The Johns-Carabelli Company has been crafting cemetery memorials, monuments, headstones and civic memorials for 147 years, through 8 generations of the Johns and Carabelli families. There have been a lot of advances in tooling and technology that have impacted the way grave markers have been designed and produced in that time.
Many, though not all of those innovations have reduced the time and effort required to create beautifully crafted personalized memorials, but that is not always the case. 100 years ago all of the design work was done by hand, full-size, with pencils, paper and drafting tools.
Today, more and more, computers are being used to create the same layouts and the stencils required so that memorials can be engraved with lettering and designs. Yes, there are some other advantages to designing by computer besides speed. Granite colors can be added to proofs to help customers distinguish finishes and other elements. But the majority of computer-generated layouts are only expressed in scale drawings instead of full-size mock ups.
Since 1879, the artisans and craftsmen at The Johns-Carabelli Company continue to go through the painstaking process of providing full-size details for our customers prior to production for some very important reasons. The two most significant reasons are assurance and peace of mind. All of our cemetery memorials, headstones and monuments are crafted to endure for generations to come. That means every detail counts. From the spelling of names and the accuracy of dates to beauty of each design and how they all fit together, everything is checked and rechecked.
Most monument builders promote the fact that they can quickly email a proof to a customer for their approval. They may also tout the fact that the scale drawing will be in color to simulate how the memorial will look when finished. At the Johns-Carabelli Company, we offer full size proofs accompanied by color scale drawings for a very important reason, size matters.
Scale drawings are generally produced at somewhere between 40% to 5% of actual size. Isn’t that convenient? Sure, it is. But the purpose of a proof prior to production isn’t supposed to be convenience, it’s meant to provide peace of mind and assurance that every detail is correct and all elements are in harmony with each other.
Think about your last vacation or special family gathering and all of the photos you took. How many of them really captured the reality of being there and seeing things first-hand? The same thing holds true when considering scale vs full-size.
The full-size drawing isn’t just for the customer’s satisfaction either. Often our artisans see imperfections or opportunities for improvement when examining a full-size drawing that they missed on their computer screens, and they are professionals creating these layouts every day. Those adjustments or corrections get made. A new full-size drawing is created and provided to our customers for their final approval.
That’s when we know, we’ve done our very best for each and every family we serve.