What has been your biggest screw up in Graphic Design?

[Jason Fraker]

I asked yesterday what your first printed piece was (the one with the goofy grin), but today I want to know what your biggest screw up was. I hope this didn't cost anyone a job, but we've all screwed up from time to time. What was the biggest/funniest/most tragic fowl-up of your career?

Mine was a trifold brochure for a commercial building company. The front panel had a yellow hard hat on it. Well, the original scan was of a red hard hat. I selected the hat, and adjusted the color to yellow in PS. Most of the shading was apparantly made up of Cyan and not black. When the printer brought color keys by, I thought the hat looked a little green, but I signed off on it because no one else was here. Well, we got the 5,000 brochures back, the hat was pretty green, but I thought 'who cares. it's a construction company' Well, they cared, and my little executive decision cost our company several hundred dollars. Not enough to get fired, but enough to get a second opinion on color proofs.


-Jason

A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can even put on its shoes.
-Mark Twain

[Mickey]

I started at the postion I am now at and one of the jobs I had was to design a capacity pocket folder for a marketing kit we needed to send out. I designed this folder 4 over 4 with two pockets and a flap that came over the front, it had a die cut and a velcro tab to hold it closed. It was also capacity so it could hold like 4 magazines and a set of tabed information sheets. it had an overall lanination to make it all shinney. LOOKED GREAT!


except for the wrong phone number on the back of the folder. We printed 18,000 of them! at about $2.50 a piece...

Well I typed the phone number in but am not responsible for proofing so that got me off the hook, my boss who was responsible for copy proofing is no longer with the company. (not just because of this project though!)

http://home.wi.rr.com/mygraphics/konceptcreative.jpg

[DivineDesign]

hmm...i haven't made a real life mistake....but i'm still in school...so everything is a mistake..lol

[I]"BAN!"

Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists.... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.

[Mickey]

Design mistakes are't really mistakes as long as you say you ment to do it! and have a great bullcrap reason to back it up!


I love art!

http://home.wi.rr.com/mygraphics/konceptcreative.jpg

[D-Frag]

ive never made a mistake /emoticons/tongue.gif

hehe, ive made a few minor typos in my days, but thankfully have never mispelled any important info such as websites or phone #s

http://www.pillargraphicdesign.com/dfrag/DFRAGSIG.jpg

digitalcamwhore (http://digitalcamwhore.deviantart.com/gallery/)

[Kink]

Oh man... you wanna talk about mess ups!?
http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/emoticons/ibf-iamstupid.gif I am the QUEEN!!!!

Typo's are my biggest problem. I type so fast that I can miss it so easily. I have learned VERY quickly that when I proof, I make sure to tell them to check everything!!! Even the spelling. (spell check doesn't always get it).

This one envelope that I sent out to get printed was messed up. To start, I had to use PageMaker to do the layout, well didn't HAVE to but it was already layed out in it and I just had to change one thing. Well, the fonts wern't embedded correctly so when we received the order the font was in italics. Not suppose to be. In the faxed proof, the letters were so small, we couldn't tell. So it was signed off on.
There was 25 000 envelopes printed, both sides.

One typo I did was on post cards, it was suppose to say 2 for 1 and it ended up being 2 for 2. LOL There was 5000 of them printed.

WHAT IS BOOBY ISLAND????????

I missed out... :(

[YellowDart]

Ouch! I haven't done anything huge yet. A few minor mistakes on some school projects here and there, but luckily, nothing serious. I do tend to make spelling mistakes or minor text formatting flaws in banner adds for the web, but nothing that will cost anybody any money. *knocks on wood*

-=[Go ahead... Give the dog a Yell0wDart]=-
http://members.cox.net/~jroffutt/files/orange_sig.jpg

[MD]

Oh man.....I feel so much better that I am not the only one with typo troubles :)

Here is a doozy. We were printing some business cards up for car dealership that had a show the next day. 2 color hairline registered, 2000 cards each nothing major. There were quite a few names so I stepped the first card I set down the sheet and made the changes to them. Now we attached a huge rush charge because they needed them in 3 hours. My boss had some spare time on his hands and decided to run them as a favor to our customer. (We are a wholesale printing shop) So somewhere along the line I was interupted and changed the name on the business card but forgot to change the address and phone numbers. 1 hour after they came and picked them up we got a phone call saying that the phone numbers were all wrong. I should have checked the whole card over but I did not. We printed them again (same night) and they came to pick them up yet again. 10 min. later he was back in the shop yelling because the address is wrong (They never informed us that it was wrong on the first printing) So we had to make the change and print them again (same night) and them drop them off in a van parked at the car lot. I got home somewhere around 12/1:00 in the morning.

On the brighter side........I did get some nice overtime that week :)

[Magnus]

Ditto to what kink said...couple that with the fact that no-one in my office looks at anything...now i've learned to cover up my mistakes though.

I think overall my biggest mistake was staying here for so long...lol.

Know this: Spammers, Flammers and Trolls will be shown no mercy and given no quarter. They will be pursued to the ends of the earth and executed Mod-style.

- Magnus

[HAK]

typo queen here...
getting much better at it though... (fixing them)
and making sure other people read it proof it and sign okay to print.
Otherwise...
HAK

No mistakes yet

Does no one get proofs anymore?

hear alot about making sure to get it proofed or just singing off
lol, Would get fired pretty quick if that happened to me.

First thing after a project is done, it gets proofed by art director or one of the senior designers, mistakes are fixed and then it is proofed again until no mistakes are found. Then final comps are sent to client, then to printer.

[PrintDriver]

I can't wait for you to bone a proof, man.
No one is perfect.

Only a few in the last couple years for me, but they are always doozies. Large format sucks in that respect. Each graphic can cost you upwards from $2K. Mostly in finishing though. There are always mistakes in printing. Dumpsters full of them.

PrintDriver is a grande format digital print dude. His advice/opinions may not apply to the 4color/offset/web world of printing

didnt say i was perfect, i have made mistakes but they are always proofed and taken care of

others have admitted also to not making a mistake

[PrintDriver]

We all know D-Frag is lying.
;)
And DD, well... it doesn't cost you while in school.

PrintDriver is a grande format digital print dude. His advice/opinions may not apply to the 4color/offset/web world of printing

[D-Zine]

I did the 'Quality Pant Job' remember guys ;oP Of course that one was caught before it went to press but how classic is that! Pretty much all of my typos are of a sexual nature. I have NO idea why....ahemm...

SocialD - how long have you been in the field (working that is, not counting school)? Your day of the big mistake will come, it's inevitable...and part of the business. It happens. The biggest part is owning up to it being your fault. I always find its best to admit when somethings my fault. Everything falls on my plate and its up to me to prove if something was my fault or not but if it was my fault, my boss knows me and he knows I won't hesitate to admit it...that earns you a great deal of respect in this business and can keep you a job at your place of business when you really do screw up majorly.

Biggest slip up I ever made was I left the bar code off the back of the weekly shopper 2 WEEEKS IN A ROW!! No one even noticed it the first week!!! When I dumped my template one week, I accidentally grabbed the bar code and dumped it too! I was UPSET but my boss was totally cool about it (I'm guessing for the reason listed above). Paper sales were a lil down that week but we were able to get a print out of the code over to some stores to help out some. LOL! Now I just love that little 'lock in place' feature!!!!! :oP

Boobie Island or Bust!

[PrintDriver]

I hate that walk to the boss's office. Or worse, having to search the shop for him cuz then you know he's busy. Then to have to tell him 'I f*d up.' Yack. But if you do it while there is time to fix it before deadline, or have a solution or two in mind...even if it costs money...it helps.

But I think Mickey wins so far on the monetary scope. Yikes man. How'd you make it right? 18000 labels? Or all new jackets?

PrintDriver is a grande format digital print dude. His advice/opinions may not apply to the 4color/offset/web world of printing

[lump lump]

mispelling a menu item for a presidential menu card.. yea that was fun turning those back around in 24 hours

two lumps are better than one

like i said before i have made typos and what not, but never had any of it printed, proofing always took care of the mistakes, and some were my fault and some were all of the team etc.

Dzine I have been in the industry for 5 years

[DivineDesign]

ha^

mistakes cost you in in school..maybe not monetarily..but trust me the cost you.....i have seen it with my own eyes...luckily none have happend to me tooo bad and too late..but other classmates have been very unfortunate...i'm scared shitless

[I]"BAN!"

Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists.... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.

[Keyare]

Too many to count. Usually little stuff that are honest mistakes. Nothing worth more than a grand though. We DID have a toilet leak in an office above ours that wrecked $20,000 worth of books we were printing... and insurance only covered the lawyers needed to finish the insurance claim so we're STILL paying that off.

Little ones like when the customer doesn't supply a phone number so you type in 123-4567 and then they proof it, sign it off and give the go ahead to print... then a week later they freak out all over us - yeah it was our mistake.

It sure would be nice to have no responsibility or work in a place where they like babysitting their designers... but sigh... no one will babysit me.

I want a babysitter too!

Preferrably with pleasant boobies!

[D-Zine]

Do I need a resume to fill that position Key or what kinda test will that require??

http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/emoticons/ibf-iamstupid.gif

http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/emoticons/rofl.gif

Boobie Island or Bust!

[Keyare]

You come to my office, I hand you a t-shirt and say 'fill this out'

Then there's the oral exam.

[D-Zine]

pretty damn sureI can fill the shirt outhttp://www.graphicdesignforum.com/emoticons/smilewinkgrin.gif

and the oral exam...well...http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/emoticons/devil.gif

only problem is...well..the flight to your office. Is the company paying?

http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/emoticons/rofl.gif

Boobie Island or Bust!

[D-Frag]

PrintDriver said...
We all know D-Frag is lying.
;)
And DD, well... it doesn't cost you while in school.

come on now, give me some credit PD, you have to remember how I was raised as such a proficient designer, lol.

I did however ruin a TON of stuff when I was learning finishing....mainly laminating but their were a couple pieces I mangled pretty badly with a dull xacto knife (Gator board is a BITCH to cut, esp 1/2 inch white, argggg), I also screwed up a ton in the press dept, but that just comes with learning the territory I think, I thank god for my last job, it really taught me alot about production, prepress, and final output, when your taking a job all the way from concept to completion multiple times a day you could see how I got the way I am.....also im a great gift wrapper now, using scissors for 8 hours a day makes you quite handy in the holiday season /emoticons/ph34r.gif

http://www.pillargraphicdesign.com/dfrag/DFRAGSIG.jpg

digitalcamwhore (http://digitalcamwhore.deviantart.com/gallery/)

[D-Zine]

Will you gift wrap my stuff too D-Frag? :o)

Opps..ok I derailed enough on this thread tonight...thanks for getting me back on track here D-Frag :oP

Seriously tho..I want a babysitter at work too! Anything that goes wrong at work, the bossman comes to me bc I'm at the end of the line and the last to do anything before its in the presses hands. In theory you think design>proof>correction>signed proof>output and everythings gravy but that's just not reality all of the time. Sometimes things get over looked and sometimes sh!t happens. Sucks but its all a learning experience!

D-Frag - taking a job from beginning to very end is the best way learn in this field and makes you one helluva gift wrapper, right! LOL! You could earn extra monies during the holidays! LOL ;o)

Boobie Island or Bust!

[DivineDesign]

funny...i'm babysiting right now...AND i have nice boobies!!!

[I]"BAN!"

Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists.... When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.

[morea]

I am so obsessive-compulsive over spelling mistakes that they almost never get by me. Of course, that has made me the resident proof-reader where ever I go!

My biggest mistake at work wasn't so much 'design' related as customer service related. A client that had made me live and breathe their stationery project over the course of a week (hourly phone calls, changes, etc.) was FINALLY satisfied with the job and asked me to fax them a copy of the invoice. Their file contained their office phone number, home phone number, TWO cell phone numbers, an 'alternate' voice mail phone number, their end user's phone number, and ONE fax number. I faxed the invoice to that fax number.

Turns out that it was the END USER's fax number that we had used once for sending a proof. So the end user called the distributor SCREAMING about the fact that my client was only paying $X for the job, and they were billing the end user $2.5X for the job. My client was, let's just say, 'slightly less than pleased'.

Ooh, that was a rough one. It's been a few years but I still remember it vividly!

I haven't lost my mind... it's backed up on disk somewhere.

[PrintDriver]

That is soooo embarrassing. Almost as good as thinking you hit the reply button on an email to a collegue and it goes to the client.
Put foot in mouth on that one too.
Forgiven but not forgotten, lets put it that way.

PrintDriver is a grande format digital print dude. His advice/opinions may not apply to the 4color/offset/web world of printing

[Silence04]

one time on a lotion product i did, i cut off the last line in a paragraph on the back of the tube.

another mess up was the time i flip-flopped 2 numbers in an 800# on a hugh Devry College poster that went up in a big mall.... luckly the client didn't notice!!! LOL

i'm sure i have an even bigger mistake lingering in the back of my brain somewhere... i'll chime in later

<SUP>www.jdcgraphics.net (http://www.jdcgraphics.net/)<SUP>- currentlyunder construction
http://www.jdcgraphics.net/banner.gif

[Jason Fraker]

Here's a good one:

I had almost no experience with ad spec. stuff when I started my present job 2 years ago. Well, one of our clients was getting some sport bottles with a wrap-around imprint of their logo. Using Illustrator, I selected all and converted to grayscale. For some reason I assumed that whatever was darkest would become black, and anything lighter would be shades of black (I still feel stupid for this one). Well, the ad. spec. company faxes me a proof and it looks fine because of the distorting factor that comes with faxes. Then, four weeks later, the product arrives and the logo has this ENORMOUS halftone screen. I found out the hard way that most of those screen-print places that print on irregular surfaces use something in the neighborhood of 50-70 linescreen. I was horrified to see 20 boxes full of sport bottles with this horrible logo. I hadn't been here long, and I was sure I would be canned. Then, the customer picks them up and says: 'I love them. Thanks!'

Whew! I love customers who are so easy to please.

-Jason

A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can even put on its shoes.
-Mark Twain

[morea]

no worries, dementress... some people are just scared of smart women. /emoticons/biggrin.gif

I haven't lost my mind... it's backed up on disk somewhere.

[dementress]

morea said...
no worries, dementress... some people are just scared of smart women. /emoticons/biggrin.gif


http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/emoticons/cheers.gif touche.

I'd rather leave a bad impression, than no impression at all.

[Mitch Wood]

My biggest mess up wasn't a printing error, had a few of those though, you know like having a rich black under a 100% black box in quark that is set to overprint, fine of the ink jet, but terrible from the press.

We had a customer who is a print buyer (she is up her own a$$), and I had designed a card for one of there clients from a rough word document, my design was OK nothing special but it was clutterless, clean and fairly well designed in my opinion. Well the customer had spent ages 'designing' this word doc and didn't even consider my executions, screaming they were WRONG, and was adamant he wanted it exactly like his word doc.

So I did it like his 'design', but in a bit of a strop, saved the file in addition to the one I had originated, but added _brainlessdickheadsv on the file name, so I knew which one was his, with all the rush of a separate more important deadline, I quickly saved the pdf, but forgot to take the registration off it.

Well you can imagine what happened when the job went to him, well I got a severe ear bashing from the print buyer, but she got absolutely hammered by the client, as she told him that they did it in-house, and couldn't blame anyone else apart from herself, as she lied about outsourcing anyway.

I would be sympathetic with her if she was cool and pleasant, but she makes Ted Bundy look angelic, so I still smile when I think of the barracking she got that day.

Post Edited (Mitch Wood) : 12/16/2004 4:29:19 PM GMT

[Debz]

HAHAHAHA Omg!!! thats funny!

America.. ***** Yeaaaahh!!

[Jason Fraker]

That's the best thing I've heard all day, Mitch! I think we've all named files like that, but you never DREAM that the customer will ever see it. Plus, the sales lady had to take the blame to cover her own tracks. Classic! You win the prize, which is nothing. Congrats!

-Jason

A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can even put on its shoes.
-Mark Twain

[Mitch Wood]

Jason thing is with her, it is never her fault, but as she knows absolutely jack about graphics she always gets ammendments wrong, I can guarantee that 75% of the time.

If you knew her you would deffo be sniggering every time you met her... ;)

...I know I do! (and so do all of her employees)

[pacificg]

Let's just say that no matter how much magenta and key you have, it ain't gonna come out anywhere near red, no way no how. I knew it sounded dodgy.

Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.

[doctorfoz]

very nearly got fired for this one.... I work on a magazine and some years ago I managed to print the previous month's index. there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth! I still have no idea how it happened.

[Ovaltine]

Years ago I figured out the code to actually type a upc. I didn't realize that the programs used to generate bar codes alter them somehow so they scan properly. So probably 10 out of 40 (other designers were doing pre-press too) had upc codes which had the correct numbers, but the bars were too thin, so they wouldn't scan.

Oooooo the big boss was looking for someone to bring the hammer down on for that one.

Fortunately, I had a really awesome art director at the time who wouldn't tell them who was directly responsible, she told them the department was responsible since noone caught the error. She knew it would never happen again, because she knew the kind of person I am.

Ironically, that company went under due to the big boss' multiple screw-ups and inability to make decisions.

[The_Black_Knight]

The biggest mistake that I remember, and one of the few that I was entirely responsible for, was when I worked at an insurance company.

One of the departments had just started up a new newsletter. This would happen fairly often in the insurance business. A department would get the idea that it was important to tell all of the other departments how wonderful and useful and busy they were, and that a newsletter was the best way to do it. These things would have a great first issue, commercially printed on multiple pages. Then the second issue would be scaled back because there wouldn't be enough new content, and it would go from a two color job to a one color job. Then the newsletter would go from a quarterly publication to a semi-annual. Then it would get passed from graphics to an admin to type up in Word and then distribute by e-mail whenever something new came up, and then it would fade into oblivion. I saw at least three or four department newsletters follow this exact pattern.

Anyway, I had designed the first issue of a newsletter for a department. The client LOVED it. She loved the layout, she loved the colors, she loved all of it. I was still pretty new to the field, and was feeling pretty badass.

Then it came time to create the second issue. Somehow, when I created the second issue, I goofed up the yellow Pantone color. I think I transposed a number or something in the color pallette. Instead of the nice bright yellow that the client loved, we got an orange color, or as she put it, "Howard Johnson orange." She was furious.

Oops. I was very apologetic, and took all of the blame myself, because there wasn't anyone else I could blame. My boss just said something like, "Don't worry about it. But don't let it happen again, okay?"

I've made many other mistakes, but none of them were as blatant as this one, and I can't think of any that cost anyone a significant amount of money, so I've been pretty lucky, I guess.

[Tsmalldon]

My biggest goof was for a tradeshow. Left the Website off the Pamplets we handed out. However in my defence nothing goes out without being approved and reviewed by the boss, so he missed it too!

Lots of typos here and there as well, but that is going to happen.

Also when I first Started I did a flyer with Pantone coated colors and it was printed on uncoated stock.

[Virgo Nightingale]

I was designing greeting cards for a client. They knew the envelope size they were going to use, but gave me all sorts of different measurements for the unfolded card that would go in that envelope. I think I went by the last measurement given me, which I didn't double check whether would actually fit or not.

So it gets approved, goes to print, gets delivered to the client. And then one of her clients orders a set from the website. She gets the cards, signs one, then tries to put it in the envelope. It's the exact same width as the envelope, and thus will not fit.

In my defense, my client should have double checked the size herself, and figured out whether or not it would fit, BEFORE approving it. However, after getting conflicting sizes from her from the get-go, I should have just figured out the proper size for myself.

[double A-ron]

My biggest blunder was for the first publication I worked for. I was working on an ad for a local Co-Op and they had an item on sale and the product was called "Kiss My Face" lotion and I decided to have a bit of fun with our ad proofer and instead put "Sit On My Face" lotion. This was on a Thursday or Friday and we would go to press the following Monday. Well Monday comes around, we put the paper to bed and the entire run printed and Wednesday comes along and he comes out to the area we had the pasteboards on called me aside. It seems I had forgotten all about it and he never caught it, so it printed like that. Thankfully, the advertiser had a good sense of humor about it and the my bosses (the owners of the paper) while you could tell were pretty upset, thankfully didn't fire me and by the end of the week I was getting all sorts of crap for it and thankfully we all laughed our butts off about it from then on out.

[LeftBrain Artist]

I replaced a toner cartride in a ricoh a few years back, it was like the second or third time I had done it, so I knew how to do it. But the after inserting this thing in all the way, you had to turn a knob to the locked position. I could have sworn that I had it turned all the way, but it was a pretty lame system, with no perceivable click to let you know it was in fact registered properly. A few hours later, that powdery toner was everywhere (on the printer). We had to call in service to pull it apart and clean it up. Boss was none too pleased. Neither was I. I'm still not sure if I forgot to turn it, or if it worked itself back to an unlocked position. Either way, you'd think at the very least there would be some sort of alert that the toner cartridge wasn't locked. Or, it just wouldn't run. Live and learn.