A Short Guide to Commissioning Course Artwork
What to ask for, in what order, when a club decides to redo its course graphics.
Clubs usually approach course artwork the wrong way round: they decide they want a flyover, get quotes for a flyover, and discover afterwards that the signage, the scorecard and the website all need different assets built from different data.
Order of operations
- Survey or source accurate base data. Everything else derives from this. If it is wrong, every deliverable inherits the error.
- Agree the deliverable list up front. Website hero, hole-by-hole graphics, tee signage, scorecard, yardage book, social clips. Prices change enormously depending on how many of these come from one commission.
- Fix the file formats. Print needs vector or high-resolution raster with bleed. Signage needs a different colour profile. Ask for both, in writing, before work starts.
- Then commission the video.
Questions worth asking any supplier
- What base data are you working from, and can we keep it?
- If we renovate the 7th green in two years, what does an update cost?
- Can we have the artwork in a format our printer can use without coming back to you?
That last question separates suppliers who sell you a service from suppliers who sell you a dependency. Firms working across both the drawing and presentation sides — CAD.Golf and VueMyGolf, for instance — will usually answer it straightforwardly.
