Signs & Banners

In late Spring of 2019, InkSoft released a modernized version of their wildly popular design studio, an online design tool that allows consumers to choose and customize 100’s of blank products, and submit them directly to the printshop for production. This is a product that levels the playing field between Mom & Pop printshops and internet juggernauts like Custom Ink. 

The new Design Studio was overall faster, easier to user and shop owners were thrilled to finally have a mobile solution. 

Shortly after the release of the new Design Studio we learned that customers wanted a solution for creating printed products like banners, signs etc. It made sense. As InkSoft established itself as the go-to folks for consumer customization, shop owners were looking to us to solve another need. 

A brief google search of custom signs will take you to a list of online printers. If you take the time to make a pretend sign, you will learn that there are a bevy of printers who provide highly customized printed products — size, paper type, finish etc. However, none provide a live experiencing for creating your custom product and getting real time pricing estimates.

That Fall — 6 months after the release of the New Design Studio, InkSoft’s product team was approached to build out a Signs & Banner version of the Design Studio. The proposal came from a former licensee who had left InkSoft when they shifted focus from apparel to signs. They had seen the new Design Studio and wanted back, but they needed a solution that would work for them. 

Their offer was attractive for several reasons:

* They were willing to bankroll the entire development process

* They would license the software at an enterprise level for three years.

* We were already planning to build the solution they were asking for, but not soon.

* We could license the Signs & Banner module with no obligation to attribute credit to its investor.


What was stopping our product team from taking this on?

Time. 

We would need an MVP by the first week in January. The product would need to be Designed, Developed and Tested and fully integrated into InkSoft’s suite of tools in less than three months. 

To give some perspective, the New Design Studio was in development for 2 years, a portion of that time was spent in beta. 

Challenge Accepted: 

Ultimately, it was worth our while 3 times over to pick up the contract. InkSoft’s pair of product teams renegotiated the goals for the 4th quarter, with my team being saddled with building the Signs & Banners designer that our customers have been waiting for.

My teammates and I kept the conversation going over Slack, and finalized decisions with the BA during daily standup meetings. We broke the tasks down into 2 epics (smaller projects) that we would attack in phases.

Front and backend developers immediately started building functionality — an api with enhanced zoom and a vector canvas would allow for infinitely scalable designs. QA did their QA thing, While I began discovery in the research gold mine that is Support.