Today was a busy day in the office. A client, one of my favorites, contacted me with an urgent request. Apparently they needed a really big technical poster done, today, to print today, to ship overseas. Today.
While I enjoyed doing the job, and working for this client, it did make me think, how could my clients (this one and others) avoid getting into situations like this in the future? If I had not been light on work today, their deadline would have most likely been missed.
The problem was in the planning. Many companies that do not have a design department don't understand the process of printing on a commercial level. When a project is in the planning stages, the Printer of choice should have been contacted. Questions to ask would have been:
I'm sure there are more that I'll think of once I publish this, but it's a good starting point. Today's rush job would have been avoided with just asking question #1- What file type do you need? Asking the right questions will save you time and money, not to mention the project going much more smoothly in the end.
While I enjoyed doing the job, and working for this client, it did make me think, how could my clients (this one and others) avoid getting into situations like this in the future? If I had not been light on work today, their deadline would have most likely been missed.
The problem was in the planning. Many companies that do not have a design department don't understand the process of printing on a commercial level. When a project is in the planning stages, the Printer of choice should have been contacted. Questions to ask would have been:
- What file type do you need?
- What software do you use?
- Do I need to give your a vector file? A raster file?
- Do I need to include the fonts? Do I need to outline the fonts?
- What size of documents can you handle (for any custom sizes)?
- What materials do you print on?
- What are your rates?
I'm sure there are more that I'll think of once I publish this, but it's a good starting point. Today's rush job would have been avoided with just asking question #1- What file type do you need? Asking the right questions will save you time and money, not to mention the project going much more smoothly in the end.
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