After The Graphic Edge was awarded the contract, we became very popular at the host committee offices. They invited me to speak at the next Emerging Business Workshop with Robbie Douglas, the Director of Business Development and my biggest cheerleader and mentor.
They sent the Dallas Morning News to interview me and also introduced me to Tisha Ford, Manager of Business Events for the NFL. Tisha was a rock star to the Emerging Businesses and I was honored to be working with her directly. She noted that the company we were hired by had never chosen a local sign company to do business with and was impressed with our winning the contract. She invited me to go to Indianapolis and speak at their upcoming Emerging Business Workshop but unfortunately that never happened.
Now it is November and we begin getting manifests. We were provided templates to work with and James had to set type for all the different signs. We had Media signs, NFL signs, Security Signs … Hundreds of signs. When we quoted the job, we knew we had to create the art but didn’t realize each one would be different copy. We set up a workflow, James did the art, I proof-read and sent to press. Every sign was direct print to coraplast.
After the signs were printed, we had to label each with an individual number and package with specific requirements. This took time as each sign had to be labeled and checked off separately. Because of our quality checkpoints, not one sign was delivered with a typo or incorrectly.
In December, things kicked up into high gear. We were working 24/7 and spent all our weekends and evenings creating, proofing, printing, and packaging. Thanksgiving and Christmas were a blur and I’m not quite sure what we did for New Years Eve.
Check out one of the signs we did.
The fun is just getting ready to start. In January, the client moved to Dallas with their team of 80 employees and took over Cowboy Stadium.
