Roland imagiNATION 2016

Joe Diaz from Diaz Sign Art, an award-winning designer at a small family business that's been providing quality signs and designs for well over thirty-years, highlights the major design components of running a successful small sign business. Joe reveals the ways that Diaz Sign Art has solved common problems and explains everything from design pricing to helping clients make better design decisions and protecting intellectual property. Over the years Joe has created policies and systems to solve the many bumps in the road that he's experienced as a designer in a family sign business. He'll review the top 6 problems they faced relating to offering design services and how they now prevent those same problems. Learn from his experience so you can avoid the bumps altogether.

Topics covered:

• Design pricing and design ownership solutions 
• Creating systems designed to up-sell
• Protecting intellectual property
• In-house color matching with custom color palettes 
• Creating sellable concepts for a portfolio 
• Establishing authority and helping clients make good design decisions

Join industry-renowned Mark Rugen during this imagiNATION-exclusive training session to learn how Roland users can improve their print-and-cut workflow using Flexi for sign-specific design and VersaWorks as their RIP. First, you’ll discover how to quickly add one or more contour cut paths to any vector or bitmap image, as well as nesting tricks that will save up to 50% of your media. Next, find out how to use Flexi to match colors between your monitor and your printing output so you always get the color you expect. Finally, you’ll complete file prep and send the job to VersaWorks. Yep, you’ll Rock ‘n Roll with the perfect workflow! This class is great for all levels, but those looking to improve their efficiency, productivity and color output will benefit most.

Discover a fast and efficient new way to digitally design without software with Roland's new CL!CK cloud service. Jeff DiToro, President of Inclix (a Division of Roland DG) explains how CL!CK Content Creator is a new, economical solution that lives inside your web-browser and allows you to create both high-quality custom fixed compositions and full motion video for any platform in minutes. The service includes stock photos, video and audio as well as design tools that allow a novice to create hi-res graphics for inkjet out put or videos for dynamic signage. This demonstration shows how you can use the cloud-based CL!CK Content Creator to quickly search through over 50 million royalty-paid videos, photos, and audio tracks, dragging and dropping the files to build your own graphic and video content with ease. With Cl!ick Content Creator, you can allow your customers to design their own banners and window graphics, it really is that easy.

Topics covered: 

• Complete how-to of CL!CK content creator cloud service
• Watch Jeff (who's not a designer) build a professional, high quality sales video
• Review of Cl!ck pricing
• Offer "design-it-yourself" services to your customers
• Create an additional revenue stream while you add value for your customers

Roland DGA technical and design experts, Jay and Dan, share some crucial information about wide-format in this workshop that covers both basic and advanced principles of graphic design, with a focus on best practices for wide-format output. The entire design process, from the initial objectives to final deliverables, will be presented with real-world examples of how to put theory into practice. The main points of the workshop include, the function of any design, the use of layout, photography, typography, color and proper output and installation to achieve the desired impact. Attendees will walk away with fresh ideas on how to set your business and customers apart by providing professional quality design services that complement production capabilities.

Topics covered:

• Setting Objectives
• Analyzing the Situation
• Design Best Practices
• Output Best Practices
• How to Make Money

Matt Richart and Dallas Fowler are co-founders of the hugely successful vehicle wrap shop, Digital EFX Wraps. In this design and sales workshop, Matt and Dallas offer some incredibly useful tips and tricks on how to save time when designing and keeping the designer, installer and salesman on the same page and how to design smart (ie. designing around door handles). This in-depth session covers both sales tips and best practices as well as practical advice and creative tricks of the trade for designing wraps. 

Topics covered:

• Selling best practices
• Keys to beating the competition, even with a premium price
• Why we always offer 2-3 different solutions for every job (decal, partial, full)
• How to present the proposal to the customer and position each solution
• Designing the right wrap for each customer
• Design tricks for fancy wraps that are easy to install
• In this session we will walk through an actual job from selling it to designing it to fulfilling the order.
• Pitfalls of design and selling (learn from our mistakes!)