Wall Decal Printable Area Measurements Issue

Question

I'm designing a Wall Decal to be printed and sticked on the outside of a shop; it's a Vinyl Sticker Decal. The client wants it to cover the all Glass Wall Panes except the door. Please look at the image (Shop Glass Wall Panes), with the Panes numbered 1 to 13 to be covered by the decal except the Pane Number 3 (the door).

They sent me the developer plan asking to take the measures from it, but it's difficult as i don't know how to read an Building Elevation Plan. Please look at the developer plan attached (building elevation). In the plan The shop is outlined with a red rectangle. After spending some time reading the plan i found out what i think is the Height of the Panes = 2675 mm (written beside the text "Underside Canopy”). I can't find any measure for the Width of each Pane.

I asked the client to get the exact measurements from the developer otherwise i can only roughly guess them and the proportion of the final decal might not fit perfectly the wall even with the printer being able to scale the Adobe Illustrator file.

I didn't get the measures from the client. Instead they keep asking me again if is possible to fit the design to cover the all wall.

I tried to design the decal guessing the measures. I rotated a single Glass Pane and it looks that the Width of each Pane is 1/3 of the Height, so the Width of each pane is 890 mm.

I multiplied 890 x 9 = 8010 + 1335 mm (The size of Pane n.4 is roughly 50% extra large then the standard Pane). The Width of the entire Glass Wall should be roughly 8010 mm + 1335 mm = 9345 mm

They also want very large windows die cut in the design so that the people can look inside from outside the shop. The problem is again that without having the exact Height and Width of the wall i can’t scale up to much the window or i risk that they want fit into the wall space. Please look attached file - Front Wall Panels

They want to deal with the printer themselves, even though i gave them my email and availability to communicate with the printer, so i can't to deal with the printer.

I attached as well the original design of the submarine (Submarine Wall Decal) so you can get a better idea of what the decal design is about. This design will have to be changed from the original submarine shape to a rectangle shape because as i explained above they want the decal to cover completely the wall, so the people will look at the wall with the inside of the submarine printed on.

Any suggestions? Is there anyway i can sort the issue myself better then i've done until now and deliver the file or should i insist asking the client to send me the exact measures and the printer email so that i can make sure the job is printed up to professional standards?

POST UPDATE 12 june 2017

I received the Glass Wall measurements. I have updated the Post with the review of the work and new questions:

ARTWORK SIZE

I got the measurement from the client for the Glass Wall Decal: Width: 12000 mm / Height: 2600 mm. I prepared a smaller file, 1/3 of the total size: Width: 4000 mm / Height: 866.6 mm. I read on this site that printers have machine able scale it up file for large size, so it shouldn’t be a problem.

BLEEDS SIZE

As i still didn’t receive the sealers size, i did manually set up the bleeds to 450 mm on all 4 sides of the whole artwork to allow extra space for the sealers and for the trimming. I’m not sure if the bleeds size is correct or instead they are too big or too small. Please look the attached png and let me know.

PORTHOLES TRIM

I’ve designed a dashed white colour trim line that overlaps the black colour portholes to indicate to the printer where to cut the portholes so once the inside of the portholes will be cut people will be able to look through the wall decal.

COLOR SEPARATION

I've done the colour separation with Black & Yellow in 2 different layers and added the logo on another layer too.

FILE FORMATS

As i had to scale down the the artwork size to 1/3 of the total size of the wall, i’d probably should send only the Adobe Illustrator files to the printer right? There’s no point to send other format as they’ll have to scale the .ai file to 12000 x 2600 mm.

Thanks in advance for your support!

Answer 1

Unless you know the exact measurements of each glass panel AND and sealer around the edges, you will have to make a guess and design the complete wall as one oversized file with "Bleed" to accommodate the unknown areas, their fitters can then wrestle with attempting to fit it and trim each panel to size, after they deal direct with the printers.

It looks like 3 AND 4 are the doors, surely covering just one will look odd...?

I would personally say that getting it printed AND cut is a waste of time, just have it printed and have a thin cut line where the portholes can be hand cut with a scalpel after fitting.

or just insist they pull their finger out and get the exact dimensions for you - they can only expect an estimated product if they cant supply dimensions.

Answer 2

Assuming that the printer is also going to arrange installation, they can do a site survey to confirm the sizes before printing, so let them worry about breaking the artwork up into the relevant sections.

What you need to know to handle your part is the overall width and height that the graphic is to cover: you need to explain to the client that unless they can provide you with these dimensions, you can't set the artwork up to the correct size. Do not put yourself in a position where you're guessing the dimensions, as you don't want to be on the hook for the whole job when it comes out the wrong size. If they can't provide you with the site dimensions, mark up all your drawings with "all dimensions TBC pending site survey."

The elevations you've shown do not have the relevant dimensions, so -- assuming that they haven't sent you anything else -- you haven't been provided the necessary information to complete your part of the job. Stick to your guns and don't get drawn outside of your wheelhouse.