The 2013 Duo Convention

This past week & weekend here at Duo, we held the 2013 Duo Convention. Nearly 100 clients and friends attended the festivities here in Lansargues and Montpellier. What an experience. I was given the awesome opportunity to present my work from the past few weeks to a number of different businesses and business representatives that attended the event. It was a great chance to meet and talk with lots of different people from within the industry. I had several very good discussions with all kinds of different people from all over the world.
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The convention was awesome! I learned a lot and met some great people from all over the world. We ended the week with a dinner on the Mediterranean Sea. Can’t beat that!

Megan Beard
Graduate of Bemidji State University

Bare Naked iPad Kiosks

“Boy, you’re either bare or you’re naked. You can’t be bare naked.”~ My dad

I’m a hardware guy. Which makes sense since our main business is developing hardware solutions for graphics, whether trade show, retail, or environments.

That’s not to say I don’t appreciate graphics. I do. Fortunately, I see spectacular graphics every day in our purchase and rental set-up areas. And to be totally honest, it’s not unusual to see an occasional visual belly flop that makes me scratch my head. Some graphic designers clearly do not understand how to design for trade shows.

I tell our distributors all the time, “If you want to educate your client on what works and what doesn’t work for graphics, spend 30 minutes to an hour in the Past 5 Days photo gallery on the Classic Exhibits website or in any Exhibit Design Search. There, you’ll see seven years of trade show graphics, one day at a time.”

Dave Brown discusses the Power of Pano

Dave S. Brown, VP of Sales

About the Author
Dave Brown is the Vice President of Sales at Optima Graphics. He has been in the Trade Show industry since the early 90s.

Other posts by Dave

Talking Tech – Intro

Hello all! For those of you who I haven’t worked with in the past (a small percentage I’m sure as I’ve worked with the majority of our client base over the years), my name is Keith Simpson and I am the Supervisor of the Graphic Support (or Tech Support) department. I’ve been a member of the team at Optima for 8 years and a Supervisor of the Graphic Support department for roughly 5 of them.

This is the first installment of the “Talking Tech” blog that I will be writing from time to time, and also my first foray into blogging as a whole, so please bear with me! The goal of this “address” is to share with you graphic-related tips or upcoming changes that could affect you and your business. This would include template adjustments, procedural changes, or any general information about the ever-evolving print industry. Make sure you subscribe to our blog so you can be in the know on all template or sizing changes as they happen.

Being an Optima employee comes with one major core principal: outstanding customer service. I can assure you that any and all changes made are made with you, the customer, in mind. Ultimately the Graphic Support Department’s goal is to provide a simple, pain-free experience when uploading artwork to us, and more importantly, a detail-oriented structure of correspondence on all pending orders.

With all of that being said, I will jump into some of the changes we’re planning on implementing in Graphic Support effective Thursday, June 6, 2013.

In Graphic Support, we have a position solely responsible for filtering through and distributing all incoming artwork sent to us through multiple channels. This position is known as the downloader. The downloader position is evolving into a new way for us to manage your orders and keep constant communication on pending jobs.

Our downloader will be responsible for all pending purchase orders (PO’s) holding on receipt of art files, as well as all pending uploads holding on receipt of PO. If you upload a file to Optima, you will receive an email from the downloader within 24 hours letting you know that we’ve received your artwork and are holding for a purchase order. If we do not get a reply via email, we will follow up with a phone call. Unless instructed otherwise, we will continue to contact daily until the missing piece of the job arrives.

This re-defining of the position comes with two benefits to you:

1. In the past, these responsibilities were handled by the Graphic Support Rep in charge of your account. Moving forward, these TSR’s will be able to dedicate 100% of their time to processing orders and customer correspondence on existing jobs.
2. One person will be dedicating all of their time to ensuring that ship dates are not missed and that you are always aware of what orders you have pending with us.

I am confident that this new procedure will be of a huge benefit to you and I encourage your feedback related to this change. We will always have eyes on your orders and uploads, allowing you to focus on advancing your business and being successful. Now, I must also say that I feel we currently do a great job in Graphic Support when it comes to keeping up with correspondence on orders; however, the goal of this new process is to exceed those expectations.

As always, please feel free to reach out to me at any point, for whatever reason with whatever questions or concerns you may have. I have listed my contact information below. I am optimistic about where we’re going and I look forward to hearing feedback in the future. Thank you for your time!

About the Author
Keith Simpson is the Graphic Support Rep Supervisor of Optima Graphics. He has
worked in Trade Show Industry since 2005.
Toll free: 1-800-844-8877 x255
Direct: 636-680-9255
ICQ (instant messaging): 552523421

Other posts by Keith

l’antre du lion (the lion’s den)

Today marks my second week working at Duo Display here in Lansargues. What an experience it has been! With everyone busy preparing for the 2013 Duo Display Convention (June 13th to 15th), I was “thrown into the lion’s den” so to speak. Immediately on my first day of work here at Duo, I was busy in the production warehouse putting together and taking apart an actual Panoramic™ trade show booth. This gave me an up-close and personal look at how the system works and of course, how it is designed to function properly. This is the hands-on experience that makes an internship so invaluable for a designer in the exhibit/event design industry. It provides a better understanding of how the materials, the functionality, and the design all work together to create a 3d environment and experience.
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This week flew by! Tasks at duo France are moving at high speed! The convention is approaching and I can’t wait to see my homies from the USA! I’m feeling more comfortable in the work environment and duo 3d is getting easier to work with. I’m learning tricks in photoshop which is very exciting to me. Off to explore Montpillier tomorrow! So glad Catherine from Montreal is interning here as well!

Megan Beard
Graduate of Bemidji State University

Hyper-Multi-Task

Ever get the feeling lately that your senses are permanently set to hyper-multi-task? Relentless competition for our attention as consumers of information is everywhere: the never ending stream of news, entertainment, business, non-sense and up-to-the-minute event updates on FaceBook, Twitter and CNN. Itʼs increasingly difficult to appropriately prioritize oneʼs daily affairs. I see the choice being made on the road all the time – should I continue driving or should I risk everyoneʼs safety and ʻlikeʼ my sisterʼs friendʼs FB post on a wicked mac-n-cheese dish?

As a self proclaimed people watcher I was recently observing a family of five eating lunch. Obvious to me, but likely wrong, I concluded they were on an en-route break from a planned weekend vacation. Now, the first thing you might think of is ʻwow, great idea!ʼ, spend time with your loved ones and get away just like that flying bus of B.O. ad would have you hear it.  Catch-up, strengthen the family bond, share stories – fun right?  Wrong, each member of this crew, save one bambino, was hacking away at their mobile devices and completely ignoring each other. My guess? – Dadʼs checking the score, Momʼs working on e-mails so she doesnʼt lose a step at work, one kid looking at pintersomething and the other no doubt cyber bullying her FFBB cause she didnʼt LOL her JJKN.  My friends do this and it drives me nuts. My own family does this and it drives me nuts. I do this and it drives me nuts. Nuts!

Procedes Chenel Art Exhibit

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to see incredible examples at a presentation of paper architecture. Now what ever comes to your mind when you hear paper architecture is about to change once you see the amazing examples below.

I meet Sophie Chenel, General Manager of the family business Procedes Chenel International.  The International business has been helping designers since 1896 with worldwide development, production and distribution of decorative solutions, technologies and materials.