An Interview with Nicole Seitler, owner of The Digi Chick.
Nicole Seitler, wife and stay-at-home mom to four children, has been designing for over three years. She creates under the names Sugarplum Paperie and {girl friday} studio and owns The Digi Chick, which gives her a unique perspective on quality control. You can find her design blog at Sugarplumpaperie.com. The DST Insider asked Nicole for her views on quality control for digital designers.
DST Insider: What’s the top issue you look for when reviewing a designer’s products for quality? Is there an “unpardonable sin” of quality control?
Nicole: Ooo … that’s a good question. It’s hard to pick just one thing, because there are a number of issues that can be “unpardonable.” But I think I would say that blurriness [is] the number one thing I just couldn’t forgive in a kit. If you had an element that had stray pixels on it, you could probably fix that yourself with the Eraser tool. But if you started off with a blurry flower or a paper with a fuzzy pattern, there’s really not much you can do about that except delete it. It’s very disappointing to find that one of the things you loved… in the preview is actually worthless. Ouch!
DST Insider: What’s the biggest quality-control problem in the digital-scrapbooking world right now, in your opinion?
Nicole: I think stray pixels on elements are still a pretty wide-spread epidemic, even though if you look for advice on designing you’ll hear over and over again that this is an important issue to look out for. I don’t really know why this is. If it’s that designers just get lazy and forget to check for stray pixels or if they rely too heavily on bad Commercial Use products and assume all is good with their elements because they purchased them from someone else. Whether a designer is making their own elements or purchasing them from someone else, everyone needs to be sure to check for stray pixels. It really only takes a second!
DST Insider: Can you give us some suggestions for steps a designer could take to quality-check his or her own products?
Nicole: Always look at your creations at one-hundred percent. If you have a good-looking product at one-hundred percent, you’ve gone above and beyond in creating a high-quality item and you can rest assured that your kit will look great when your customer sends her pages off to the printer. Plus, it will stand up to being resized by your customers as well!
If you’re photographing or scanning your own elements, be sure you start off with a clear, crisp image every time. If in doubt, don’t use the image! If you’re extracting your own elements a simple stroke around your image will show you any pixels you may have missed.
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| Example of a clean element with no stray pixels – picture from digiscrapquality.com | Example of an element with stray pixels – picture from digiscrapquality.com |
And if you know that photographing, scanning and extracting aren’t your strong suits, then be sure to only spend your money on totally reliable Commercial Use designers. And don’t just rely on a big name–inspect their work closely! It’s going to be your work once you place their items in your kit.
If you’re going to add your own shadows to an element (like when adding a rhinestone center to a flower) be sure you pay attention to the light source on all your images! Where is the light hitting the flower? The rhinestone? Is your shadow falling on the wrong side? Usually your eye will notice that something is “off” with a finished element that is full of conflicting light sources. You just might not know what it is right away. You may have to rotate your flower or rhinestone to make sure everything looks correct in the end. It’s a subtle thing that not everyone will catch–but a very important thing nonetheless.
DST Insider: In general, what do store owners look for in a new designer’s products?
Nicole: I know that the main thing I look out for is originality. Is this designer doing her own thing or are her items basically indistinguishable from five other designers that I can think of off the top of my head. But the thing with being an original–you need to step away from the safety and security of relying on too many Commercial Use products and do your own thing … and not only that, you have to do an excellent job at “doing your own thing,” whether that’s handcrafting items to scan or photographing and extracting your own unique elements.
DST Insider: Do you have any suggestions for quality-control resources for designers?
Nicole: Google is your friend! There are hundreds of great articles, blog posts, tutorials and even videos out there if you look. We live in such a unique time where people have really embraced the web and are happy to spend a little of their own time sharing what they know for the benefit of everyone out there. If you have a question about how you go about doing a certain thing in Photoshop, do a quick search. You’re guaranteed to find something helpful!
DST Insider: Anything else you want to share on the topic of quality control?
Nicole: I think it’s extremely important for a designer to always keep in mind the reason her customers will be purchasing her designs. They intend to make scrapbook pages with our kits. They will be recording their precious memories with our papers and elements. We all need to respect that and take our work seriously! And one of the ways that we do that is to not rush through things thinking, “Oh, this [paper/element] is good enough. I’m done.” When creating a kit, a designer needs to be sure she takes her time, does it right and makes something that’s worthy of being in her customers’ books for years to come. She needs to balance things in her personal life to allow herself time to properly design a kit and not push something out the door in a hurry because she wants to have a new release this week. When you do that, it shows. And when you design with your customers in mind, that shows as well. So designers need to ask themselves “What do I want to be known for?” It’s a great question to ask to make sure your heart is in the right place.
Great article!