Bryant Gillespie: Learn how to build a better sign and print shop from a
few crusty sign guys who've made more mistakes than they care to admit.
Conversations and advice on pricing, sales, marketing,
workflow, growth, and more.
Your listening to The Better Sign Shop podcast with your hosts, Peter COIs,
Michael O'Reilly, and Bryant Gillespie.
Before we jump into the episode, I'd like to give a shout out to
our sponsor, GCI Digital Imaging Grand Format Printer to the Trade.
We talk a lot about outsourcing on the podcast and the importance of.
Good partners and GCI Digital Imaging is a good partner to have owner TJ
Bak and his team focus on providing killer customer service just the
way grandmother used to make it.
If you're interested in learning their approach to business, hop
back into the archives to episode nine where the guys and I interview
TJ about customer experience.
So if you're looking for a high quality trade printer for banners, wraps,
and other printed graphics that your customers throw at you, check out
GCI Digital imaging@printgci.com.
All right guys.
Welcome to the next edition of the Better Sign Shop podcast.
As always, I am your host, co-host, Bryant Gillespie, and I've got,
uh, some colleagues of mine, well, just one colleague today,
Mike, the Sign Design Samurai.
Riley, are we, are we going with Sign Design Samurai?
What are we?
Hey, nobody sent me any nicknames between the two, so now I'm kind
of pissed, but just grasping
Michael Riley: up straws at this point.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, yeah.
Why is no one sent us any more nicknames for you?
Maybe we just call you, I'm gonna call you like the mike, the sign
industry Mercedes-Benz or something, since that's been on my mind.
I don't, I don't know.
I was just trying to figure out how to tie it back to a car, but
Michael Riley: whatever.
Let me think about that one.
See if I come up with a good analogy there.
Yeah.
Well,
Bryant Gillespie: welcome Mike.
Welcome to this episode.
We are, I, I don't know, this is like the 15th episode.
Let's, let's do like a, a quick little, like, recap how, you know,
how are you, how are you feeling about everything that we've done?
So,
Michael Riley: You know, I'm actually amazed.
I don't, this sounds terrible to say, but I'm kind of amazed
we made it to 15 episodes.
I mean, I, it's, I don't know about you, but I sometimes tend
to not stick to things very well.
So I'm, I'm, I'm proud of this that we've, we've made it this far.
I mean, I think it's pretty cool.
Bryant Gillespie: Let's, let's preface that with Yeah, yeah.
I'm enjoying the following.
I'm enjoying the podcast.
Let's preface that and say that we, while we've stuck to the podcast, we have not
stuck to the schedule that we set first.
No,
Michael Riley: no.
Uhuh, that's been, that's been
Bryant Gillespie: nothing.
Not
Michael Riley: in the slightest.
No.
But hey, you know, small victories though.
We, we made it to 15.
We have a, we have a, an official real sponsor and, you know, it's, it's
so weird to see, you know, scrolling through Facebook and see like random
people on one of the sign industry, you know, Facebook groups like.
Hey, check out this podcast.
We found like, this is great.
Like, it's, it's really weird to see that.
Like I know it's not, it's not like we're, you know, major celebrities or anything,
but it is, it is weird to, to think that there are people out there that actually
like, listen to this and, and maybe even want to hear what we have to say.
It's, it's a, it's a strange thing.
It's new to me, so I guess it's, it's pretty cool.
Bryant Gillespie: You're not sure what to do, what to do with all your fans that
are like stalking you out in Portland?
Yeah,
Michael Riley: it's just a crowd of people gathered in front of my house waiting
for me to come outside to get the mail.
Yeah, no, it's, it's pretty cool.
I, I'm pretty proud of us.
I think that it's, it's pretty neat.
I, I've enjoyed a lot of the conversations that we've had and I think that it's
just gonna get better over time as we can continue to grow, have more
listeners and more people that want to be, you know, guests and talk to us.
And it's been pretty neat, neat thing to be a part of.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
Yeah, I agree.
That's a great way to sum it up.
You know, I, I don't think he, and I'll speak for Peter here just because he's,
he's not here, but I don't, I don't think any of us thought that, uh, we
would get the response that we have.
So if you're listening to this, know, first and foremost, we appreciate you.
We plan to continue doing this.
We enjoy it.
We need more nicknames.
Number one, also spread the word.
Hey, we do, we do need more nicknames.
Spread the word.
We also like to interview guests from time to time.
Uh, those are enjoyable conversations.
So, Spread the word, keep listening, send us nicknames.
Not specifically in
Michael Riley: that order, but yeah, and if anybody has any, you know, topics
or things that you'd like to hear us talk about or discuss, uh, let us know
too, cuz some, sometimes we struggle to come up with things to talk about.
I mean, the site industry's a, it's a lot of topics, but at the same
time, there's not very many topics in this industry after a while.
So we're always looking for new subject matter to, to beat on.
If anybody has any ideas, roll ears.
Bryant Gillespie: I, I think we're scared to do the customer horror story
episode at this point, but maybe, maybe around Halloween next year
Michael Riley: that'll be, yeah, they'd make it really great Halloween episode.
Get some spooky music playing in the background and.
The, yeah, a hundred
Bryant Gillespie: percent.
That's a great idea.
All right, so the topic today, we'll, we'll just jump into it.
The art department, streamlining the art department.
How can we improve efficiency?
I feel like efficiency and design is, are not two words that go together, but how
can we streamline the art side of this?
Uh, as we've talked about in like past episodes here recently, design is
one of the most important pieces of, uh, running a successful sign shop.
Uh, unless you just don't do that, you outsource it to like a, a sign
designer, like a freelance one per se.
But I digress.
Um, very big piece of the puzzle.
Uh, how can we make that better?
Mike, if you're a designer, I'm sure you got some thoughts here.
Um, I'm xDesign at this point.
I don't, I don't even touch, I don't even open the illustrator on a weekly basis
Michael Riley: anymore, so I'm so envious sometimes of you, you, you
escape that, that black hole that just sucks you in and doesn't let you out.
Yeah.
You know, I think the, the number one thing to improve efficiency in your design
department above all else is just get better at communication and get better at,
you know, Creating that design brief to tell your designer what you need, whether
that's an in-house designer or you know, a third party freelancer that you use.
Um, or hell, even if it's you, if you're your own designer, learn to,
you know, talk to yourself really.
Yeah.
Right.
No, seriously.
I mean, there's, there's, there's merit to that actually.
Like, you know, some people just like, I'm gonna design a sign
without putting any thought into it.
And then four hours later they're still struggl.
You know, designers aren't mind readers, and I think a lot
of people think that we are.
And you can't just tell us, Hey, design a sign that goes on this building and
expect the outcome that we create to be what you envision in your head.
Every, you know, design is very, very subjective and, and every
designer is going to approach something a little bit differently.
So, You know, clearly conveying to the designer what the parameters of the
project are, what the client needs are, what, what problems this design is trying
to solve, I think are really important.
Uh, I think that last point is probably the most important, and it's
probably the least understood, but, but really, really drilling down.
And we talked about this with Dan Antonelli a little bit as well, that you
know, And, and I say this all the time to, you know, I probably sound like I'm
beating a dead horse at this point, but we're, we're in the marketing industry.
We're in the advertising industry, and even though we're designing,
you know, what could sometimes be a fairly utilitarian thing, like a, a
channel letter sign, it's still that business's primary means of advertising.
And so thinking about it from that perspective, and, and this is an
advertising tool, how is this going to help this business is important.
And, you know, if there's a, if there's a sales rep or project manager
between the designer and the client, that sales rep becomes the funnel for
all the information to the designer.
So really, really getting that communication dialed in between the
designer and the, you know, the project leader is, is the single most important
thing I think you can do to make your design department more efficient.
And then some, I mean, and I think that's where a lot of
places really drop the ball too.
I mean, as a freelance designer, I work for a lot of sign companies
around the country and still on a fairly regular basis, like I'll get a.
You know, a screenshot of like a, you know, at a three quarter
angle of a building around it from Google Street View and, and just
like, I need a sign on this wall.
Bryant Gillespie: Uh, make it happen.
Okay.
Make it fun.
Yeah,
Michael Riley: I mean, I can, I can definitely put a sign on that
wall, but, uh, more information would probably be helpful so that
that sign does what it's intended to do and doesn't waste your clients.
That's money.
Yeah.
I mean that's, that's a big
Bryant Gillespie: thing for me.
I, I think that's, yeah, I think that's great advice.
We're really curious to hear what our guest has to say on the matter today.
Uh, we've got Brian Seder from Artwork IQ and, uh, the new project
they're working on Task Os, which is, uh, like design automation.
I'm sure he'll tell us more about it.
Brian has built a large artwork provider.
Um, so they provide artwork services at artwork iq, like, uh, redrawing setup,
artwork, automation, vectorization conversion, kind of all those things.
So they are.
Focus on like the production art.
So, and, and I'm curious to hear like how they have streamlined that process
and, and kind of what goes into that.
You know, there's like the Yeah.
I'm really the creative side of design and then you have like
the production aspect as well.
So I, I think this will be a good conversation.
With, with you the super creative, and I, I would say you're, you're pretty
efficient at this point as well, but I, I wonder if there's some more tips
Michael Riley: we can get out of it.
Yeah, I'm really excited for this one.
I mean, design is a weird animal because it does require you to be efficient and
come up with ways to do things faster and quicker and, and, and, and easier.
But at the same time, because it is wholly creative as well, you can't
really force that or rush that.
So you k you're kind of weird and there's this weird, like middle ground between
like, I've gotta be as efficient as I can to get this done fairly quickly.
But also I, I also need to take my time so that the design looks good.
So I'm really excited to see how this guy's kind of like
married those two together.
And especially like you said on the production, uh, end of things.
I mean, you're, you really can't automate just, you know, creativity, right?
Like that's creativity.
That's not something that will, yeah, yeah, you can't do that.
But there's so many like ancillary components to design.
Suck up a lot of time.
Um, and that's really where the efficiency comes into play.
Like, like recreating a logo, like, I mean, on a daily basis I get low
quality, you know, screenshots and, and, and JPEGs of somebody's logo.
And I've gotta figure out a inefficient way to recreate those.
And if I've got three or four of those to do in a day, even if they only
take 30 minutes, 45 minutes a piece to, to run through illustrator and
redraw, that's still a couple hours, three hours a day where I'm not being
creative, I'm just trying to get something done so that I can be creative.
So automating that, right, coming up with a process for it, I think is really cool.
So I'm excited to see what this guy's up to.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, let's, let's bring him on without further ado.
All right guys.
So we are back with Brian Seder, our guest for today to talk about streamlining
the art and design department.
Brian has like three different companies and I would not introduce you in the
proper way, Brian, so why don't you give us like the, the 5 cent introduction.
Brian Saetre: All right, thanks Brian.
So I guess I can start.
I, this could be a history lesson actually.
Uh, this story sort of starts after World War II in, uh, 1947.
My grandfather got back from, I like where this is going.
Yeah.
My grandfather got back from the war, and my understanding is that at the time,
because of the war and also just because of technology advances, uh, there were
a lot of new innovations in plastics.
So, uh, my grandfather saw an opportunity there and started a screen printing
company for printing plastics, which led to my dad, uh, and my, both of my uncles
getting into the printing world as well.
Uh, and then that led to me growing up with it, like basically being surrounded
by a bunch of, uh, bunch of printers.
Back then they were doing a lot of la large format stuff.
So my dad tells kind of funny story about how my grandfather, who was
pretty short, would only hire people who are like 6 4, 6 5, because they
need to have arms long enough to like move the squeegee across the huge,
um, huge pieces they were printing.
So that's funny.
Yeah, so
Bryant Gillespie: I'm sorry.
I definitely fall into the, the short category, so I wouldn't
have made, it wouldn't have made
Brian Saetre: the cut?
No.
Not as a, not as a screen printer, but, uh, yeah, so I guess my dad has
like, memories of these giants that would just like, kind of throw 'em
up in the air and like play catch with him in the screen printing shop.
So,
Bryant Gillespie: uh, that
Brian Saetre: sounds awesome.
Yeah, so I definitely grew up with that in my family's culture.
Uh, so yeah, both uncles worked there and actually my dad and, uh, my uncle Ray
ended up buying it from, from their dad.
So they owned it and about 1996, they sold it to a manufacturing company that
they're working really closely with.
And my dad didn't love being an employee, which I totally understand.
I've never been one myself and asked me if you, if we wanted
to go in the business together.
So this was like when I was in, I think I was in eighth grade, I was like 14, 15.
Was I in seventh grade?
Yeah, something like that.
This was like right at the beginning of when people were using the
internet for business and it wasn't just like academics and.
I mean, there were websites obviously, but we had one of the
first websites, uh, I put one of the first websites online for ordering
bumper stickers and decals and stuff.
We got listed at the top of the search engines at the time, which I'm, I'm
dating myself a little, but it was
Bryant Gillespie: Lyco and likely we
Brian Saetre: were way up there on Lycos.
We dominated Excite, oh, was it called HotBot or one of the other ones.
And Infoseek.
Infoseek was like the one I really kind of nailed.
I got, I remember the phone.
Um, so we had like more work than we could possibly like even
quote, which was pretty cool.
Uh, pretty cool way to get a company started.
So this was infographics.
The last company that my grandfather started with, screen Print Products
Corporation, and I don't think it goes under that name anymore, but, so yeah,
we started infographics pretty soon.
Let's see, like some major stuff we did.
We did a, a big project for the Menards racing team really
early on, which was kind of fun.
And then for, uh, for nato.
So we printed, oh, how many, oh.
How many hundreds of thousands it was.
It was so many little pink badges that when all the NATO soldiers
badges, like these little stickers that went on their badges.
That's cool.
Um, so just reminiscing a little here.
Maybe I'm getting into too much detail, but, um No, no, no, that's
Bryant Gillespie: fine.
Yeah, we tend to, we, we, we are not afraid to ramble here.
So I noticed, I
Brian Saetre: noticed your podcast tend to be on the long side actually.
I was like, I'm kind of good at rambling, but am I gonna be able to ramble
for an hour and 15 minutes or more?
It goes quick.
I think I'm probably up for it actually.
So, uh, kind of digitize the place.
Uh, built a database that they're still using today, which is crazy scary, but it
got pretty into programming, uh, coding.
And then when I went to college, I started what would become artwork at Q, which
is one of the companies that I'm like actively participating in right now.
And what we do is we work with lots and lots of different industries, but a
big part of that is the sign industry.
Uh, and we take any images they get from their customers that aren't
usable and we do whatever needs to be done to make them usable.
More and more, we're doing like, data driven stuff with like mapping and Power
BI and Tableau and different programs like that, which probably isn't relevant
to this, but, um, yeah, we kind of got our start and we still do a lot of, a
lot of work for sign makers and graves, that sort of, that sort of industry.
Yeah, that's so always a
Bryant Gillespie: problem.
Was always our biggest headache at Yeah.
Uh, our shop.
Was it like getting proper files or, you know, like if we've gotta
create something, so mm-hmm.
Totally understand you there.
Mike was just saying before you came on that like, his creative time is reduced
every single day because of like crappy files that he's gotta recreate or, or
Brian Saetre: something like that.
Right.
So our, our idea is, you know, you have, you tell us what, what
you're using to make this thing.
If you want to go into enough detail, you can like tell us
exactly what like pressure you're gonna use and all the tolerances.
And we'll make sure that like every image comes through just the way you
need it for that particular process.
So it's kind of like a black box you throw garbage art into and get good art out.
That's the kind of one way of thinking about it.
Um, but on the inside of that, that's nice.
Uh, like it built, I had to build, um, an e r p, like an enterprise.
What does that even stand for?
Enterprise resource.
Michael Riley: Enterprise research Planning.
Brian Saetre: There you go.
Yeah.
Sorry for pointing at you.
Like that isn't kinda weird.
Uh, yeah, we That's alright.
Yeah.
I built one of those, I guess that's the best way to describe it anyway.
Uh, to handle all the orders, take all the payments, keep track of all the
orders, built an API so bigger customers of ours can, can integrate with it.
And also on the artwork side, having thousands of customers,
you really need to be organized.
So lots of standard operating procedures and lots of scripts.
And what we found in time is that that became pretty difficult to
manage because the standard operating procedures were in one place and our e
r p and the scripts and the automations.
Were sometimes you would just manually run the script.
You'd go into Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop and file select
script and then run it.
For some companies we would like build it into a little plugin where
like there was a whole bunch of, whole bunch of steps for each one.
But the fact that this, the scripting, the automation and the the SOPs were
separate, I think was kind of a problem.
So that's what gave me the idea for Task Os, which is kind of my current
passion and my baby, where we, uh, so the software, you create your, uh, SOPs in
the software, and then instead of having people manually go through and follow
those, all of the steps, which you can do, is you can automate certain steps.
So this integrates with, uh, currently integrates with the Adobe Suite, and
we're also making integrations with artificial intelligence software
like Open ai, Dali Chat, G P T.
Um, and, and other systems there.
So, uh, it's kind of this what what about Corll Mike is, uh, thinking
about it, thinking about it.
Uh, a lot of our customers do use Corll draw, especially the, uh, it's quite
common at the screen printing customers and pretty common at sign makers too.
So it's, uh, like
Bryant Gillespie: a whole different tool set on the back end though, right.
For it is like
Brian Saetre: making it work.
It is very d.
There are ways of scripting things in there, but I haven't
actually done it yet, honestly.
But it is definitely pretty high on our list of, of apps to integrate
because it is, it is used in the, in the graphics industry and that's sort
of where we're starting out with our, uh, offering our automations cuz it's
what we're most familiar and can kind of offer the most value, I think.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
It was like, it was interesting how we ran across each other.
Like, I think it was James Sours that introduced us.
It was, I, I had done some work with James.
He was like, Hey, you gotta check out this guy.
I know you're in the sign and print space.
Like, he's doing some really cool automation stuff.
I know that's up your alley.
And I, I took a look and I, I was like, this is really smart.
Just like bringing.
Both pieces together.
Mm-hmm.
And, and like we, we've talked about this before and it's like some of the things
that we're doing at Better Sign Shop is like, let's bring all these pieces
together, like you've got, instead of having the SOPs over here and then like
the, the business in like the scripts, like you mentioned, or like, I, I don't
want to have a, a dock up with the s o p and then try to follow it over here.
I just want it to be in context.
Mm-hmm.
So, to me, that makes a lot of sense.
Brian Saetre: And a nice side effect is if you're using like,
template-based workflows, it'll pull up your templates automatically
and it'll even switch apps for you.
So if you have a step that's happening in a different app, it'll pull the
app up for you when you need it.
So you don't even have to think about that.
Like thinking about opening it and going to where it is.
I know it sounds like a small thing, but as like a matter of
workflow, it's, it's amazing.
I really like it.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: Mike, what's your initial impression?
What's your initial take here?
Michael Riley: I mean, I'm just a lowly designer, so a lot of what you guys are
talking about is a bit above my pay grade.
Um, this, this is nothing lowly
Brian Saetre: about design.
I I'm not a designer, so I really appreciate what you do.
It's like magic.
Michael Riley: It, it actually, it mostly is magic in witchcraft.
There's, there's, that's about the truest statement you'll ever hear
about design is, it is mostly magic.
No, it, it is really, it's really fascinating, uh, how you're, you
are trying to tile that together.
It's really cool.
I, um, I, I will be waiting, uh, for a Corel draw integration for sure.
You're a Corr draw user.
Okay.
Yeah.
Sort of.
Unfortunately, you know, I was a, an Adobe.
Fanboy for most of my career.
But the reality is Corra is just, Hey, Mike's significantly better.
I keep trailing
Bryant Gillespie: off the mic.
Oh, sorry.
We're gotta get you a different mic, dude.
I know.
It's, I'm sorry to make you deep through it.
I
Michael Riley: really am.
I know.
It's like I'm, I'm trying not to, but it's just, it's awkward
and, and it's not a natural.
Do you want me to go back and say that again?
No, no, that's
Brian Saetre: okay.
Okay.
I think, I think I followed, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Careful, careful.
Listening is required, but I think I got it.
Yeah.
The
Michael Riley: gains up all the way too.
Yeah.
I, I was a, an adobe, you know, power user for years and years, but, but the
reality is, especially when you enter into the, the, like the larger electrical
sign arena, which is where most of my work is Corral draw, just objectively
beats the pants off of Illustrator.
It's a, it's a terrible clunky, like, Almost amateur hour
program in a lot of regards.
And it does, it's got a learning curve to it, but, um, when you
understand it, it's actually, it, it, it's significantly better than
Illustrator at a lot of things.
And, and so it's, it's a very commonly used program on, on the
science side of the industry.
Yeah, I've certainly seen
Brian Saetre: it used a lot, but I, I guess I know a little bit less about,
about why, why for electrical science.
Is that something that's, um, appealing?
Michael Riley: It's almost more, it's like rolling a cad design software like
AutoCAD or something into Illustrator.
It does a lot better with, you know, multi-page documents than
Illustrator and templating pages.
Um, it has built in native scaling and dimensioning tools, which Illustrator
does not to achieve what you do, what you can do natively and corral.
You've gotta use Illustrator, you have to use Photoshop, InDesign, and also a
third party plugin called CAD Tools, which is horrifically inefficient if you have
to start using all those side by side.
You know what I mean?
And the big, the big piece of the puzzle there is CAD tools, which is
the plugin which gives you scaling and dimensioning and illustrator.
And it's, I'm hesitant to like shit all over a piece of
software, but it deserves it.
It's, it's truly awful.
It works half the time.
It doesn't work half the time.
It crashes constantly.
It's a, you know, they try their best, but it's just, It's not that good and
it's, it's really inefficient to use.
Um, which is the big reason why a lot of shops have moved over to Corral
Draw from Illustrator because the workflow and Illustrator to create the,
a kind of technical drawing is mm-hmm.
It's inefficient compared to Illustrator.
And there's a lot of guys out there that will like hardcore disagree with
me on that and say, oh, there's no, there's no reason for Corral draw.
You can do it all in Illustrator is fine, but when.
Burning through a lot of work, a high volume of work every second,
you can save counts and Absolutely.
Uh, back to the whole efficiency, you know, automation conversation.
Yeah.
It makes a big difference.
And corral draw is just, you know, it's, it's better.
It just, it just is.
And a lot of people aren't willing to give corr, draw a fair try,
and they will argue with you to your blue in the face that you're
Brian Saetre: wrong.
But yeah.
Um, I, I probably know, I'm not sure if I know anything better than I know
Adobe Illustrator, like inside and out, like creating automations for
it, like dealing with the objects that it creates in code, all that.
But I, I just know too many very, uh, fervent cor draw supporters
to write it off completely.
And I do use corral draw every single day.
But not like you do.
So for me it's clunkiness.
It's just a little more annoying.
Yeah.
Um,
Michael Riley: the clunkiness will never go away either.
Like it's annoying to me.
Make
Brian Saetre: it clun, don't they?
I I seem to remember older versions being less clunky.
Yeah.
Every
Michael Riley: version's clun than the last.
Mm-hmm.
I think it's not a great piece of software, but what it does, it's
tool set is what's really good in it.
And I mean, if, honestly, if Illustrator had native scaling and native dimensioning
tools built into it, and, and managed multiple page documents better, I
would abandon Carr draw on a heartbeat.
And a lot of people would, but.
It's never gonna happen.
I mean, illustrators focuses the creative side, the drawing side of things.
Right.
And it's where
Brian Saetre: Carll draw focus, simple dimensioning
plugin actually, cuz it's Yeah.
Lacks what I needed.
Michael Riley: If you came out with like a full suite of tools for Illustrator
that had scaling and dimensioning and, and like real CAD level mm-hmm.
You know, tools, even on a basic level like hat tools, plugin gets
into some pretty in-depth crap.
But I mean, if it was just like a fairly basic plugin, but did, did scaling and
dimensioning really well, you would, it would, you would sell, you would switch.
You would switch.
I would, yeah.
I, I actually would, I totally would.
Um, I
Bryant Gillespie: That's a challenge.
Too many, yeah.
Too many
Brian Saetre: business ideas in the head right now.
I, yeah.
Yeah.
I'll, I'll insert that one in there for you, but, uh, I don't know
if it's gonna make it to the top.
It's just what you wanna mess with.
Right.
Also, I, I do have experience with cad, but it's like, I might
not be the man for the job.
I might not be the man for the job.
It's mostly Gotcha.
Yeah.
Converting stuff.
Two CAD formats and testing them, but not a lot of creating stuff in cad.
I mean, back in high school I took a CAD class, but that
doesn't exactly make me an expert.
Bryant Gillespie: That's actually, that's how I got into the industry.
But I, I think like the first que Yeah.
Yeah.
I was in a CAD class and like the, the teacher in the CAD class
had a large format printer and I had just done like the graphic
design class the last semester.
We made it through the CAD book and he was like, oh, like, hey, let's
go cut some vinyl and print some stuff on this large format printer.
Uh, so I actually did more graphic design in the CAD class than I did
in the graphic design class, but I haven't been able to shake it since.
So, interesting fact.
But I, I think like the, the first question I've got for you Brian, is.
How did you transition from like, hey, we're, we're doing a print shop
or a print business, so, you know, signs and graphics and stuff like
that into like, the artwork IQ side?
Well,
Brian Saetre: I went to college, uh, pretty far away, so I couldn't
bring the printers with me.
So all I really had was my, uh, my graphics ability and my marketing ability.
So, since I mostly did the graphics at ipro mm-hmm.
Anyway, like that was my biggest thing that in the marketing, uh, it
wasn't really much of a transition.
I just sort of learned it as I went and really, really pretty
natural, uh, switch when I went to college and started Artwork iq.
Um, gotcha.
It's, is that, is that Yeah.
What you're looking for?
Bryant Gillespie: Ok.
Yeah, definitely.
So you're just like started slinging artwork in like
the dorm room or something?
Brian Saetre: Uh, yeah, it was a couple years after I started, but, um, okay.
Yeah.
I think I just set up a website, uh, some Google AdWord and
printers started showing up.
We were frustrated with just a.
It's really unfortunate our work they've received from customers.
What
Bryant Gillespie: I, I don't know, I hate to date you and us as well, but like,
what's the, like the timeframe on this?
Like, like year wise?
Brian Saetre: I started this in 2003 or four, I think four.
2000,
Bryant Gillespie: 2000.
Three or four.
Okay.
I was just trying to think of like what, like the internet situation looked like.
Um, oh yeah, like transferring files back and forth, all that, all that
Brian Saetre: stuff.
I remember like going between classes and, and looking at my flip phone
and trying to use the internet on this flip phone, which was like a
pretty advanced feature at the time.
Yeah.
Um, and also back then, no one, no one not, not no one, but most
people had no idea what, like, even Photoshop was, uh, people, they
didn't know how to use illustrators.
So like, everything was like a logo made in Microsoft paint
by, you know, somebody's.
Brother or cousin or something.
So there were just so many, so many bad pieces of art out there that were
totally useless for just about anything.
Right.
So there was, there was a lot of that kind of work out there and I think
these days most professional designers hopefully are making vector files, but
you still find, he's find ones who don't.
Bryant Gillespie: Mike can speak of that, I'm sure.
Yeah.
He's got that nervous grin on his face.
Brian Saetre: Oh, uh oh.
Did I just call you out?
Oh no, I
Michael Riley: don't.
I'm calling out as clients.
I'm all for punching designers in the throat that do that.
But no, I get, I get logos designed and Photoshop fairly
regularly from like big agencies.
I don't boggles my mind, but you know, you gotta
Brian Saetre: roll with it.
Yeah.
So
Bryant Gillespie: how long, oh,
Brian Saetre: go ahead.
I just, I find I'm seeing that less and less these days, but that might
also be the fact that, you know, we have a lot more competitors.
I think when we started we have like three competitors anybody heard of, and now
there's, I mean, there must be hundreds.
Like maybe a
Bryant Gillespie: thousand.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
I still get, so I, I haven't been in a, worked in a sign and print shop
in seven or eight years and I still get like, digitizing requests from
like, folks international, like, Hey, we could digitize your stuff.
And I'm like, I don't even, I don't even do embroidery anymore.
Like I don't do it, you know, but hey, like how soon or how long did
it take before you were overwhelmed and you're like, okay, like I've
gotta, like, how, how does the scale?
Brian Saetre: So I got pretty fast at this work, so I'm trying to remember,
I think I hired my first, hired my first employee maybe two years later.
Uh, that didn't work out super well.
Tried again.
That
Bryant Gillespie: didn't work out.
Super.
It turns out I was pretty bad at
Brian Saetre: hiring, but the one after that, this is a
Bryant Gillespie: sign guy, Mike, like he, he,
Brian Saetre: is this a common story and
Michael Riley: Yeah.
You, you're a, you're a sign maker through and through.
You just don't know it yet.
Brian Saetre: Just, yeah.
I just need to start making more signs.
But I, the next, the next employee I hired, he's still with me.
So he is, been with the company for 14, 15 years or something.
Um, how many
Michael Riley: employees total do you have now?
Brian Saetre: So I have four.
Okay.
Now, we had a few more in the past, but the pandemic was a little hard
on our business, but that was, yeah.
So things are, things are kind of getting back up to speed
now, so they're all much more so
Bryant Gillespie: like how many pieces of, how many pieces of like art do you
guys like process on a, like a single day?
Um, trying to get like an idea of like the scale, like I, I imagine it's quite a bit.
Brian Saetre: So at our peak we were doing.
Something like 80 a day, I would say.
Wow.
Uh, these days it's, it's much more complex stuff.
Like one of our big projects we're working on now is digitizing all of the, the
blueprints into data that can be used in, uh, Microsoft business analytics software.
So each of those projects takes like hours and we have like, how
many do we have in the queue?
I dunno.
Maybe 250 more facilities to do or something.
So on a daily basis, we might only do like 30, maybe on a good day, 40 projects now.
But they tend to be much more complicated.
Like some of them are used for manufacturing.
So we work with, uh, one of the major, uh, sports equipment makers in the
country and they'll customize them.
So if you ever go find yourself lucky enough to be in like a major nfl,
um, teams, gyms, or, uh, like a major colleges, gyms, probably we had a hand in.
Helping them decorate the, uh, the weights and cut the logos and need
equipment and stuff like that.
That's cool.
That's really cool.
So some of that is kind of for, you know, uh, it is overlaps with the
signage stuff cause there's like metal fabrication involved, which is
sometimes the signage thing as well.
Yeah, definitely.
Bryant Gillespie: Mike, you got any questions at this point?
Michael Riley: I'm trying to think of questions.
Yeah, I'm trying to think of how this ties into automation and how, but like
I said, it's not really my area of expertise, so I'm not sure what questions.
Bryant Gillespie: Well, so, hey, like, here's what I think is interesting of
like the, and I, and I want to hear like Brian, like, okay, like what are
your tips for like automating this?
But like the thing that we were talking about before you jumped on is this
intersection of like, like producing signs and graphics at the end of the day.
It's an exercise in like constrained creativity almost.
Like, yes, we wanna be creative and, and produce awesome stuff, but there's like
a, a fixed number, uh, a fixed limit of time that we can spend on any one project.
Mm-hmm.
So like, how, how does creativity and efficiency, like,
how do those come together?
Because I, for the life of me when I was a designer and I'm like a recovering
designer is what I like to call myself.
Yeah.
Like, I was never, I could never be like super creative and super efficient.
It was like, it was usually like one or the other like,
Hey, you need a logo today?
I can, I could slap you together something that's gonna look okay.
It'll be professional looking, but it's not gonna be like great at all.
Michael Riley: Yeah.
That's a, that's a good question because, you know, there's that, that old kind
of saying in the sign industry, you, you have, you have a, you can have a good
fast or cheap, but you can only pick two.
Mm-hmm.
You know, so I want to.
I want it fast and cheap, but it won't be good.
Or I want it good and fast, but it won't be cheap.
That is kind of, it's a constant struggle that we, we face as designers is, is how
do we, how do we bridge that and, and provide the client with, with good, fast
and cheap, cheap is the terrible word.
I guess.
Cost efficient, I guess I should say.
Brian Saetre: Well, I, we have the same saying in the, uh, the coding industry.
Software development exactly the same.
Yeah.
Uh, concept supply there.
So with logo, so with, with design, like where it's mostly you being creative
and thinking and playing around the, the efficiency really comes from, mostly
comes from like the export process.
So if you need the logo and a whole bunch of different formats with or without
backgrounds, uh, after you make a tweak, if you want everything to be edited,
like all the different versions you've created, like maybe the black and white
version or the bug or whatever to be edited, to go along with the main logo,
you can automate that sort of stuff.
So I find that like adding structure to the creative process can be
handy, but I'm not a creative myself, so I'm mostly working with
other creatives doing this work.
And um, and
Bryant Gillespie: I think that's why this is very interesting to me is like,
like you have built a set of tools and a company around enabling other
like designers to be more efficient.
Mm-hmm.
So like you, you, you, uh, you've got like the mike is the designer.
You've got, you're the guy who's supporting the designers.
So it's like two different takes on the, on the similar topic.
I think that's, that's, that would be interesting for me to, to
hear you both kind of expand on.
Brian Saetre: So when you're designing for signage or designing for print, a
lot of times the design part itself is, it's, it, it does tend to be a little,
a little harder to automate because, um, you're not following the same
steps every time for occurring process.
But the, um, the finishing and the, the starting points are much easier
to automate because, you know, you automatically pull from a template, you
pull in your customer's information.
Uh, for example, we, uh, work with a clothing company that's using, uh, task
OS right now to pull templates and then create variations for like, I think
more than 200 NCAA teams, uh, based on data they have stored in a, like a
database spreadsheet app called Airtable.
So familiar with the design happens, design of the templates happens upfront.
Uh, and then it's, it's set up in tune, so it can be used with the software
and then the automations happen.
And then at the end of the process of creating all the different, uh,
variations, the, the automations then help with things like putting the images
on t-shirts and uh, getting it ready for showing to a licensing department.
And then, Also actually submitting it to the licensing department and
keeping track of whether they say yes or no and, uh, uploading images, uh,
for a website for like to Shopify or some other other system like that.
Uh, so that's kind of where the, that's kind of where the automation tends
to come in, although that's changing a little bit now that we're able to
integrate with, uh, software like Dolly.
Um, if you're familiar with open AI's, uh, image generation software, um, yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: I've been also looking at, uh, mid Journey is
the other one that I've looked at.
I spit out a couple renders for Mike from it.
Mid, mid
Brian Saetre: journey is amazing.
It creates really, really beautiful artwork.
Yeah.
Um, like the kinda artwork you would've five years ago paid a designer.
$700 or something to do, and it happens in like two minutes.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: Uh, let's, let's save that one for, I think that could be like
a, a, a good, uh, closer there, but like, Mike, like, is, does this track for you?
Like, where are you, where do you spend your time?
Like, do you sit down, you're designing a sign, like where
is most of your time spent?
Yeah,
Michael Riley: no, it definitely does like a, a, a really good
example that I could, I could see.
This applying to is when I do like large interior sign packages, like ADA signs
with braille and everything on 'em.
You know, if you have a large office building, say with 200 rooms, the
Americans with Disabilities Act says that every single door in that building
must have a a sign on it, right?
Mm-hmm.
So when you're designing one of these large interior sign packages, you've got
say, six or eight different sign types, restroom signs, and general room signs,
conference rooms, office right there.
So the creative process in that is designing how each one of
those signs looks and feels.
And that, I don't know that there's any way to automate that process, right?
Like it's, it's just, it's design.
But yeah, I mean,
Brian Saetre: you know, with this artificial intelligence, we're not,
it's not there yet, but I probably look out down the road pretty soon actually.
Uh, but you still have to know how to use the software, which is
not particularly straightforward.
Michael Riley: Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I'm skeptical that that's ever fully gonna take away what, especially
with, with, with design like that, where there's a lot of restrictions.
I mean, like designing an ADA sign is different than designing like
a big pile on sign up by the road because there's a lot of guardrails
in place, uh, with the ADA code that says this, you know, it's gotta have,
you know, this type of background, it's gotta be this finish, there's
gotta be this percentage of contrast.
There's a lot of specific rules that, and then it hasn't look good as well, which is
where I don't, you know, I mean, AI can.
You know, achieve something that complies with the rules, but whether
or not it's gonna look good, i, I question if it'll at least get there
Brian Saetre: soon.
You won't do it with like, off the shelf, like going in the mid journey
and say, Hey, make me an ADA compliant.
Right, right.
Signage package.
That's not happening now.
However, you could train a model to do that.
Um, so if, if you are a little deeper into the tech, like I'm pretty sure if
you gave me a number of months, I could probably make that more or less happen.
The
Bryant Gillespie: he's, he's too much like me, Mike.
Like, gimme two weeks, I'll, I'll build it.
Oh, not, not to, I was just thinking out,
Michael Riley: but, yeah.
Yeah.
But like, so, so designing the individual signs, like what they look
like is the creative process, but then once that's approved by the client,
then you've gotta go in and you've gotta lay out each individual sign.
So in a, in a.
In a building, a large office building, you could have say, 5, 6,
700 total signs, even though there's only, you know, six or eight designs.
Then you gotta apply that to each different location in the
building, and that's where.
You know, automation would be super handy if, if I could just upload the
spreadsheet list of every sign type and the sign message and, and automate that
process of laying out each individual message or each layout for each sign.
You know, that's the final step in the process of that.
And it, doing that takes twice as long as the creative does.
Yeah.
And it's, you know, uh, if, if I'm just designing the look and feel of the sign
family, that can be anywhere from five to, you know, 30, 40 hours to do that.
But then to expand that, depending on the size of the, the, the full,
the full scope of the project to, to actually do all the individual message
layouts, then could add another 20, 30, 40 hours to the project to do that.
Cuz it's, it's all manual.
I mean, I've got a copy and paste and type in what the next one is.
And, and it's all, you know, I think in core draw there's a way you can kind of
automate that a little bit by doing a data merge with a spreadsheet, but it's.
It's carll draw and it's not, it's not that good.
And is it,
Bryant Gillespie: is it like, is it something you get straight template,
Mike, or is it like, okay, like here's the, the restroom sign.
Okay, this, this one has got like an extra bit of copy on it and
like I gotta manually tweak that?
Michael Riley: Yeah, having to manually tweak them is kind of rare.
I mean, usually in every sign package there's a few that you've
gotta, you know, kind of manually mess with a little bit, but, but 98%
of them are pretty straightforward and, and, and could be templated.
Um, for sure.
And, and yeah, it's a, you know, it's a huge, it's a huge time suck
to, to do that part of it because it's just, it's, it's just busy work.
There's no creativity to it at all.
It's just plugging in data and copying and pasting and, and automating
something like that would, would save an insane amount of time for, for me.
I mean, that's, that's the first example that comes to my mind.
But there's a, there's a lot of things like that and what I do that
Brian Saetre: could potentially be, that's a very, a very good example because,
You know, no artist is gonna be mad that you're taking that work away from them.
You know, when you automate it, you just, you just sit there and watch
it happen on your screen, depending on how you wanted to set it up,
using one of our systems or even some other systems that are available.
Most other systems that I know about will just kind of go through and
just plop them all out into a folder.
Mm-hmm.
And then you can go through and edit them if you feel like it.
Our system will allow you to like edit them as they're being
generated if you would like to.
Uh, so if there's any tweaks you need to make in this case, it may just be almost
completely automatable and you could kind.
Just dump the output into a folder and do quality assurance on 'em real quick.
Now the trick
Michael Riley: is it has to be compiled into like a full drawing set for approval.
Cause once, once they approve the, the design of the signs, then they've
gotta go through and they wanna see.
And then sometimes it can be a hundred plus page document of
every one of these things laid out.
Oh, okay.
You know, and, and there'll be, you know, 6, 8, 10, however many you
can fit on a page, sometimes 20 on a page with, with each individual.
And, and that's really like, you know, the time consuming part, well,
part of the time consuming part.
And then exporting those is, is individual production ready files.
Obviously on top of that becomes, uh, you know, another headache and hurdle.
But just creating that, it's basically a proof Creating that proof document that
has every, every sign message laid out to scale, uh, is, yeah, it's, it sucks.
That's,
Brian Saetre: that's pretty straightforward.
If you wouldn't mind, uh, the artwork, uh, going into Adobe Illustrator real
quick and then popping back into draw.
Um, I can make that work.
That would be, that would be pretty, yeah, that would be pretty straightforward.
Uh, that's a.
Right now that's pretty typical of most of the work we're doing with this plugin.
Interesting.
Michael Riley: Yeah, that kinda automation, I mean, that's, that's kinda
automation that I, I think would free up designers to be much more creative.
I mean, as designers, we're always racing the clock and we're trying to split the
difference between being creative and being efficient and, and, and really
like the only, when we're talking about, you know, true creativity in design
and, and not like, you know, busy work and, and, and production design, but
like, you know, actually trying to be creative and designing something, the
sacrifice there is you, you've gotta, you've gotta think down the line and,
and say, okay, when I get done with this, and I've gotta do this, this,
and this, so I've gotta really hurry on the creative and maybe cut corners.
Or maybe, you know, the quality there is sacrifice.
So things that, that remove.
You know, that those other tasks from a designer's plate, so the designer is freed
up to just focus solely on the creativity.
I, I, I think would, would be huge.
Not just from a time thing, but also from a time standpoint, but also
from quality of design standpoint.
The more time a designer has, the
Brian Saetre: better the design's gonna be.
If you finish creating all the variations and then they decide,
oh wait, oops, sorry, we forgot.
We need a reg, a registered marker trademark in this corner, or
we need something else tweaked.
You probably had that happen, right?
Oh, I,
Michael Riley: uh, that's a sore subject.
Yeah.
Well, no, I'm dealing with it right now.
I like a package that has like, like 2000 different units in it, and,
and like, everything's laid out.
Everything's done and ready to go to production.
Like, oh yeah, we, we need to make this one minor.
And, and like in the customer's mind, it's like a really simple tweak, right?
Like there's nothing to it at all to their mind.
But when you have to go back and apply that tweak to every
one of those 2000 signs,
Brian Saetre: I, that's it.
It's tons of time.
What?
It's bad when you have to just click a button to say rebuild.
Right.
And then it rebuilds it.
Maybe, maybe it takes 15 minutes or something, but Yeah.
Michael Riley: But yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm, I'm looking at a week's worth of work to do it manually.
Yeah.
And that's, you know, and it's, it's billable time for me.
So on one hand it's like, well, cool, I get to charge you more and, and
I'll take your money all day long.
But on the other hand, it's like, that really, really tanks your schedule
as well, and it really spreads you thin as a designer for something
that it just doesn't move the needle.
Right, exactly.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, like it's nice to have that billable time that
you're, you're gonna get, but.
But in the grand scheme of things, it's more important to be more
efficient and get more work out the door than it is just keep grabbing
hours outta the air cuz they're
Bryant Gillespie: there.
Yeah.
Um, I, I think where I, I, one of the things that I'm really curious about
is like, when do you reach for the automation versus just like, knuckling
under and like getting it done?
Right.
Because I, I know, like I, I dabble in development.
I'll, let's say that Mike, I, that's probably pretty fair.
Mike would say I'm like an actual developer.
I'm kind of like on the fence.
Like if somebody was like, Hey, I want to pay you to develop this, I
would be like, eh, I don't, I don't, I'm not comfortable with that.
But if it's something I've tackled on my own, yeah, great.
But sometimes like I, like I put on that lazy developer like hat and I'm
like, oh, like I could automate this.
Really, it wouldn't take too long to automate and then I
wouldn't have to do it again.
But there's also this balance of like, I'm just overthinking it, like it's
gonna take me like 20 minutes to do this and then I probably won't have
to do it again for like six months.
Brian Saetre: Yeah.
Yeah.
So if you find yourself doing the same thing again and again, that's when you
wanna take a look at automating it.
In the meantime, it might be worth writing some notes, like a, like a
skeleton of a standard operating procedure if you think it might come up again.
Um, but if it's just a one-time thing, uh, we will automate projects like that, like
that I was telling you about that, that blueprint product for the data analytics
software, uh, just because there's hundreds of them and, uh, the automations
are pretty easy to do and doing them without the automations is you're almost
always gonna screw it up a little bit.
Um, and it takes a while.
So, um, there's kinda a cost benefit analysis there, but if it's gonna take you
20 minutes to do it manually and you don't think it's something you're gonna have to
do again, then I, I wouldn't, even if it take me 20 minutes to do the automation,
I probably wouldn't usually bother.
I would just do it manually.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
Like it's really what's been your experience in the past, like as you're
growing like the artwork IQ side of like, you know, when do we develop
the s o p and then like, can you like, speak to like a specific example
beyond like this blueprint project of like, okay, hey we, we noticed we were
getting X, Y, and Z every single week.
And then we said, okay, here's what the s o P looks like, blah, blah, blah.
Like, okay, now we need to do an automation for this.
Yeah.
Brian Saetre: Let me see if I can think of a good example.
So there's one I've been doing for a while.
Uh, it was, I've had this customer, I don't know, like 15 years or something.
So I've been doing this process for, you know, like quite, quite a long
time and I've gotten really, really, really good at it, really fast.
Don't have to think, uh, but it still takes about 45 minutes of my time.
And since I'm trying to build another company, uh, it's, it's.
It's a little distracting.
So recently we started building that into an s o p only to realize
that there's like, I don't know, 47 steps or something like that.
It's just I've been doing it so long, I don't have to think about it
Bryant Gillespie: anymore.
Uh, yeah.
But it really does need to be
Brian Saetre: something that my employees can do, and it's different
enough for most of the work.
Uh, what it is, is, uh, we work with a ceramics manufacturer and,
uh, they have custom monograms.
So if somebody, if people get married, they might have their initials
monogrammed on it, so it's like, like fine China, that sort of thing.
So we have to lay these monograms out on a layout, um, and then apply a cover
coat, uh, because the, they have to be then, uh, applied to the, uh, to
the China and then fired in an oven.
So it's a sort of a repetitive process, and there's a lot
of quality control involved.
We also have to create the monograms in like one of, uh, 24 styles or something.
So there's like a lot to it.
Yeah.
So, um, so yeah, we've decided it's time to, it's time to go through
the process of automating that.
And, uh, we're about halfway done, I would say.
But right now, right now, it's mostly manual.
And then what we do usually is we have employees go through the manual process
first a little bit so they understand it.
Um, and then we automate the, we dis discover which parts take the most time
or, uh, cause the most potential for like making errors, making mistakes.
And then we automate those steps first.
And what ends up happening is you take a procedure that started as like
a 40 something step procedure and you like condense it down so that a
lot of those steps, like become one chunk of code that runs automatically
that they deploy doesn't have to see.
So it ends up becoming a much easy, easier thing to teach to, uh, new employees.
If someone goes on vacation, like if I ever go on vacation, I
always, in the past, I've always found myself doing that project.
It's like it takes too long to kind of master it manually.
That that's kind of a, maybe that's not the.
It's a little bit of an odd example.
I guess the, the rule of thumb is like if we have an employee and they, or sorry,
a customer and they're a printing company who's ordered something of few times,
uh, we'll do more than just like write down the file format they need and what
they're doing with it and we'll, we'll go into it and, uh, like export, set up
exports and, and use templates, uh, to get things a little bit automated there.
And if it's something that's a little bit out of the ordinary and there's more
steps involved, then in like a typical, just sort of draw it as a vector, set
spot colors, save it as EPS eight, or send it if it's more complicated than that.
If we, you know, if we find ourselves.
I guess it, honest, honestly, it's when it starts to become annoying.
That's when we got meeting.
Bryant Gillespie: That's, that's kind of a rambling answer to your question.
No, no, no.
That's, no, that's great.
Great to like watch you go through it because Yeah, and it
kinda, to me that's sound to it.
Yeah.
I mean, I, yeah, that's, I, I feel like that will track with a
lot of listeners of like mm-hmm.
Not just an artwork, but like, Hey, when do we need an s o p for this?
Or like, is, hey, It's got to the point where like, Hey, I could do
this faster than anyone, but I, I'm trying to go on vacation, or
I don't want to do this anymore.
And yeah.
Hey, like, like Mike, maybe you could speak to this, like your,
your design business is exploding.
You're, you're trying to bring on other designers, like how do you,
how do you codify what you do for somebody else so that the results,
like the end result is similar?
Like what are, what are you doing personally on that front?
Michael Riley: Oh, nothing.
No.
Any, any of my knowledge, any of my designers, like, they've
gotta know what they're doing when it comes to sign design.
I, I can't, I can't hold anybody's hand and tell somebody how to design
a pile on Z or channel letter sign.
Like, you just, you gotta know, you know, and I'm using, you know, many requests,
which is an online, you know, kind of project management app that, that.
It brings everybody together.
But at the end of the day, I mean, because so much of it's creative, I,
I, I wouldn't even know where to begin to turn any of that into an s o p.
Um, yet, it's something that I haven't put any brain power to and probably should.
So thank you for that.
Bryant Gillespie: Yep.
Thanks for calling you out.
Like Yeah, rough enough.
I mean, I, I see that all the time, right?
Like, or, well, I, I won't say I see it all the time, but how many des, how many
shop owners have we talked to Mike, where it's like, Hey, I want to like, measure
and get more out of the design department.
Like how, you know, like production.
Okay.
Yeah.
Like we could go in and measure like, okay, throughput, like,
Hey, you made a hundred thousand dollars worth of signs this month,
or you made 50 signs this month.
But like on design, it, is it being a creative process, but also with
a production focus, you know, like you still gotta get it out the door.
Like, what, what are the standards there?
You know, or like, how do you.
You not just like, rely on the designer's design ability, you know,
like, like you gotta be able to produce repeatable results, right?
Michael Riley: Yeah.
And I don't, I don't know how that's a, other than, other
than just like purely talented designers doing what they do best.
I mean, when I was in the art department of security science,
um, I would say they probably had the most efficient art department
that I've, you know, kind of seen.
And they used a Smartsheet tracking tool that they built to, um,
you know, to put a few KPIs and metrics on, on what's going on.
The design director would review every incoming project and she would determine
a, you know, an estimated amount of time it would take, that'd be put on
the, the, the Smartsheet, and then the designer would have the track actual time.
And, you know, there's in, in that data eventually was used to say,
okay, for these types of signs, they're taking this amount of time,
so we need to allot this on average.
And, but, Design is so subjective at the end of the day, especially when
you're talking about the creative and the design, there's a limit to what
you can, I don't know, standardize and, and turn into a process with it.
I think because the, in my opinion, the more you, the more you do that
in a way, you're kind of kneecapping designers a bit and you're, you're
taking away their, their creative freedom, uh, by, by, by forcing them
into too much of a, a process or a box.
But yeah, you, you know, does that make sense?
Um, yeah.
That, I mean, that tracks
Bryant Gillespie: with me.
That's like, that's the whole crux here is like, Hey, hey, this process is,
is fairly creative, but like, we also gotta get work done and it needs to be
done and in a certain allotted time.
Right?
Yeah.
Brian, like what, what metrics do you guys track?
Like, like every piece of artwork that you guys work on, on the
artwork IQ side, like, do you.
Time spent against each job, or
Brian Saetre: really, I should be better at tracking these metrics.
Okay.
Uh, so if tasks, that's a feature we're adding, um, okay, cool.
We do have like some rudimentary time tracking for projects
that are billable by the hour.
Um, oh, okay.
And then we have ways of looking at the data in the database and seeing how long,
like when someone started a project, when they fulfilled it and when it went to qc.
But honestly, I don't have a dashboard for that data right now.
So, uh, we're not, we're not using it for business analytics
or anything like that at this.
Um, but that's a good idea.
I should be doing that for sure.
What,
Bryant Gillespie: well, I I it is more just like a gaze.
If like you're processing 80 pieces of artwork on a, a given day and
you don't have this data, then I'm just trying to, like Mike, make Mike
feel better about, so Oh, situation
Michael Riley: should
Bryant Gillespie: be clear.
We do
Brian Saetre: have, mostly have the data.
It's just we don't look at it.
Right, right,
Michael Riley: right.
That's probably the problem with data collection in general.
I mean, I mean, I wonder how many companies out there track those kind of
data points and KPIs, but don't actually do anything, whether it's design or
production or anything else, like mm-hmm.
I I would imagine that tracking the data is in, collecting the data is one thing,
but actually analyzing it, putting, putting the results of that into action
is probably where most people fall
Brian Saetre: short.
That, that is one of our goals for Task Os is to make the data available.
Because you can see exactly, you will be able to see, we don't have
this implemented yet exactly how long it takes people to do each step.
So you can see where you could pull up the dashboard once that's done,
uh, and see like, wow, it's taking artists a lot of time to do this.
Mm-hmm.
Or like, this step doesn't pass qc some of the time.
So those are the steps maybe to like focus on automating, or you could use
that data for other business purposes, like estimating, that sort of thing.
Okay.
Once you get enough data aggregated
Bryant Gillespie: or driving home the value of your tool, I, I use Loom
quite a bit for like sending videos.
Mm-hmm.
They send me a report every week or every month that says, Hey,
you saved two meetings this week, or like two hours a time or four
hours a time, or whatever it is.
Brian Saetre: So yeah, I, we, we did look at some of the data recently,
uh, with one of our customers who's using PAs os and they're, they're
a big, pretty big clothing company, but uh, in the five and a half months
they've been running it, they have saved, uh, 240 something person days.
Worth of labor.
Days, days, days.
Well, like 24 hour chunks too.
Not just work days.
Maybe I need to have a better way of talking about that statistic, but like,
it's kind of mind blowing, isn't it?
Like that's, yeah.
I, I would've led with that on your website.
Uh oh.
Don't, we're working on a new one.
Yeah.
If anybody's impressed by this, what I'm talking about now, look at the website.
They might be like, wait, what?
Well, we've been focusing mostly on making the tech and a little
bit less on the website, clearly.
All right.
Right.
Yeah.
It's coming along though.
Michael Riley: It is an impressive metric though.
I mean that's, that speaks volumes about.
The value of, of automating things like that.
I mean, that's, and I'm, I'm sure that's a fairly decent size
company to, to save, you know, yearly year in, in, in man hours.
But, um, I mean, it, it definitely does speak to how important it is for sure
when you start cracking numbers like that.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: This feels like a, a pretty good spot to
like transition a little bit.
Do we wanna hit on like ai Mike?
Uh, if I'm happy to talk about it, I, I, it's also new
Brian Saetre: that unless you're making it yourself, you can't really be an expert.
But I've been playing with it every day pretty much.
So Yeah, I can, I can talk about it a little bit in a sort of a, yeah, yeah.
Semi-educated manner.
Bryant Gillespie: Listen, like how do you see AI affecting design, Brian, over like,
the, let's, let's, let's like constrain it to like the next two, three years.
Like I, I think we can all see where it goes long term, but yeah, like
side guys are like, we're short term focused, like how is this gonna
affect me over the next couple years?
Like right now
I
Brian Saetre: think it's pretty powerful for quickly generating ideas.
So, you know, you could just think about it like, oh, okay, well,
like what are some ideas I have?
Think about it for a little while.
Or you can go to Mid Journey or Dolly and throw in some prompts about what
you want and have it generate, you know, 30 different designs for you.
And you might find something in there that like sparks the creative
juices that you wanna work off that.
So I've done that with logo designs a little bit.
Like you go to Dolly and you type like, uh, letter, press, logo, bird, a bunch
of keywords, whatever you're looking for.
And it'll just spit a bunch of sometimes pretty, pretty interesting,
um, logo ideas out at you, which you can then turn into a proper logo.
Using your, your Designability.
That isn't really our focus, our job, but when we do run into
something like that, that we need to do, it's, it's a pretty fun tool.
And then you can actually use some of these language models, which are, uh,
which is AI that will, uh, you, you ask it a question and it'll answer
the question, try to come up with a good human sounding answer to it.
Mm-hmm.
So you can, you can say, Hey, I need a logo for, I need a logo for, uh, uh, an
ice cream shop, or something like that.
Uh, please write a prompt for me, uh, in mid Journey.
Here are some examples, prompts in Mid Journey.
Please, like, copy these prompts.
Some prompt is like how you, uh, tell Mid Journey what to make.
So how do you please generate some prompts for me based on these examples?
Uh, but it should be for an ice cream shop.
And then it'll go ahead and like, give you a whole bunch of prompts that you
can then feed into Mid Journey or Dolly.
Where you can get a bunch of, uh, a bunch of examples where you don't
even have to think too hard about what you're even asking it to do.
It's that it's kind of crazy.
Did you follow that at all?
I, this people are hard to picture.
Okay.
But as far as like, what it, so I'm not like, I'm not super, super, super
plugged into design like you are Michael.
So it's a little hard for me to predict exactly how things
Bryant Gillespie: might go down.
But
Brian Saetre: I could tell you these tools are becoming scally useful.
I, I think the biggest threat there isn't such a big threat
to, like vector designers.
I think at the moment.
I think the bigger threat is to people who make fine art.
Mm-hmm.
And I think they should be very, very scared, like now.
Michael Riley: Yeah.
I, I definitely agree with that for sure.
Yeah.
I, I think that it's, it's a long way off.
You get into, you know, the technical aspects of design,
especially like sign design or just.
You know, any sort of technical design, engineering, architecture,
you know, product design.
I don't, I think it's, like you said, the ideation side of it.
Making something looks, it looks pretty or coming up with really neat ideas.
I mean, that's already here and it's only gonna get better.
Yeah.
But I, I'm skeptical that I, you know, 20, 30, 40 years down the line when
I'm long retired, it may reach this point, but I'm, I'm skeptical that
in the near future it's ever going to be able to replace that, that,
that technical vector cad engineering side of design, because there's,
there's so much nuance to it that.
You can't, can't be codified, I guess, for lack of a better term.
It's, it's, it's very subjective in a way.
And, and oftentimes there's only one right way to do something, but it's
not necessarily the way that a book would tell you it has to be done.
I mean, it's, it, you know, there's a lot of situational context that has to come
Brian Saetre: into play.
So it's, it's based on your experience, right?
There's
Michael Riley: exactly, there's a lot of experience that comes into
play that I, I don't know that a machine could ever fully grasp.
Does that make sense?
Brian Saetre: I think Yeah.
Totally makes sense.
To play devil's advocate a little bit, this is where
machine learning might come in.
Mm-hmm.
So if you feed, uh, a computer program, uh, that does machine learning
with machine learning, uh, like TensorFlow is, know the name of it,
but hey, let's, let's zoom out for
Bryant Gillespie: just a minute and like, yeah.
Sorry.
Am I getting too?
No.
Like what's, what's like the.
The fifth grader, machine learning versus ai.
Brian Saetre: Oh, okay.
Um, so machine learning is a little more, just a little more narrow.
Jeff Fox,
Bryant Gillespie: where they show or something, it's, and then like, teach
me like I'm a fifth grader or something.
Brian Saetre: So I have a pretty good definition from machine learning.
AI is a little more nebulous, at least in my head, but, um, machine learning is when
you feed examples, when you feed a bunch of, there's a few ways to do it and it, I
don't wanna sound like a professor here.
Um, so, so anyway, basically you feed, uh, a computer computer
algorithm or a computer, uh, program that does machine learning.
A whole bunch of data that shows like, Hey, this is how something should be done.
It might be something that's very hard for a computer programmer to like write
an algorithm to do because there's just, there's just too many variables involved
and it's just something that a human like programmer wouldn't really be able
to figure out, at least not efficiently.
So the machine learning though, uh, programs will like look at all the data.
And they will, uh, write algorithms that really aren't even comprehensible
to us humans, human programmers that will then be able to produce that
output sometimes fairly reliably.
Um, and I'm not a machine learning expert.
Uh, we've been exploring it a little bit with our product.
Um, so I've talked to some professors here about it who confuse me.
So I'm, she's now here to confuse you in a similar manner.
Yeah.
Uh, but, but it, it, you can teach machines to do very human, like
make very human-like choices.
However, that's like one choice.
It, uh, for like, there, there's so many choices to be made for something like
a d h or uh, ADA compliance signage.
Yeah.
So I think the only way that in the near term that machine learning and
AI are gonna matter there is if you have a company that's specifically
focusing on writing software for that purpose, and they train a bunch
of machine learning algorithms.
How to do all the pieces and then put it together, which I'm not sure that's gonna
happen in the next couple years because the, the niche is a little bit specific.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: It's not, not that expensive of a problem.
Well, it, it's probably expensive to solve, but it's not, not that
valuable of a problem to solve at this
Brian Saetre: point.
The, you can get many of the gains of the automation by just, you know, automating
the, uh, well, we've already talked about using Task Os or other, other,
any other template based, um, automation system there for exporting the, yeah.
So you don't even need to really do that.
Maybe, but I, I'm sure it's coming.
It's just not like, it's probably a little ways away because these tools
are gonna have to get easier to use.
And the biggest thing is data is pretty hard to come by.
So, um, right.
It's hard to train something if you don't have the data to train it, and
that's, that's really the problem most of these machine learning scientists run
into when they're trying to train these.
Yeah, I
Michael Riley: was thinking that in my head as you're talking through that.
I was thinking here, do I understand machine learning?
And, and there's probably a lot of applications for it where the data
exists, but I'm thinking in the, in my little world of sign design,
everything lives in everybody's head.
There's, there's very little like, yeah.
You know, hard, hard and fast data that you
Bryant Gillespie: could feed to a, you need to talk to Tom and
get like all the, like, digitize all the back issues of sign craft.
Like, that
Michael Riley: would be pretty interesting.
Bryant Gillespie: It'd be interesting to see if that could, you could
talk about reviving what, what was once old and making it new
Michael Riley: again.
Man.
Robot sign pairs.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah,
Brian Saetre: that wouldn't be the kind of data you'd need for
machine learning algorithms.
So you're probably safe for a bit.
Yeah.
You might be able to get, uh, like a language model to like
talk like a sign maker though, pretty easily using that data.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: All right.
I just wanna try this.
Give what do we, what do we tell chat?
G p t.
Like write a, let's, let's write a poem
Brian Saetre: about, um, automation and sign design.
Let's write
Bryant Gillespie: a poem about automation and sign design.
In a world of automation where machines reign supreme, there's
still a place for art and style where signs can catch our dreams.
That's,
yeah.
Okay.
So this, this type of stuff is cool.
Um, like a.
I want to create a what, what kind of signs do you have on the plate, Mike?
Michael Riley: Uh, let's, let's see what it does with a, an ADA sign.
I want to create a i, an ADA compliant.
Restroom sign.
Restroom
Bryant Gillespie: sign.
What's a prompt I can use to generate, uh,
oh,
hey, let's just take this piece.
Yeah.
All right.
So I got, I've got mid journey here.
Excuse, like the, the matrix rabbit stuff.
Brian Saetre: That's, is, this is the worst user interface of any product
I've ever seen in my entire life.
Indeed.
Yeah.
Like everything scrolls by at a hundred miles a minute, like just creates,
Bryant Gillespie: oh, no, I thought I had a
Brian Saetre: subscription.
Are you out of credits?
Shoot?
Uh,
Bryant Gillespie: probably.
All right.
Have you played with this, Mike?
Oh gosh.
Okay.
I, this is not even gonna be fun.
I'm out of credits, I
Michael Riley: guess.
Brian Saetre: Um,
Bryant Gillespie: if you want, I can, uh, do a little screen
Brian Saetre: recording of, uh, in my, um, in my mid journey.
Uh, yeah, yeah.
You guys afterwards, if you can, maybe the podcast.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, we could just drop it in.
Michael Riley: Yeah.
Cool.
Yeah, I played around with, I haven't played around with Mid Journey.
I played around with a couple of the others and, uh, but I haven't tried to
get it to do anything super technical.
I mean, a couple, Hey, I need some ideas for a, you know, a monument sign
type thing, just to see what comes out.
And some of the ideas are really cool.
All the, you know, the graphics and text are total gibberish,
you know, they're like mm-hmm.
They look like weird, almost like tie lettering or something, but
Bryant Gillespie: yeah.
Yeah.
The, the lettering is kind of weird, isn't
Brian Saetre: it?
If I wasn't busy with other stuff, I would set up an agency.
Maybe there's somebody listening will do this because, uh, set up an
agency that just fixes the fingers on otherwise fantastic mid journey artwork.
Just fix the fingers in the teeth, um, and like, or remove the one thing in
the background that doesn't belong.
Uh, and, and you have an, you have a pretty, you have an agency
that's gonna get a lot of work.
I think that's hilarious.
Boom.
Bryant Gillespie: Done.
I love it.
Cool.
Well, um, let's wrap this one up.
Brian, I appreciate you coming on, man.
Uh, before we jump, what, tell everybody how they can find
you, where you want them to go.
Like which business do you want them to visit?
Brian Saetre: Oh my gosh.
Okay.
Uh, so if, if anybody wants to buy, uh, a printing company in the
Chicago area, please let me know.
Uh, but uh, no, seriously, um, you can reach me at brian@artworkiq.com and my,
uh, other business is, uh, Businesses.
The URLs are www.inpro.com, artwork iq.com, task os.com.
And then if you wanna reach me on Twitter, my it's uh, at Brian sat.
And, uh, you'll have to look up how to spell that.
It's not very obvious.
Bryant Gillespie: Oh, I've, I've been pronouncing it wrong the whole time.
Everybody's
Brian Saetre: sat.
Bryant Gillespie: Yes.
Why didn't, oh dude.
Now I
Brian Saetre: feel like an asshole.
That French, you mean you, you're not an expert in like anti like,
uh, 1850s or 1890s Norwegian dialect from the southwest.
Really?
Unfortunately,
Bryant Gillespie: no.
But I want to be terrible podcast host
Michael Riley: here.
Life goal.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What, what an ass.
Well, I'm sorry, I, I've got it wrong.
Brian Satre.
Satre.
Is that better?
Did you, did you
Brian Saetre: say it wrong?
When we uh, when you invited me on?
I don't, yes.
Or when you introed me.
Yes.
I didn't even know this.
I
guess
Bryant Gillespie: it just, yeah, I probably did.
You you got like the Brian Ryan thing going on too though.
So like anybody's around me if they say Ryan or Brian, I'm just like, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, I was always
Brian Saetre: in the class with the Brian and the Ryan in grade school.
Like there's always like to just pack
Bryant Gillespie: them together.
Like,
Brian Saetre: this will be fun.
This'll, this'll add some humor to this class.
Everybody answering at once or nobody answering.
Yeah.
It's wonderful.
Uh,
Bryant Gillespie: exactly, exactly.
Well, we'll make sure we drop all the links here.
Like, are you guys, are you guys like selling Task os yet or is
it beta or are you doing demos?
Brian Saetre: It is, it's, well, it's not really beta, um, but we're just bringing
on customers very slowly and deliberately.
But if you're interested, please go to our website and sign up for
the list and we will let you know when it's more generally available.
And, um, I believe we have a forum on the website.
We can even describe what you'd like to do with it, which will help us sort of.
Determine if it's a good fit or not for you.
Cool.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, I think, I think it's very interesting
what you're doing with it.
I look forward to like following along with the progress.
Um, hopefully like at some point we can help Mike automate
and streamline his operation.
It's sounds like you, well
Michael Riley: it sounds like
Brian Saetre: we have one especially good use case.
Like that would be a fantastic use case for it.
And, um, I think you'd, uh, you'd find the development costs would,
would, would not be, uh, would be money well spent, I think.
Michael Riley: Cool.
Fascinating.
Bryant Gillespie: Excellent.
Yeah.
Mike, any pardoning shots?
Michael Riley: AI freaks me out and I'm scared for my future.
Brian Saetre: Well, thank you.
Thank you very much for having me on.
I really appreciate it.
Michael Riley: Um, yeah, this is really fascinating conversation.
I, I appreciate
Brian Saetre: you coming on for, for sure.
I'm glad I wasn't just a nervous wreck the whole time, cuz I thought
I might be, but yeah, you uh, you too are good podcast host.
Very easy to talk to.
Well, good.
Thank
Michael Riley: you.
No, this was, this is really
Bryant Gillespie: cool.
Yeah, we're, we're, we're good ramblers.
Yeah.
We, we get good at that Yeah.
Ourselves.
Yeah.
If this is a good conversation, um, definitely stay in touch and
appreciate you coming on Brian.
Michael Riley: Thanks.
Absolutely.
Brian Saetre: Thank you very much.
All
Bryant Gillespie: right guys.
So thanks for sticking around.
That was, that was an awesome conversation.
I don't know, um, how many tips that we gave, but let's, uh, let's sum
this up and, and like try to distill everything that we talked about.
Like, do you wanna go first, Mike, or you want me to go.
Michael Riley: I'm still processing a lot of it.
No, I think it's, I think it was a really fascinating conversation to, to talk to
somebody who's, who's kind of eyeball deep in the, the ai, uh, automation world
like that and how it relates to graphics.
Um, and I'm, you know, my mind is like thinking of all these ways that
this would, would make a lot of sign companies and and wide format shops
and designers like me more efficient.
It's, it's such a new concept though, that it's really hard to really wrap
your head around and, and, and understand and, and I think there is like a
legitimate fear there from people as well.
I mean, for me, like I don't, I don't want my my job to be automated.
Where, to the point where I'm, I'm useless.
Nobody does.
Like, that's, that's terrifying.
But he, he made a good point that it's, it's not gonna come
after and take people's jobs.
It's just gonna change the way they, they work and.
And, you know, forward progress dictates that we have to adapt to that change.
And that's a hard thing for humans to do.
But I think if we're able to, uh, some of this technology is gonna
make our lives a lot easier and, and make us all a lot more money.
So I'm, I'm, I'm going to reluctantly embrace this technology and.
Bryant Gillespie: Reluctant embrace Sounds like a, a cologne.
Michael Riley: I might be ushering in the apocalypse.
I'm, I'm not sure.
We'll see.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, I mean, we're all like supporting this even if
we're like watching from the sidelines and like cheering it on or Hey, like
hopping in chat G P T and typing dumb stuff in there, like sign poems, like,
Michael Riley: right.
Yeah, no, like the other day I used chat, G p t i I, I just asked to create
me, um, a, a playlist of obscure, you know, seventies Vietnam era rock
and roll that I'd never heard of.
And like it came up with songs that, in bands that I had no idea existed
and I found some amazing music.
So it's a really cool tool.
I mean, I think, I think it's, it's just in its infancy and, and as it, as it
grows and gets more mature and as, as we, as humans grow and get more mature along
with it, I think, I think we'll really find a, a balance or harmony there between
it and, you know, old school manual.
Skills.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
I, I like, you can't forget, the other side though is like this
thing, it got extremely popular.
I'm talking about chat, G p T.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
And that's what Brian was saying, like, you gotta have data to
feed this thing and mm-hmm.
Like at this point, like, we're just happily feeding this thing all the data
because it's, it's entertaining, but
Michael Riley: yeah.
We're, we're feeding it utter bullshit.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So to me it is a little scary at times.
But, um, yeah, we gotta roll with it like the, back to our like, topic of,
of streamlining the art department.
I, I think we probably do like another episode of like structure
and SOPs and things like that.
Uh, I know you've got some thoughts on that.
I think we've both tried to tackle like a guide on.
Managing art files and dealing with customers and stuff like that.
So I, I think that would be an interesting episode, but
Michael Riley: I, I agree.
I, I think we should do that.
I mean, there's a lot of structural and process things that, that relate
to the, the design department that really don't really even have anything
to do necessarily with automation or, or, or, or AI or anything.
But just, you know, it's like any other department in your shop, you, you have
processes for, for everything else.
There should be some for, for art as well.
And that's something that's, you know, sorely overlooked in most shops.
Bryant Gillespie: I, I think the biggest takeaway for me today was just say, and I
heard you kind of say it, and I also heard like Brian dance around it a little bit
as well, is just like design efficiency.
Like a, I don't know, there's a way to combine them, right?
Uh, the creativity side of it is, It's just inherently not efficient.
So if you're trying to streamline your art department, you're trying to
make your designers more efficient, take away the boring, stupid, mundane
stuff that they have to do so they can focus more on the creative part of it.
Like get them designing the sign, automate as much as you can of the output.
The, uh, ripping, like I, I don't, ripping is the right word, but
like, output to different formats.
Like if, if you've got Onyx, things like that, use the hot folders and phonic Onyx.
Those were some of my best friends where you set up like a preset, uh,
drop your file in there and it does like the imposition and everything for you.
So try to focus on as much of that stuff, which is just like tedious,
you know, mistakes can occur.
Anywhere in that chain.
Like you forget to apply the proper color profile, like the
output's gonna be screwed up.
But that's, that's all stuff that computers are, are really great at.
Mm-hmm.
Michael Riley: Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
For sure.
Embrace the technology.
Bryant Gillespie: Just don't feed it like you're bank account
information or any of that.
Brian Saetre: Yes.
Bryant Gillespie: Or guns.
Don't give us guns.
Michael Riley: Don't arm the computers.
People you want terminators cuz that's how you get Terminators.
Yeah.
Bryant Gillespie: Yeah.
Cool.
All right, let's wrap this one up.
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Yeah,
Michael Riley: TJ Rocks.
Great guys over there.
Bryant Gillespie: I think that's it.
That's it.
Send us your nicknames.
Mike needs nicknames.
Yay.
And And that's a wrap, Mike.
Pleasure.
I enjoyed it today as the day keep, keep doing the Mr.
Rogers thing till next.
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