Patrick Shannon
01-19-2005, 07:12 PM
One thing that I've been pushing for at this excuse for a printing place (along with another employee, but she's no longer here) has been a rush charge, but the employers won't do that....well, because it would make sense. Obviously, rush charges are absolutely necessary because customers too often will take advantage of you if you don't. In fact, I brilliantly made a satire of this scenario many months ago (http://www.mywarwithculture.com/comic.php?cid=42).
So yesterday, I get two BIG projects in the second half of the day (they can never bring it by in the first) from customers who have already had ads and pieces designed last week two, so I couldn't disqualify either one of them out (dumping multiple projects back to back is like a fat kid going back for seconds, thirds and forths, but it's a part of the business). Now, these are things like advertisements and mailers which will take a few hours to assemble, so it's not piddly jobs. I already DO have piddly jobs to get through, so I had to put both projects to the side until later. That was yesterday afternoon.
So one of those large job clients phones me this morning, and asks me if I had finished the project. I told him I had other jobs that came in before him and that I was backed up on those, but I should have his project finished by the end of this week (which would be working week, meaning Friday). So a three day turnaround, basically. He whined and asked if there was any way that could be bumped up. I told him that another customer (the OTHER client) had come in and dropped off their project before him, and that I could bump them out of the way to accomodate him, but they weren't going to understand this if I was forced to explain it to them. Not to my surprise, he said that was fine. (Yeah, of course I knew he'd say that.)
One time I was looking at the websites of other graphic places (real ones) and I was absolutely astonished to see that their minimum turnaround time for things like designing business cards was an entire week. And it's smart....even though it might take a few hours to simply design something, you have to allow for sudden problems that might pop up, frequent revisions, etc. As I always tell the employers, it's smarter to allow more time and surprise them with a quick finish than to be caught with your pants down when the customer comes back a few hours later and something monkey wrenched their project.
So out of curiosity, what is normal turn around time (for you) for bigger projects like the above? What is the bare minimum you tell your customers to allow? If you work with several designers, you might want to share that too since it would have an impact on time, of course. Keep in mind I'm the only designer here.
Patrick Shannon
'Dear valued customer, go home and die. Signed, your friendly graphic artist.'
http://www.patrickshannon.com/mwwc_sm.gif
My War With Culture (http://www.mywarwithculture.com)
Political incorrectness reinvented.
So yesterday, I get two BIG projects in the second half of the day (they can never bring it by in the first) from customers who have already had ads and pieces designed last week two, so I couldn't disqualify either one of them out (dumping multiple projects back to back is like a fat kid going back for seconds, thirds and forths, but it's a part of the business). Now, these are things like advertisements and mailers which will take a few hours to assemble, so it's not piddly jobs. I already DO have piddly jobs to get through, so I had to put both projects to the side until later. That was yesterday afternoon.
So one of those large job clients phones me this morning, and asks me if I had finished the project. I told him I had other jobs that came in before him and that I was backed up on those, but I should have his project finished by the end of this week (which would be working week, meaning Friday). So a three day turnaround, basically. He whined and asked if there was any way that could be bumped up. I told him that another customer (the OTHER client) had come in and dropped off their project before him, and that I could bump them out of the way to accomodate him, but they weren't going to understand this if I was forced to explain it to them. Not to my surprise, he said that was fine. (Yeah, of course I knew he'd say that.)
One time I was looking at the websites of other graphic places (real ones) and I was absolutely astonished to see that their minimum turnaround time for things like designing business cards was an entire week. And it's smart....even though it might take a few hours to simply design something, you have to allow for sudden problems that might pop up, frequent revisions, etc. As I always tell the employers, it's smarter to allow more time and surprise them with a quick finish than to be caught with your pants down when the customer comes back a few hours later and something monkey wrenched their project.
So out of curiosity, what is normal turn around time (for you) for bigger projects like the above? What is the bare minimum you tell your customers to allow? If you work with several designers, you might want to share that too since it would have an impact on time, of course. Keep in mind I'm the only designer here.
Patrick Shannon
'Dear valued customer, go home and die. Signed, your friendly graphic artist.'
http://www.patrickshannon.com/mwwc_sm.gif
My War With Culture (http://www.mywarwithculture.com)
Political incorrectness reinvented.