Beginning at the start of 2024, Signs Base managing director Lukasz Surma – himself a qualified IT professional – installed a number of separate AI programs for creating artwork, tweaking art, expanding marketing strategies and content creation for websites.
Joining up the APIs with Signs Base’s internal software, Surma has helped equip the seven-staff firm’s designer with the tools to cut down on tricky and time-consuming processes – and speed up production by two to three times.
Surma told Printweek: “I genuinely believe we can improve not only the way we process the hours, but also can give our clients a better, more customised service. When they purchase stock images, they quite often need a lot of changes to actually reflect the brand.
“With these tools, we can improve the resolution of the images, extend it if it is cropped, and implement customers’ own [design] elements into stock images or their own photos in minutes, not hours.”
He added that much of the productivity gains come from cutting down on smaller, duller tasks, rather than replacing the bigger, more creative tasks.
“We can tackle them much more effectively, and much faster,” he said.
“It’s just a matter of knowing how to use [AI] for each purpose – it’s all about processes and the systems we put in place.
“By improving our lead times, and the time it takes to send proofs out to clients, we can get more jobs in: essentially, we’re doing the same work as with two designers, with just one.
“We increase our revenue, and our profit margins.”
Signs Base, founded in 2020, has doubled its revenue each year for the past three years, even in the few months since implementing AI in the design process, this growth has accelerated further.
The firm, which prints with an Epson SureColor SC-80600 and uses a Summa plotter to cut, is making plans to invest in a latex printer to target the vehicle wrapping and livery market.
“That’s a plan for the next six months,” Surma said.
“We’ve just completed our accounts and are just budgeting for the year, so we have fairly high hopes for growth.”
