This morning, my boss asks me to do up some artwork for a display plinth for an upcoming conference. I contact the display maker to get the layout information from them, I also ask them if they have an Illustrator template that I can use, a pretty simple question, so I thought…

They respond with a “No, we don’t have an Illustrator Template, but here’s a PDF with the dimensions written on it” . After doing a CMD+I on the PDF they sent me, I learn that it was made in Illustrator…. πŸ™‡

It’s so frustrating that they won’t / can’t supply such a simple thing. This would easily enhance their sales offering and allow business’s like ours, who don’t have a marketing / design department, to get more work done by them. I have enough design chops to put logos and images into layers in Illustrator, but not the chops to setup the template to start with so that the bleeds and what-not are correct.

After a quick meet with my boss to tell him what was going on, he decided to cancel the order for the plinths we had with them, with a suggestion that they “create” some templates that they can share with their customers, or at least offer a design fee to do the complete job.