FAQ's
Sumaku.com is a full-service advertising and marketing agency that creates and implements marketing plans of any size and scope. During the past ten years of brand positioning and advertising, we’ve gained a tremendous amount of respect by successfully answering all of our clients’ questions and concerns.
We have condensed this knowledge into a clear FAQ’s page that we use every day. We hope they will benefit both you and your company.
Logos on letterhead, banners with your band, catalog of clothing, website with widgets. We Design In Color. Sumaku.com
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WORKFLOW
After confirming your project with one of our commercial managers, one of our project managers will contact you via email or IM (instant messaging) software to explain additional steps.
Given the complexity and number of projects we manage, we prefer correspondence via email or IM. We find that these means of communication ease the explanation of project details and are more user- friendly than telephone transactions. An email or chat transcript gives both parties documentation of any project-related changes/issues and/or their resolutions. We are always, however, reachable via telephone and are more than happy to assist our clients with any project- related questions or concerns.
In addition, Sumaku.com will not send you e-mail that you have not agreed to receive. If you are a member of our mailing list, you will be contacted with announcements, news, portfolio additions, and new products or services. You have the option of "unsubscribing" from our mailing list at any time, thereby disabling any further e-mail communication.
Office hours: Mon-Fri / 8:00am-5:00pm PST
All projects start with an “information-gathering” phase. You will be required to provide us with information about your business, past graphic designs/web work, project objectives, audience, competition and aesthetical preferences. On projects comprised of graphics design work, one or various mockups are delivered. Feedback is requested and then successive revisions (or complete reworks if needed) are re-delivered until the client’s objective has been reached or satisfied.
Technologies to be used for the project will be chosen by our team based on our experience with them, availability, budget, future, and ease of development and maintenance.
IMPORTANT:
If you have special preferences or requirements, please inform us of this in advance.
If the project involves coding work, the development of this work will be shown as each of its successive phases takes place or when our project manager needs feedback. Although we are happy to show the developmental stages of your project, sometimes the labor required to present it is high or it cannot be shown for technical reasons. In such cases, we will continue to work on the project and show its development as soon as possible, informing the client of the reasons and providing an estimated date when the situation will be reversed.
REVISIONS
We will do our best to meet all of your graphic needs. Revisions should be requested with the reason(s) why it did not fulfill your expectations. This information is vital and will be used during the next round of revisions. A limit of ten revisions will be given to any project before a second information-gathering phase. During this second phase, Sumaku.com may determine that we are unable to meet all of your project requests and reserve the right to opt out of the completion of the project.
On projects incorporating programming we will ask for your confirmation on structural functioning before coding starts, as revisions on the structure of a coding piece are subject to our approval.
TIMEFRAME
Graphic Design:
Current delivery times are usually 72 business hours max for first mockups, and 48 business hours max for revisions. However, timeframes can vary due to workload and artistic development.
Programming:
Delivery times for coding work vary depending on each particular project.
In case of emergency and your project needs to meet a hard deadline a fee (or fees) will be added to the total cost of your project. (Please remember we have multiple professionals working on multiple projects at all times) Please communicate your expectations for time, quality and pricing prior to your selection of our services. We will do our best to fulfill all of your requirements.
DELIVERY FILES
Deliverables are usually the result of the work on the source files (However, in the case of certain projects, deliverables are actually the source files.). All deliverables and source files are usually sent via email or placed in web locations for downloading.
Web development projects are set up at the web location selected by the client.
Deliverables:
We work with industry-standard formats for deliverables. If the client has not otherwise specified, our team will deliver files according to the most suitable formats.
Upon full payment, we will deliver all source files that were used to develop the project. This is very important information as it will give you freedom to make future revisions.
If no special software for the project source files is specified, our team will select the best software for this application. We usually prefer Adobe Photoshop CS and Adobe Illustrator CS for most of our web/graphic work, but use other formats for editorial design (Quark), animation (Flash), sound and 3D rendering.
COPYRIGHTS
Clients get full copyrights, including unlimited usage of the site, modification and editing of all the work done by Sumaku.com with the following exceptions:
Stock photography:
We use royalty-free stock photography for most of our work. Under no circumstances will Sumaku.com assume responsibility for the usage of any copyrighted material provided by the client.
Third party software used is subject to its own copyright policies:
We reserve the right to show our work under our own portfolio as part of our marketing strategies. If you wish that your work not to be shown as part of our marketing portfolio, this must be communicated prior to the start of the project.
Sumaku.com's proprietary web administration / content management system, known as ABM, and Sumaku.com's proprietary components (DLLs) are delivered with a multi-user license for the site and task it was configured for. Any other usage without the written permission of Sumaku.com is prohibited, including, but not restricted to selling, usage in other sites, modifications, disassembly, reconfiguration, etc.
PRIVACY POLICY
Every message, conversation, file or data you send regarding your business is kept strictly confidential by our company. Under no circumstances will we reveal, sell or use this information for any other purpose than for developing the project. For web development projects, we provide free upgrades to our components and admin system several times a year. There is a functionality developed to inform us of current version number, website health, etc. and is built into our admin system, which does not transmit any confidential data.
SATISFACTION
We do our best to avoid bugs in our codes, typos or other issues in our design projects. However, in such cases, we will fix such mistakes at no charge. This guarantee protects you if the work was defective at delivery time (and not because of changing environments).
We are happy to do small revisions even after delivering the project at no extra charge. If changes need to be immediate, working time exceeds half an hour or repetitive revisions are requested, we may charge a low hourly rate, which will be communicated to the client prior to doing the work.
HOSTING PLATFORMS
On web development projects, it is important to know if your project needs to meet certain hosting specifications. Although we can provide excellent US-based hosting services, you might have already hired a specific hosting platform, which may or may not fulfill the requirements needed by our staff. In the case you already have hired a hosting platform, please let our commercial managers know prior to starting the project.
Purchasing a hosting platform will help you to know your project requirements, and then purchase it according to these specifications. However, we have seen, many times, that people purchase hosting beforehand (probably by marketing of domain name registrars).
Some of the specialized functionalities of our websites, especially those related to web portals and other large websites, will probably involve hosting requirements that cannot be offered by non-specialized hosting companies.
COMMERCIAL TERMS
A 50% down payment to our first time clients before beginning a project.
We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause, but we have found that this business practice helps to lower fraud rates. Lowering these rates ensures that we continue to deliver high quality services to our existing clients. We thank you in advance for your cooperation and understanding.
Source files are delivered after full payment. Full payment is required after the project is complete and the client has been notified.
For medium and large projects, we can provide flexible payment terms if needed.
PAYMENT METHODS
Payment is typically requested through PayPal.
Alternate methods include bank checks or wire transfers, although we require that funds are cleared prior to starting of the project.
PayPal is the biggest payment portal on the Internet and you will be able to pay with wither a credit card or with your existing PayPal account. PayPal is secure and easy to use: you will receive an email containing a link from our billing department. Payment fees for the usage of the portal are 100% paid by LOG Technology Consulting.
IMPORTANT: If any other method of payment is preferred, this must be communicated prior to the start of work on the project. This rule is non-negotiable.
REFUND POLICY
We always refund 100% of the deposit in the case that the project is cancelled before any files have been sent. No questions asked.