Creator Feedback for our new product: Etched Bamboo chopping boards!

[James]

Hi Creators, 

Head on over to Creator News and discover our newest product launch. A versatile Etched Bamboo Wooden chopping board, and let us know what you think! 

Thanks!

[CrazyMermaid]

The video was super helpful. Great product!

[ibelieveimages]

Need portrait orientation, so can be hung by the handle for display.

[northwestphotos]

I strongly agree that we need a portrait orientation for these cutting boards, especially for our vertically oriented photographs to design with, such as lighthouses.

[PAZP]

I ❤️ this idea. Thanks for the video explanation too. 

[WHS_Designs]

it's awesome that Zazzle now offers these, and it's great to see the video introduce them and offer tips on their use and care, too.

it would be even nicer if the full engraving area for the 2 larger boards were progressively larger, too, instead of being stuck at 6"x6" for the medium and large sizes ... the design looks best on the smallest board, but designs on the bigger boards look a bit "empty". maybe 7"x7" for the medium board and 9"x9" for the large board?

thank you for your consideration.

[Fiorenzo]

I'm pretty sure, this is due to technical "printing" area limitations of the engraving tool to 6x6". 

[WHS_Designs]

@Fiorenzo 

you may be right ... but I'm adding my two cents in the interests of (constructive) feedback to this new product rollout, because maybe, just maybe, if it's an oversight, the Maker (whom I'm guessing is not Zazzle Home) might be able address this.

[Fiorenzo]

And your two cents were and are most appreciated, don't get me wrong. I just gave a technical explanation of the issue. Isn't different with Zazzle shirts, btw, unless they have changed it in the meantime. The designs look good on smaller to medium shirts, but on large ones, they're too small. In this case, some printers work with fixed sizes while others are able to scale up the printing area depending on the shirt size.

[WHS_Designs]

noted. no offense taken. 🙂

that's interesting. I never noticed that the larger shirts had scalability issues.

I wonder if, were we given the choice to design and publish on a specific size of shirt, that that issue could be addressed? I do this for some other products that offer this choice. Of course, this presumes that the scaling between the different sizes is proportional (e.g. the two sizes of square pillows) as opposed to non-proportional (e.g. between square and body pillows; and some of the sizes offered by the paperboard puzzles).

[Fiorenzo]

Good. I would never want to (unintentionally) hurt my fellow designers, especially not the lovely and helpful ones.

Zazzle shirts are or at least were back when I did a custom work for one of my customers most certainly printed at the same size that makes them look small on L/XL apparel. You can check the customer reviews and photos, there were quite a bunch who complained about small print sizes. I also had some printing issues back then and addressed these in the old forums. Here are the shots I did. The first shot on the white sweater was the first attempt that came out in bad printing. Then I made a second design based on the previous experience that resulted in better printing. In both images you see the discrepancy in the design size of the preview (small or medium shirt) vs the real print size on a XL sweater size. Zazzle prints the same way, btw, the mentioned printers with scalable prints are others I know about.

Edit: I used the whole design area size to the max. The prints scale on other products like pillows. Careful when you design products with different shapes, always check all shapes before you publish, the design may not scale well on different shapes so you may end up with unprinted areas. When this happens, you must find out which shape to design on so all shapes get filled.

[WHS_Designs]

@Fiorenzo let me just bask for a moment in your compliment. 🙂

thanks for providing those screenshots! (and your advice -- when I first started designing on Zazzle, I would forget to set the merchandising options for square pillows to just square pillows. so the lumbar pillows would be terrible. ditto for the paperboard puzzles, and tapestries).

yes, it is always frustrating to discover that what's on the screen doesn't align with the actual received product. I see that the white parts of your collies got bleached out in the light shirts. 😞

as for the images on dark shirts ... the results on the received product look quite faded. much less of a warm reddish tint to the tan parts of the collies, and the blacks are not as rich as on screen. 😞

H

PS. when you took photos of that collie trio on a dark shirt and I saw the words "no flash", my first thought was that you selected a dark shirt without the flashing option. 😉

[Fiorenzo]

What goes around, comes around. Works also the positive way 🙂

Be aware that all shapes and sizes get restored as soon as the product gets edited, saved in the "saved designs" and then taken from there to make the final changes.

Shirt printing usually uses the "Direct To Garment" (DTC) technique when not stated otherwise. This means the colors are sprayed on the fabric and the quality you get is subject to different factors that directly affect the results, such as the density of the used inks (how much diluted they are), how much ink is used, and finally the color profiles and mixtures used as well as the fabric type. You can send the same design to 10 different printers and you'll get 10 different results.

If you want vivid results, you should look for sublimation printing where the fabric gets soaked with the ink. This works only on Polyester, though. Good examples are all-over printed shirts (unfortunately not sold on Z), women's racerback tank tops, scarves (look fabulous, btw), pillows (also great), and more. That's why I don't design "photo" shirts but on request. Until we (hopefully) get all-over shirts.

A good way to check the printing on the products is to look at the customers' review photos and compare them with the previews of that product, where available.

[WHS_Designs]

@Fiorenzo super! thanks for the overview on the DTC process.

to the Zazzle mods: very sorry a thousand apologies for this extended segue. 😉

[Kaleiope]

not a fan of the small print area, and it looks like it's not centered correctly? 

[Fiorenzo]

The small printing area is probably due to technical limitations of the engraving tool. I agree, that the design is vertically off-centered, this is most certainly (hopefully) a preview issue.

[Zorinda]

I agree with the comments about the image area on the larger boards. Too small. They look weird.

[KimJ]

Hi James, is there a reason new designs haven't indexed yet?   It's been over 24 hours, and they're still not showing up in searches.   Thanks!  

[Pixelan]

It's a fun item to design for, thanks!

[Sara_H]

Will these be available to purchase via co.uk international domain and if so - when?

Thanks! 

[Fiorenzo]

Great add. Please add a vertical orientation, preferably both design area and previews, or at least a product and a generic insitu preview. Thanks!

[almdrs]

I have a question about the orientation of the designs on those boards. Which one is considered the standard?

[WHS_Designs]

a round cutting board would be a nice option to have, too.

[chefcateringbiz]

A square inside of a rectangle just looks weird. With the handle/hole taking up space as well, it can never look really centered. Not sure what to do with this. I did a full-space decorative corners design, just looked super weird. Did a "The Andersons" text with a flourish underneath and it doesn't look centered.

[ArtVixen]

Very nice cutting boards, but it would have been nice to fill the entire surface with a pattern. 

[ChromaMaven]

This is a great addition! As others have mentioned, it would be great to have a vertical orientation in the product views.

I have a question about the centering of the design on the full etching. When I center my design in the Design Tool, in the preview images, it appears off-center towards the right. Is this a preview issue? Should I believe what I see on the Design Tool?  It would be great to see an overlay of the Design Tool printable area on an image of the cutting board. [Edited to add a screenshot.]

Thanks!

[ChromaMaven]

 Here is my design in the Design Tool. It is centered but the preview shows it off center.

[Fiorenzo]

Preview issue. If you watch the video, you'll see that the design is well-centered on the real product. Look at 0:30 where they show a square design.

https://community.zazzle.com/t5/creator-news/new-product-launch-etched-bamboo-wooden-cutting-boards/...