The "Due Yesterday" Print Job From Your Boss - Survival Tips

Anatomy of a successful digital “quick-print” job for a beginner.

So you've just finished your last word on your report, clicked save, threw it on a CD and are now ready to frantically run down to the print shop where they will reverse time to get your job to you yesterday. does this sound familiar?

Well, my experience in being at the receiving end of these sorts of projects for many years, I think I can help. Below are a few ideas to turn a potential disaster into a success story.

1)Communicate!

If you have one of those projects that is already late, a preliminary phone call to the print shop to let them know a project is on the way down always helps. This ensures all materials can be ready, i.e. tabs, binding material, special covers, special paper, and most importantly to help them schedule run time on machines. Also worst case scenario, you learn that a “machine is down”. Knowing this before you walk in the door helps the stress level.

2)Choose your program?

Let the print shop know what program you are using to produce your project do they say “no problem?” Or possibly a long pause - “uh yeah I think so” Not a good answer. Regardless of what program you are using check to see if it can save the file as a PDF. The nifty thing about this is once made, you can look at it using Acrobat Reader (free download – most computers already have preloaded too). This eliminates weird page break issues, font issues, and graphic issues (98% of the time at least). Check under FILE - EXPORT, or FILE - SAVE AS.

3)Print a copy to take with the CD

Giving the print shop a copy of what the project is supposed to look like will save you countless phone calls should something go awry. Without it, they really have no idea what a project is supposed to look like. For example, a MS Word document form one computer to another, can really look and print shockingly different.

4)Proof it!

I know time is of the essence, but I truly cannot count how many times a customer doesn't want to proof something, 500 copies of it get printed, and it's wrong (funny though there is always time to re-print). In the long run, you really will be saving time by taking a moment to really look at a copy off the shop's machines. By bolding “really”, I'm emphasizing the tendency to merely glance a proof over, not really looking at it, but then actually proofing it when 5,000 brochures just got printed.

"If I only had a nickel for the number of times this happened" you know the rest of the saying.

Article Source: http://www.content.onlypunjab.com

iDesign Marketing - Oregon Graphic Designing www.idesignmktg.com

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated