I used to work for a direct mail company that also had a seventeen-foot Canon color laser printer so we could do specialty print jobs. I had been in marketing for fifteen years at this point, and while I wasn’t a graphic designer, I knew enough to have intelligent conversations with real designers.
A quick graphic design lesson: when designing for printed products, you can’t put anything behind your photos or graphic elements. That is, if you stick a blue background behind a photo, your printer thinks it’s supposed to print the photo and the background. The photo will look like it’s at the bottom of a swimming pool.
To avoid this, you have to cut out a box the size of the photo — called a knockout — and put the photo inside the box. That way, you don’t print the blue background under the photo.
Anyone who understands how to design for print knows that one simple trick.
I had a marketing agency as a new client. My contact was the son of the owner, and he thought he was hot s***. It took everything I had not to roll my eyes whenever I met with him.
[Contact] wanted 500 brochures for a big real estate agency client. It was only $250, so not a very big job.
Me: “No problem. Does your graphic designer know how to design for print?”
Contact: “Oh, sure. She just graduated from college and has her degree in graphic design.”
Me: “Sure, but most people don’t print things anymore, so most designers don’t learn it. So are you sure she knows how to design for print?”
He assured me that yes, his designer was also hot s*** and knew her stuff.
Contact: “So, when you get her file, just print out the order. Don’t mess with it. At all.”
Once I got to my car, I rolled my eyes so hard I saw the back of my skull.
The file the designer sent over had large black polka dots as a background on the entire page, with a large red box in the middle. My production manager showed me the sample and — you guessed it — the black polka dots showed through the red box.
Production Manager: “Should I fix this?”
Me: *Smiling* “Oh, no. [Contact] was very specific about not messing with it.”
I told her about [Contact]’s designer and she cackled with evil delight. She printed the job and our delivery driver delivered it that same day. A few hours later, I got an angry phone call from [Contact] demanding my presence at the agency.
I showed up, and there was [Contact], white-knuckle clutching one of the offending brochures.
Contact: “What the h*** is this?”
He was clearly winding up to make this whole thing my fault.
Me: “I know. It looks like s***, doesn’t it?”
Contact: “You’re g**d*** right, it does. Why does it look like this?”
I paused and took a breath.
Me: “Do you remember when I kept asking whether your designer knew how to design for print?”
Contact: “Yeah.”
Me: “And you told me that she absolutely, without question, understood all that?”
Contact: “Yeah…?”
He wasn’t sure where this was going, but he wasn’t liking it.
Me: “Well, she doesn’t. Because people who know how to design for print know that you never put a background behind other graphic elements. They know you need a knockout behind the photo.”
Contact: “Yeah, but—”
Me: “And we didn’t fix the problem on our end because you told us to absolutely not touch it at all.”
Contact: “Yeah, but—”
Me: “If you’d like, we can rerun the job for you. And even though it was your error—”
He gave a pained gurgle.
Me: “—we’ll rerun the job for half the cost.”
Contact: “Half?!”
Me: “My boss wanted to charge the full amount, but I talked him into half for you.”
He didn’t; I hadn’t.
Me: “Just have your designer fix the problem, and resend it, and we’ll get it done for you tomorrow.”
We could have fixed the error, but I wanted the hotshot designer to learn how to fix her own error so she didn’t make it again.
She fixed it, we ran the job early the next morning, and I hand-delivered it to the client myself by lunchtime. Our client was happy, their client was happy, and they always gave us print-ready work from then on.