Happy Valentine's Day! If you were wondering if we'd be your Valentine, the answer is yes. If you were also wondering how to be our greatest Valentines in return, you're in luck! Here's a list of things you can do to make your friendly neighborhood printers and sign-makers love you.

• Send us your logo/art in the correct format: "What is the correct format," you ask? Well, any sort of vector "art" file is ideal. This usually means Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw files. Photoshop (PSD) files work well too. A good rule of thumb would be to always send files in formats compatible with design programs. Many people think that formats that are web compatible—like JPEGs and PNGs—are ideal, but that's not necessarily true. It's a lot more difficult for printers to adjust the sizes of pictures in these formats.

This will be our reaction if you send us beautiful, correct files.

• Send us BIG files: Sending in as high a resolution as possible is appreciated as well! We want to make sure your logo and signs come out as crisp and high-definition as possible, and we can't do that with a blurry, low-resolution photo. According to one of our graphic designers, 1024 X 768 (the average size for desktop wallpapers) files are a good starting point, but go bigger if you can! If you are purchasing your own art—like stock photos—invest in the biggest size they offer. Trust us, it will be worth it. I know the people on CSI can take a grainy security photo of a license plate and somehow turn a tiny reflection on a screw into a high definition photo of the main suspect murdering someone, but I'm here to tell you that that is actually impossible. Sorry if I've burst your bubble, fans of crime drama!

If CSI were about the printing industry—they'd have to try a lot harder to come up with topical puns.

• Understand that design is not free: Unfortunately, we are not independently wealthy artistes who have time to lounge around designing for the love of art. (But if we were, that would be awesome.) Please know that if you ask us to design something for you, we will ask you to pay for the time it takes to create the design! Even simple mock ups and drafts take our designer's time away from another job they could be working on, so we can't afford to do them for free.

Don't make us beg, y'all!

• Please don't ask us to "pull your logo off of your website": There isn't a good way to do this. Usually, if people don't know where their original logo files are located and they ask us to do this, we end up having to create a matching version of their logo from scratch. This ends up costing them extra money in design time that they didn't need to pay and makes us spend time guessing which exact font and color they used instead of creating their signage. Refer to the first bullet for a good way to send us your logo.

Listen to Boromir. He knows what he's talking about!

• If you like what we did for you, leave us a review!: We love getting feedback from customers because it helps us know what we're doing right and how we need to improve. You can review us on Google or Yelp. (Or you can put it in skywriting. We don't mind!) Many of our customers find and choose us because of our 4.9 out of 5.0 star rating on Google so we greatly appreciate anybody who helped get us there.

• If you live far away, send us pictures of your installed signage: We love pictures! We get a lot of clients from out of our home state of Tennessee, so it's not uncommon that we don't get to see the finished product put up in its natural habitat. Sending us a picture of your installed business sign is also a win-win scenario: it's a "win" for us because we get to use the picture in our portfolio and it's a "win" for you because we'll promote your signage and company in our blog, on our website, and on our social media accounts! Sharing the love, 21st Century style.

• Bring us Candy: We're never opposed to a traditional Valentine's Day treat :)