If you want to avoid a costly and time consuming mistake with attempting to design, order and print your own business cards, like the example conversation between the graphic designers and a client, then we advice getting us to redesign your logo and business card as well as producing your flyers, business cards and other marketing items.
[Unhappy Company] Hi, received the cards but not happy with them as it seems you have cropped the image despite providing it in the correct format and dimensions, additionally it seems much darker than the ones I have previously got and printed from my machine, the cropping has caused it to appear much bigger than I wanted, can send you a scan / example if you want but the original is attached and this is how I wanted it
[Graphic Designers] Although your artwork was sent at the correct size, your bleed allowance was out. If we had printed them ‘as sent’ then the lettering at the bottom, especially the first character would have been partially trimmed off, so all we corrected was to move the image up slightly so that it didn’t get cropped when printed.
Regarding colours, again your artwork was sent through as an RGB file when print ready artwork requires the colour format to be CMYK, when converting to CMYK colours will appear slightly differently. Also you can’t really compare a home printer to a litho press, the way in which images are treated and printed is totally differently.
Unless you use Pantone spot colours and have a calibrated monitor calibrated to one of the industry recognised colour systems i.e. Pantone then unfortunately the colours you see on your screen will always be slightly different to the printed image. I hope that answers your query, if you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to ask.
[Unhappy Company] This doesnt make sense, the image that was sent has 5mm from the bottom of the last character (the
j) to the edge of the card, there is also 7mm at the top, the cards that you printed me have 1mm and 2mm ! Therefore you haven’t just moved it up you have enlarged the whole image, or so it seems.
I have also changed my image mode to CMYK and there is barely a difference in the image I see on my standard monitor, I would have changed to this mode if you had advised it, the difference between your cards and my cards and jpg / photoshop image is so vast I cant really believe it, the colour goes from pink to purple, please check this for me as its not my imagination, I have had 3 other people check it, so now I have reduced the size of my image and changed it to CMYK mode
[Unhappy Company] I am a recent start up business and obviously want more printing especially other cards (as there are 4 of us here now) and A6 flyers and if you can get this right I will stick with you and give you good reviews. I actually found your company as I pointed out a couple of mistakes to you or your colleagues about your website on the uk business forum and hope I am able to go away a happy customer. I would like you to say that you can reprint these cards and ensure they look like I want them to look as at the moment I cant use them as they are purple and the image is too big.
[Graphic Designers] I have re-checked the second file you uploaded and if we trimmed the cards 3mm up from the bottom without touching your artwork then you would have had the bottom of the ‘j’ trimmed off, there is not a 5mm clearance at the bottom. Again on the top of the card the clearance given is 5mm, when these are trimmed to size it would mean that the lettering would be 2mm away from the top edge. Again regarding the colours as I previously stated unless your monitor is calibrated and you’re using spot Pantone colours you can never be certain the colours you’re using are actually the colours that will be printed.
If you undertake to do the design yourself you have a responsibility to ensure you know how print design differs to designing for the web, they are poles apart in terms of preparing your file ready for print. To help customers we have an artwork guide available on the site that outlines what sizes we need, the concept of bleed and the fact that artwork is required as CMYK.
Unfortunately we won’t be able to re-print the job as apart from ensuring your final product wasn’t trimmed off we didn’t touch the artwork and printed it as it was sent to us. If your artwork was setup as RGB this would explain why it looks different when printed as CMYK.
In future I would suggest you read through the artwork guidelines which clearly explains how a print file should be set up and what the finished size of the card is. We request a file that is 91mm x 61mm but the finished size of business cards is 85mm x 55mm.
I would also suggest you have a look at getting your monitors calibrated. It may cost a few hundred pounds but its definitely a worthwhile investment. You mention the image has been printed as purple, that’s because the image we have IS purple. The new image you attached to your last email has had the spacing adjusted, if it was fine before I can’t understand why you would have moved it?
We like to have happy customers, but we can’t be liable if people don’t follow or don’t understand how to design for print. We even have an artwork service which is very well priced at £45 for business cards, this ensures our clients get a professional print designer to work on their order with the result being artwork that is suitable for print.
[Unhappy Company] I moved it to conform to your standards so the most recent 1 I attached to the email would I assume print ok and look like the image I sent? The printing I have is not what is what I sent they are much much deeper purple, instead of a pink / purple ? If you have copies of my printing you will see what I mean. I do follow instructions but didnt see any on your site and indeed the page that is titled ‘artwork info’ is not available then or now
Your artwork guide should be a requirement has having read before making your order and it states in it a 3mm bleed is required
This relationship started by myself giving your company help and free advise which let to me making an order after seeing posts on a business forum and now I am left with a worthless product, if you are not going to reprint the items then I am going away a very unhappy customer and will share my experience with others, I attach an image of what you printed compared with what was previously printed and required, as you can see they are very different.
[Graphic Designers] I’m sorry but if you get involved with designing for print you need to understand what you’re doing with regards to basic technical aspects such as bleed/margins and setting the correct colours, also an understanding of how monitors display different colours would be beneficial, just because your monitor says its pink/purple doesn’t mean that it will be when its printed, this is where the use of spot Pantone colours is useful as it’s a standard by which every printer works. Most organisations for their branding will have set Pantone colours so they know that when their identity is printed whether its on business cards or pens it will be exactly the same colour.
Further, we won’t be blackmailed into providing you with a re-print due to mistakes at your end. In good faith we adjusted your artwork to increase the bottom margin without charge to yourself. If you wish to post up negative comments about my business it will show you up in a worse light as no-one likes to see that kind of tactic on a forum whatever the circumstances. For the 1% of business we get from forums I’m not going to replace jobs that are the fault of the customers under a threat of negative feedback.
It’s a shame the job has turned out this way but I’m confident we couldn’t have done more.
