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Embarrassing Printing Mistakes

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So we have all done it. Had something go to print and there is an error. When the client calls, your heart sinks and and your stomach tightens. In hindsight, the errors can be quite funny but in the moment your whole world comes crashing down.

One of our more serious errors happened on a launch kit to Toshiba Telecom dealers. The word "Reliability" was misspelled in a headline. It was spelled "Realiability". Break that into two words and you get:

REAL LIABILITY

No there weren't two "Ls" but the client called and said it reads "real liability". Frantically we went back to check our printouts. The final signed off printout was spelled correctly. There, plain as day on the signed proof, by us and the client, was the error REALIABILITY staring us in the face. How could this have happened? The printer fessed up. A pre-press person had to retype the headline before proofing and they made the misspelling and we all missed it. Quickly we stopped the kits from going out and reprinted. We weren't fired.

The next error was when we were working with the Orange County Performing Arts Center. They were hosting the Vienna Philharmonic. It was a huge campaign for us. Brochure, banners, kiosk, and direct mail. The event was being kicked off at the Crystal Court in an upscale mall in Orange County. Everyone who was anyone was invited to a kick off event at the mall. We had created a huge wall graphic that read:

Orange County Performing Arts Center Presents the Vienna Philharmonic

Our Account Manager was supervising the installation of the graphics and she happens to have an eagle eye when it comes to proofing. There it was for the whole world to see:

Orange County Performing Arts Center RESENTS the Vienna Philharmonic

The "P" hadn't printed on the large printouts and now the graphics were mounted. Quickly a "P" was printed and worked into the headline. Tragedy averted.

Imagine our amusement when we received the latest Pricing and Ethical Guidelines Handbook from the Graphics Art Guild and found it was bound inside the cover upside down. OOPS. Even the Graphics Arts Guild makes mistakes. I'm sure they will laugh about this years from now. The only way to appreciate it is to see it.


Comments

Anonymous said…
It is exceptionally essential to guarantee that the printed materials are free of spelling and syntactic blunders. This ought to be exceptionally clear yet it is not remarkable to see glaring spelling errors on print design. It is imperative to check the work before it is printed. Spelling mistakes gives individuals the feeling that the organization is careless about everything they do.

print design
October 19, 2013 at 4:47 AM
Anonymous said…
The Guild Manual could have been an isolated error. I used to work for a publishing company, and saw instances like this when checking bound books. Sometimes, for various reasons, a cover might get flipped in the binding stage. Only manual checks of the entire run can and will find these, and the printer will pull them and not charge the client for these "mistakes." On large quantity runs, it's almost impossible to check every book. But the publisher or vendor will usually replace it if you send it back.
November 1, 2013 at 10:11 AM
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