and say �Okay Paul, I've seen your work,
here's what I want on the sign, I trust your skill and judgement to go ahead
and do your stuff.  The budget for the sign is �x�, it needs to go here
(points to spot on ground) and it needs to face this way� (opens arms as if
witnessing the second coming and looks up the street).  So I do the work, I
get paid, everybody gets what they want, everybody happy.

However.  Now and again, I get the odd one that comes in and gives me the
whole spec., including fully dimensioned architectural and engineering
drawings, type face including weight and style, and pantone values for all
objects.  I wonder (to myself of course), why they ask me to do the work,
when they know so much about layout, colour and choice of materials?!

Experience of life itself tells me that further down the line, this same
character is going to pick holes in every possible aspect of the work, from
choice of materials to the final invoice. Also that when they do get the
work installed, they are going to tell all their associates and their
brother and their dog about the terrible way they have been treated.

You know that kind, right?  And who needs customers like that anyway?!  I
appreciate how very fortunate I am to be able to pick and choose, BTW!

So I tell them, in my most sincerest, dulcet tone (I have an uncle that's an
undertaker), either that my work-load right now is so great I won�t be able
to even look at these maginficent drawings for at least a week, or I take
all the info anyway and call them back the next day with a quote that would
knock their teeth out if they weren't glued in.

I've often considered asking my customers to sit and fill out a Myers Briggs
character type indicator test (http://kiersey.com) so that I'd have a
head-start in knowing how best to communicate!


</SHARING LIFE EXPERIENCE>
</ATTEMPT AT HUMOUR ON A DULL WET UK AFTERNOON>

BTW Eve, my homepage at

http://freespace.virgin.net/p.stevenson/home/

has a beige-ish tiled background.  You are welcome to take a copy of that if
it will do; please feel free to also take some time to look at the rest of
the pages about Belize, a place I love very much.

HTH & TTFN,

Paul Stevenson
MBTI: ISFP
Inside leg, 31".


-----Original Message-----
From: Emshoff, Eve <EmshoffE(at)wtr.com>
To: 'hwg-graphics(at)hwg.org' <hwg-graphics(at)hwg.org>
Date: 14 April 1999 04:49
Subject: Tileable Linen, Sanity heading out the window


>I'm a little frustrated today. (happens to the best of us ) A client of
ours
>/insists/ on having a light-beige 'linen' texture background on all their
>pages (http://www.burkburnett.org to see the pages). I've expressed concern
>that this will wreak havoc on the main graphic in the right frame, but it
>doesn't matter: what the client wants, the client gets. (...and yes. I'm
>sure you'll ask why I didn't just use text rather than an entire graphic
for
>the main image here, but this is just how the client wanted it to look. I
>didn't find it easily accomplished with tables)
>
>So I thought... easy done, I'll just use the Texturizer in Photoshop.
Blech.
>Not so great. The canvas doesn't give me the look I want, and the rest for
>sure wouldn't give me what I'm looking for. So I went web surfing: I've
>found lots of ads for linen paper, lots of texture places... but oh so few
>are really tileable!!!
>
>I've tried to offset these suckers in Photoshop, Gaussian Blur, Diffuse...
>you name it, anything to get rid of the slight but still annoying edges of
>each tile.
>
>Is there a .psd texture I could download into Photoshop that someone would
>be caring enough to send my way, or perhaps a smooth light-beige linen
>tileable texture you yourself are using or have made in the past?
>
>Surely they are out there. They just haven't met all the criteria I need so
>far: beige, linen look, soft texture for readability, and definitely
>tileable.
>
>
>/\
>/
>\ Eve Emshoff
>/ Web Site Designer
>\ http://www.TRNonline.com
>/ Times Record News
>\ Wichita Falls, TX
>/ PH: 940.763.7545
>\ 1.800.627.1646 ext. 545
>/ E-mail: EmshoffE(at)wtr.com
>\ Let TRNonline design your company's Web site!
>/
>\
>\/

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