Case Study

Helping a Growing Sign Shop
Create Digital MagicOverview
Name: Steve Thomas Greer
Company: Abracadabra Signs and Designs
Location: Ontario, Canada
Industry: Signmaking, Graphic design, Illustration
Product: CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite and Corel Painter“Using Corel's products, we've been able to grow ourbusiness by more than 200 percent since implementing
the technology a year ago.” – Steve Thomas Greer
Owner of Abracadabra Signs

Abracadabra is Known for its Artistic Flair
Dubbed the “Cartoon Saloon”, Abracadabra Signs and Designs
built its reputation designing unique and memorable cartoon
characters as part of its signature eye-catching murals and signs.
For more than 12 years, the company has specialized in handillustrated images that add a special appeal to its clients'
storefronts, restaurants, and businesses.
Steve Thomas Greer, owner of Abracadabra Signs, is an artist andcartoonist who has been hand-painting murals for more than 12years. For most of the company's history, Steve and the four otherartists who work for Abracadabra did things the traditional signmaking way – with paint, brushes, and sometimes cut vinyl, andof course, loads of talent and imagination.
“Our jobs were all hand done. Many were completely handpainted, while other times we would cut simple vinyl designs,
hang them up, and work on top with paintbrushes andairbrushes to add the desired effects,” said Steve.
After many years of running a small, successful sign business,
Steve wanted his company to grow. Clients were requesting moreand more projects, but his hand-painted workflow was time
consuming and Abracadabra simply couldn't keep up with thedemand. He knew that digital printing would enable thecompany to speed its processes and take on more jobs. But healso felt strongly that he couldn't take the risk of changing fromtraditional to digital processes if it meant jeopardizing thetrademark look of his company's hand-crafted character art.
Then Steve was introduced to Corel® Painter™ and CorelDRAW ®
Graphics Suite. Things at Abracadabra were about to change.

Digital Printing Drives Growth at Abracadabra
The first time Steve saw
Corel Painter, it became
immediately clear that
this software was thefirst step he needed togo digital. Corel Painteroffers highly realistic
brushes, papers, andeffects that look liketraditional media. For thefirst time, he and hisartists had a tool thatwould enable them to maintain the look of their hand-crafted
artwork in a digital workflow. “Without Corel, we'd still be in thedark ages of design.”
Using Corel Painter in conjunction with a 9x12 Wacom® Intuos® 3tablet, Abracadabra's cartoonists are able to create their handcrafted work in the look of virtually any art media that you'd findin an art supply store – ranging from markers to crayons,watercolor to acrylics – all without the high costs associated withkeeping all of these supplies in stock. With Corel Painter,
Abracadabra's artists enjoy all of the benefits of working digitally,
including the ability to work faster than ever before and thetremendous power of the 'undo' feature.
Once the artwork has been created inCorel Painter, the artist then brings the image
into CorelDRAW Graphics Suite. UsingCorel® PowerTRACE™, the new bitmap-tovector conversion tool in CorelDRAW Graphics
Suite, the Corel Painter images are turned intovector files which can be easily scaled andmanipulated in CorelDRAW. Once the images
are converted to vector, it's easy to re-purpose
artwork and quickly implement client changes without having tostart again from scratch.

Case Study“With Corel, we're growing faster than we thought possible, all
the while maintaining the same high-quality work that
established us in the first place,” said Steve.
The team completes the layout for their signs and murals inCorelDRAW Graphics Suite, and then prepares the files for output.
Abracadabra has invested in two Roland SOLJET large-formatprinters that the staff keeps running 8 to 10 hours a day.
“By sending our final vector designs from CorelDRAW Graphics
Suite to our Roland printer, we're able to quickly output banners,
murals, and other large format signage with ease,” said Steve.
“Even more impressive – by doing all of our digital printing inhouse, we've seen an immediate return on our investment bydramatically slashing the time it takes to complete each job andreducing our overall outsourcing costs. Client jobs that once took
four days to complete are now delivered in six hours.”
A New Digital Enterprise Emerges
Since leaving its paint brushes and cans behind and adopting
Corel Painter and CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, Abracadabra has
enjoyed the benefits of a digital workflow while maintaining thetrademark, hand-crafted look that makes the company's art
distinct. Corel software offers Abracadabra's artists ease of use,
flexibility, and broad range of creative tools that meet thedemands of even the most challenging jobs.
But Steve says the biggest advantage that Abracadabra hasrealized since going digital has been the speed at which thecompany is now able to deliver the final product to its customers.
Amazingly, client jobs that once took 4 days to complete are now
delivered in 6 hours.

Corel Painter and CorelDRAW Graphics Suite, Abracadabra has
been able to meet the restaurant chain's needs head-on, anddramatically grow its own business in the process.
“When you combine the time and money we save using Corel'sproducts, we've been able to grow our business by more than
200 percent since implementing the technology a year ago,”
Greer states. “But in addition to our phenomenal growth,
personally, I think the best part of the process has been getting
home in the evenings in time to have dinner with my kids!”
To learn more about CorelDRAW Graphics Suite,
visit www.corel.com/coreldraw

One of Abracadabra's biggest clients is a restaurant chain that has
been growing so quickly that the sign shop would never havebeen able to keep up using traditional methods. But now,
Abracadabra has been able to quickly deck out all of the client's
restaurants with murals and images featuring the uniquecharacters that are the client's corporate standard. Thanks to© 2009 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved 11/09 JB#2497-09

United Kingdom