Things that utterly irk me

[BigD]

Last week i had to visit some clients who blame my distiller settings for making their computers refuse to postscript from Quark with all fonts embedded and when they also received postscript errors during distilling this must be my fault as well.

Their OS9 macs are completely screwed up but that has nothing to do with them obviously.....

Dennis Wyers.

[hotmetal]

Originally Posted by pressman2

Hey Hotmetal,

Just met a designer just like the one you described. Could it? Nah.....
We're not cloning, are we?

I think this is one of the basic archtypes of digital idiocy. This guy likes to do everything in Illustrator, but he's lousy in Illustrator. Likes to save Quark files as Quark epses then open them in Illustrator. When I pointed out that this was causing a lot of type reflow, letters bunching together or springing apart, and that it was getting printed like that, he said "that doesn't matter, no one ever looks at this stuff." His files have dozens of layers, half turned off, none having what the layer name says should be in them. Nothing is ever grouped, and he steps out, like, coupons, 200 up on a sheet, in Illustrator. Without grouping the first one. Then the client wants to make alts and the boss hands it to me.

But, I digress...

[Sally]

One vent, and one story.
Getting a new file with a job ticket that lists one set of corrections. A laser that has a different set of corrections marked up. And an email with yet a 3rd set of corrections. The real kicker being... the corrections contradict each other and the laser doesn't match the file anyway.

A designer sent in 4 revised designs for packages. With them, I get a conference from the CSR. Apparently this designer didn't realize there were limits to what she could change and what she couldnt as far as matching the previous art. So now I need to dig out our old live text files, typeset all her changes in the old design format for 3 panels (of 5), and oh, she just sent in a new disc for panel 3's headlines.
I start working and notice I have 5 job tickets. I call and ask where the last file is? CSR: Oh? It's not on the disk? No... Designer: Oh? I didn't send it? No... So a disc arrives from the designer with a file. It's the background CT for that package. No type. Not in a die. Nothing. Just the image-which, being a text revision, I already had anyway. I go to the CSR: Er, she just sent the background image... She calls designer who tells her to just *fill things in as needed*
I explain to the CSR that this not going to work. A. Because any designer having us build the files from the ground up is probably charging her client for design work, and showing them our proof as if it was her original work. I never heard any outcome of that but I havent received anymore files in that state so I believe the issue was taken care of.

[prepress_brillance_43]

A. Because any designer having us build the files from the ground up is probably charging her client for design work, and showing them our proof as if it was her original work.

whoa, wtf?...

[Sally]

Well, where I work is a packaging operation. So our sales people go after clients with a product. Then that client contracts a designer to make the package pretty. After this happens, sometimes the client sends us the file themselves and sometimes the designer does it all for them.

So the client was paying for the "prepress work" on designs that should only have needed minor tweaking for printing in flexo. In reality, they were paying for: us building the 5th file from scratch, as well as what they paid her to design it in the first place. Not to mention me retypsetting every single panel on the 4 we did get. And since all the material went through the designer first in this case, think she would have mentioned anything? Stank of something very crooked or somebody's best-friend-job to me.