customer did not spell check his proof

[signswi]

The short of it is someone has to take responsibility, by having a customer literally sign off on a proof it puts the responsibility in their hands, after that point you can be nice and cut a small discount on a re-run if it will buy some goodwill but it's their responsibility. This has been standard in every print house I've ever worked in or done business with as a designer/customer. The copy shop/small run offset I worked at in college even had that policy, not sure why a large format shop wouldn't.

If you don't have a sign off procedure, it's a clusterfuck and 99 times out of 100 you're going to eat the job or lose the customer.

 

[Charlie J]

A pretty busy street here in town is called MacArthur. I made a small lighted sign for a liquor store and I spelled it McArthur. The customer looked it over on my screen and said yeah that looks good. Then calls me back a week after installing the sign and says that its spelled wrong. I didn't have him sign a proof, so we re-did the sign for free.


I think I'll be having customers sign off on proofs from now on.

 

[Gino]

Yo.... careful of the language in the open forums. Read the rules.

Anyway, you're not comparing the same kinda stuff. When someone is sending you a ton of copy for offset printing, whether it be magazines, brochures or major documents, of course you need a waiver to protect your self, but what most here are talking about are signs. Most of them don't have but 5 or 6 words up to maybe a dozen or two. If you can't look at your files and see something is spelled wrong, that you're just not qualified to be in that department. You should be pushing a broom or digging holes if you can't spell.

By the way jess, why won't you let anyone know anything about you in your profile..... something or someone got ya upset....... or scared ??

 

[Bly]

And do you really think that this makes you more money over the long term or is it to let you think you won?...

I take all care to fix or notify them of any errors I pick up but sometimes faults slip through. I'm talking print ready PDFs supplied by design and advertising professionals.

If they supply faulty art and push for quick turnaround why should I pay for their mistakes?

Do you let your customers set all your pricing or just jobs they screw up?

 

[mark in tx]

I once fired a graphic artist that couldn't spell. I got tired of having to correct 90% of what she did. All that time starts to add up. Worst part was she had a degree in fine arts.

 

[signswi]

What does having a degree in fine arts have to do with spelling? There's a reason marketing departments and agencies have copy editors...

 

[signswi]

Anyway, you're not comparing the same kinda stuff. When someone is sending you a ton of copy for offset printing, whether it be magazines, brochures or major documents, of course you need a waiver to protect your self, but what most here are talking about are signs. Most of them don't have but 5 or 6 words up to maybe a dozen or two. If you can't look at your files and see something is spelled wrong, that you're just not qualified to be in that department. You should be pushing a broom or digging holes if you can't spell.

Even the smallest jobs should have a simple signoff, it's not hard and it's standard throughout the print industry. Sign shops just seem to have weird blind spots about some of these things, see all the discussions about copyright, art ownership, charging for design...a lot of reinventing the wheel. A small paragraph with a "sign here" line on your proof or job approval sheets, no big deal, will save you a ton of headaches.

You should especially have sign off when you're doing the design, you have a proofing process right? At some point you need to define the design as final, at that point the final signoff should be final--that includes spelling. The design is frozen at that point. Any reasonable person will understand that, and it gives you ground and professional options for dealing with an error that will usually result in everyone happy. Otherwise it's just nebulous and you're going to eat it every time, which isn't a great way to run a business if you have a goal of ever turning profit. This is how freelance designers and design agencies handle signoff, why wouldn't you also handle it that way if you're doing design for a client? Doesn't make any sense to avoid having a signoff process.

 

[Gino]

Not the way you're explaining it..... nope.