PK was helpful to take minutes during the meeting last month held at my factory.
Thought I'll post it unedited for the benefit of some of you interested in using this service.
Do not PM me if you're interested. Contact the designers directly. Some of them are actively promoting their services, like PK, Pierce Teo, etc
Meeting of Wedding Coffee-table Book Designers.
Attended
1. winsonapm / Winson Lan
2. apmedia / Clifford Lee
3. hobbesyeo / Yeo Kian Wah
4. p.k / p.k
5. nicholas68 / Nicholas Wee
6. stor / Steven Tor
7. joho / Jonathan Ho
8. Dan / Daniel Lim
9. pierceteo / Pierce Teo
10. destiny_star / Josh Swu
11. sgtluah / Tony Luah
Absent
1. legoman
2. spawninc
3. areality
4. fundee
5. s11loop
6. rolzink
7. zyle
8. smurfman
9. g-man
10. photosnapper
Agenda
1. To understand the new opportunities out there.
2. How to design a Coffee Table Book or a Portfolio for digital offset production?
3. To understand how to make some money, achieving artistic satisfaction and fulfillment.
4. What's a good price to charge for the service? Right price to survive or be happy.
5. To create a market place to get-together and discuss on the issues facing the industry.
6. In the wedding photography market, the market is mixed with high-end pros (A), mid-range (B) prices and under-cutters (C). What will become of this designers' market?
7. Entry Barrier. Anyone with a cam is a photog. Not everyone with a Photoshop is a designer. The average training is 3 to 5 years, lots of learning curves. Cost of a Big Mac and latest software, $20K???
8. Other than Photoshop, designers use Quark, Pagemaker, Freehand, Illustrator, etc.
9. The lack of concept, story, text, etc in photo album today. What's needed in a Coffee Table Book?
10. Creating yourself a name in designing, your style?
Minutes
1. General Issues:
(i) Trend. A strong trend demanding wedding coffee-table books. Very common in USA and Europe for low-end consumers. KiKUZE will not deal with end-users and consumer-level customers. Hence this initiative to partner with professional designers to create a marketplace with a spirit of trying. Prefers to work with a set of partners who know what they are doing and are able to give print-ready files, and also within certain limitations of materials and finishing.
(ii) Colour-matching. One of the higher-priority concerns was how close will printed work match the work on a calibrated screen. Winson assures quality will be as good as if not better than expectations (95% accurate), provided designers know what they are doing. Which means camera input and monitors should be calibrated.
(iii) Proofing. Soft-proofing (on-screen) can be done for in-house reference but not needed with printer.
(iv) Colour profile. Suggested CMYK profile to use JapanColor or Euroscale. SWOP (U.S. Standards) is lesser in quality.
(v) AdobeRGB vs. sRGB. No issue concerning which profile photographers can choose to use when shooting weddings. Gamut will still reduce sizably when converted to CMYK.
(vi) Resolution. Images may not have visible differences whether they are in 300dpi or 200dpi (or possibly even 150dpi), and in fact will be smaller in file-size. However, note that DPI is different from Linescreen. Linescreen for printing coffee-table books will be at 175lpi.
(vii) Images. What if the images that the photographers provide are of poor quality, low resolution, and not sharp? Should the designer do DI? How much DI?
(viii) Design clutter. Questions raised concerning how much design should be placed into the book. Are photographers images strong enough and should they stand on their own? Will design elements overpower the images? Balance of design versus design clutter.
(ix) The use of text. Copy is presently non-existent in current wedding coffee-table books. Copy can make the difference between a normal album and a coffee-table book. How to use copy wisely is important. Can be a form of personalisation for customers. Will eventually archive a collection with contributions from partners and share it on the website.
(x) Structuring. The discussion veered to the issue of the purpose of the meeting. That if we are to be an informal club or association (for lack of better words) of designers, should there be a basic structure and a set of pricing guidelines. See the eventually formulated Pricing Guidelines. That despite being competitors, do we have an obligation to help the industry and market with a mutual agreement not to undercut. And that while in the first year, we may not earn huge sums money from this, will it still be enough to make a living out of.
(xi) Marketing. How to create a name? How to get our audience?
(xii) Customer base. Service the photographers? Or direct customers? Who are more willing to pay? How about wedding planners?
(xiii) Incentive. Winson provides 50% discount on costs to help designers get started with their own set of samples and portfolios.
(xiv) Other possibilities. Winson suggests that there are other possibilities such as menu design, hotels, family-tree books, and limited-editions / signed publishing for fine-artists, some of which are already being done using this short-run offset-quality capability. Personalisation can be done. Only limitation is the size constraint of 12 X 17.5 on the Indigoes, posters can have 44 width.
2. Pricing Guidelines
(i) Generally, pricing for design fees only (excluding print/material) should not deviate too far from:
(a) Category A $1000 and above: Highly conceptual, professional quality with original design concept + copywriting + layout, factoring in personal discussion with customer. Probable time spent: 2 days. Customer base: few, top-of-the-pyramid, but willing to pay, quality-conscious, highly values creativity and originality.
(b) Category B $600-800: Professional quality with design and layout based on pre-created templates that customer can choose from. Probable time spent: 1 day or less. Customer base: mid-range, can pay, quality-conscious, values creativity.
(c) Category C - $200-400: Fuss-free, no-frill, non-designer, entry-level, anybody-can-do, simple layout-only work, no copy. Probable time spent: Few hours or less. Customer base: higher quantity, consumer-level, does not mind unoriginality.
(ii) The original intent is to create something highly original and not just take a set of photos and plonk them into layouts. However, it may be that it could still be worthwhile if the price is right.
(iii) Professional standards must still apply and files to printer should be print-ready. The bottom-line: creative, originality & value-for-money.
(iv) Pre-press guides to be provided.
Update-able database of partners info and specialties to be provided soon.
