Hello everyone. My name is Jeff Schlauch and I am the Creative Manager here at Proginet. Over the last six months, I’ve been working hard on changing the face of our company, rebranding everything from our logo to our collateral, and most recently overseeing the launch of our rebranded Web site!
We also released some exciting new products and wanted to get involved in some industry events to gain visibility. Which leads me to my next point…
One of my more recent and challenging design projects was coming up with the design and messaging for a trade show banner for the Microsoft Exchange trade show in Las Vegas.
We attended with one of our partner companies, Intradyn, who offer complementary archiving solutions for compliance and e-discovery. My challenge was to come up with one banner to compliment both of us.
I came up with the design below:
At 10ft x 10ft, the design required a few very high resolution images and some heavy design work. As you can imagine, the file size was enormous. At its final stages it was 1.2 gigabytes and ready for print.
I needed this done in a hurry (I’m talking one day turnaround!) to meet our shipping deadline. With this kind of file size, there’d usually be no way for me to get the file to my printer without saving it to disk and sending it by snail mail.
Luckily I was able to use the product that was right there on the banner. I literally got the 1.2 gigabyte file to the desktop of my printer in less than 20 seconds!
Eric, who is our printer and the owner of www.postersigns.com, agreed to answer a few questions for us.
Question: What does your company do?
Answer: We do large format printing and trade show displays.
Q: Who are some of your clients?
A: We typically deal with print brokers, artist, franchises, and retail stores.
Q: What is the range of file sizes and types of files that you need to transfer on a daily basis between yourselves and your clients?
A: Usually they are between 1 MB to 200 MB. In extraordinary cases they can be much larger. On Proginet’s last job the file was over 1 gigabyte.
Q: How many files over 10 MB are typically transferred between you and your clients each day?
A: On a normal day – probably around twenty files over 10 MB are transferred.
Q: You recently used Slingshot to complete a rush job which included a number of 1.2 gigabyte file exchanges. How did Slingshot help get the job done?
A: It was quick and easy to use. Great product actually!!! There are a number of online attachment services available but most limit the maximum file size that can be sent. Slingshot proved that it was up to the task of sending us this 1.2 gigabyte file.
Q: There are cost and time factors associated with shipping design files to and from your clients. Do you think Slingshot could provide benefits from the perspective of cost and turnaround time?
A: Absolutely. The quicker the files are received the quicker we can get a proof approval and get the order printed and shipped. It can make us much more responsive by removing some of the third-party logistics (truck companies, couriers, etc.) that are outside our control. It can also reduce costs of course.
Thanks to Eric for participating in our blog. Here’s wishing everyone a fantastic holiday season.
Jeff
Filed under: Email Attachment | 2 Comments
Tags: attachments, e-mail management, file transfer, huge file, managed file transfer, sending large files, slingshot, slingshot vault
That’s a great solution to your resolution problem. We deal with these file sizes every day. Our method of choice is to receive these large files(over 600mb) via FTP. It works well and does not take that long too download. We have done this with hundreds of Files 1GB and over, although there is the occasional problem. Our biggest problem is getting the customer to understand they can’t take a 72 dpi image from the internet and blow it up to 10′ x 10′. At least not without pixels the size of an ipod.
Great Graphic by the way!
Hi Sue, thanks! The problem with FTP is that it’s neither secure nor reliable. In fact, one of our big customers (a Fortune 100 manufacturing company) has issued an edict banning FTP usage in their enterprise. FTP servers can be easy to hack into and user IDs and passwords are sent in plain text (imagine for a moment, if you were sending “top secret” design files for the new iPhone or iPod).
Then there are the performance issues. I remember an issue I had in a previous job. The printer I was working with used an FTP upload through their Web site. When I uploaded my file I received a confirmation that said “congratulations.” A few days later I e-mailed the printer and found out that they had never received it. It was a mad scramble and we had to pull all kinds of strings to meet the deadline.
FTP can also be prone to failure in the middle of a large transfer…there’s nothing worse than having to start the transfer all over again. One of the best things about using Slingshot is the comfort level I have that my file transfer was truly a success. It’s fully integrated with Microsoft Outlook so you just need to compose a regular e-mail and click send. A progress bar shows your file sending and confirms that it was sent successfully (guaranteed delivery and checkpoint restart are built in). You also get a notification when the recipient downloads the file.
To your other point, I have run into resolution problems before with these giant banners – not to mention that the design computer needs to be a beast. I remember working on my first banner on a PC with 512 MB of RAM and a slower chip. Not fun at all…every adjustment took 5-10 minutes to catch up and to save… I just went to lunch and came back!
Thanks again for your comments Sue and Happy Holidays!
Jeff