I’m a web and graphic designer. I designed a flyer for one of my clients. I sent the design to her via email. It’s really hard to match colours from the screen to print, especially since monitor colours don’t match up to their local office printer. Plus, screen colours are in RGB, so there are literally some colours that are unachievable in a physical print. Usually, for exact colour matching, we have to use Pantone swatches, or when they send it for the actual print, they can sort it out and tweak it with the actual technician.

I received a call immediately, and she mentioned that she printed out the flyer on their company’s office printer. I readied myself for the usual spiel about how monitor colours don’t match the printout, etc.

Client: “Hey, I printed this out and the colours don’t match what I see on the screen.”

Me: “Yeah, don’t worry about that. Every monitor is different, and you can’t calibrate it to match your office printer. I used the exact CMYK colours for your logo and fonts.”

Client: “Well, even so, the colours look correct on screen but not when I print it out.”

Me: “I’ve used the exact CMYK colours, so you don’t have to worry about it. Your professional printer will ensure that you get the right colour.”

Client: “Yes, but the whites aren’t white enough.”

I quickly checked my file; did I leave a translucent layer on by accident? No, it was perfectly #FFFFFF. Told her that the white is as white as it can be.

Client: “Well, the white ink is not very white.”

I was stunned. Office and home printers don’t have… white ink. It’s just the white paper. Any white areas are basically just paper that hasn’t been printed on.

I tried hard to explain this concept to her, that printers don’t print the white. Regardless, she insists that they do. I tell her that it cannot be done on an office/home printer; it literally requires a separate offset printing plate that only large commercial printers use. And even then, seldom do people print white at all.

She insists that her printer does print white, and that the design I sent her simply isn’t white enough.

I tell her maybe her paper stock isn’t white? Maybe the paper itself is yellowish?

Client: “No, it’s not my paper, it’s that your white isn’t white enough. Look, I’ve used some of my liquid white-out on the paper. It’s very white. Your design is not printing the white colours properly.”

I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t laugh out loud. She literally used white-out on the print-out and complained that the correction fluid was whiter than the paper. 

Can’t really remember what happened after, but she showed her boss, and he seemed happy with the design, so everything went well, I suppose?

This story reminded me of my own time when someone tried to help despite my objections.

Years into my job as a copy jockey at a print shop, I had a good grasp of what my regular customers wanted and what to look out for if something wasn’t right with a file. Sometimes files don’t export properly, especially back in the days of Windows ME. Sometimes people don’t realize their graphics are too low resolution to print without looking pixelated. And our boss was in charge of quality control, whether we wanted him to do it or not.

Like clockwork, a regular customer comes in to order a very large banner from us for a time-sensitive event. And lucky for us, we had just enough banner material on the roll to print their job with just a few feet to spare. We had already ordered more, but it was on backorder and wasn’t going to get to us until after their event ended. So I had to be extra, extra careful that it printed properly. I stood by the printer to make sure it was printing correctly and rolled it loosely as it came out to prevent the printed side from dragging over the floor. 

After it was printed, I took it to the trimmer to gently hand-trim the white edges. It genuinely took me half an hour to make sure my cuts were straight and that I didn’t scuff the printed side. Last was the grommet punch, which is where things started to go wrong.

The boss was watching me do this, periodically guiding away oblivious customers who were trying to place an order with an employee who was very obviously busy. Then he notices it.

Boss: “What happened here?”

Me: *Panicking because I was nearing the finish line with my work.* “What? Where?”

Boss: “The printer left a blue streak across the banner.”

Me: *Calming down.* “That’s a lens flare. I pointed it out to the customer, and he said it’s supposed to be there. It’s a part of the design.”

Boss: *Scrunches face.* “It doesn’t look right to me. I can use a marker to make it blend in with the black background.”

Me: “It does look better on the screen, but it’s going to be hanging up really high. The customer tried to get a higher resolution PDF for us, but they couldn’t get it to render without their computer crashing.”

Boss: “Believe me, when he sees how I fixed their banner, he’ll love it.”

Me: “Please don’t. He specifically said that he wanted that lens flare. He worked really hard to get that file to us like this.”

Boss: “I don’t—”

Me: “I’m begging you, please don’t. At least wait until he sees the banner first before doing anything with it. I don’t have enough material to reprint if he doesn’t like it.”

Boss: “Okay. But I know he’s going to hate this thing. When he stops by, offer to draw a mini section with the marker to show him how it would look better.”

By then, I’ve finished the banner, rolled it up, and stored it away for pick up. The boss drops the topic and goes to help the next customer.

At that point, I am exhausted. I had just spent an hour wrestling with a fifteen-pound pile of vinyl fabric as it printed, unrolling and rerolling it multiple times to get it cut and grommeted. My stomach was growling, telling me I was late for my break.

I’m sure you all can already figure out what was going to happen.

By the time my fifteen-minute paid break was over, I emerged from the break room to discover that my boss had already unrolled the banner, draped it across the front counter, and was having a go at it with a marker.

And it looked bad. The shiny black marker he had used was a huge contrast to the muted black of the printed background. And the line as wiggly as the Mississippi River. There were scuff marks from where it had collided with the metal wastebasket next to the counter. More marks from where the buttons on his sleeves had dragged across the print image. Crimp marks from where the banner had folded over itself while he was moving it. Parts of the ink had been smudged where he had been pawing at it as well, smearing it into the white print.

Me: “Did the customer approve this when I was on break?”

Boss: “Look at how great this looks! He’ll never be able to tell that there was a printing error on his banner.”

Me: “That wasn’t a printing error. It was a part of the design. He’s going to refuse to pay for that.”

Boss: “Well. We’ll see when he picks it up. My shift’s over, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Me: *Internally.* “I’m going to have to give him a refund.”

And I did have to refund it. The customer was just as perplexed as I was when I related to him what had happened. Luckily, the customer was a regular, was familiar with how the bosses could get, and was on friendly terms with me. And because the boss wasn’t around, we both made fun of his antics to blow off our mutually derived frustrations. Including jokes about how I should have strapped the banner to my body like it was a newborn baby while I was on break.

I work for a graphic design firm. I can hear a coworker on the phone with a client as I approach my desk. The client is on speakerphone as I approach, and I hear:

Client: *Excitedly.* “And the pickle should be smiling, but not like… too happy. People don’t trust pickles that are too happy.”

There’s a pause. I look up at my colleague across the room, who takes the call off speakerphone, but I can still hear her side of the conversation.

Coworker: “Got it. So just to clarify, you want something bold, subtle, quirky, corporate, cute but intimidating, loud but muted, and minimal but detailed.”

Pause.

Coworker: “Perfect. I’ll just feed that into the AI and let it have a panic attack.”

I did not envy her the afternoon she was about to have.

I’m a freelance graphic designer. I live in a small rural village in England, and while not religious, am friends with a few neighbours who attend the local Catholic church. I’m helping them make some pamphlets for an upcoming religious service, and they’ve sent me the copy text to go into the design.

I spot something and call them back.

Me: “Are you sure this is the final copy?”

Client: “That’s what they told me!”

Me: “It’s just the text to go above the image of the priests. It says ‘let us prey’ – spelled P-R-E-Y.”

Client: “Yes, I see that.”

Me: “I think it should be P-R-A-Y. Prey as a verb is… well… probably not what they intended to go with an image of priests.”

Pause.

Client: “Oh… Oh! Yes… I see it now. Yes, I think I’d best double-check.”

Me: “Yes, I think that would be best.”

I’ve been at my design firm long enough now that I have the power to choose my jobs and clients. I have “done my time in the trenches” working for clients who know nothing about design but still insist on their very bad ideas every step of the way. We still have to deal with those clients as a company, but I don’t have to work those jobs anymore.

Most of the time, I accept a job that comes my way, but recently I have turned one down.

Boss: *Coming by.* “Why did you decline to accept [job] from [Client]?”

Manager: “They sent over their proposal, and the entire thing was written in Comic Sans.”

Boss: “…As you were.”