I screwed up - help
Out of context: Reply #11
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- SkyPoo0
This reminds me of a marketing jobbie I did for a record label. I had specified a (four colour) black and white image to be overprinted in parts with a flourescent pink.
To my mind "Overprint" was a term that conveyed the general approach but was open to technical interpretation by a skilled printer who knew his inks.
This job went off to Hungary to be produced though so they literally overprinted the flouro pink on all the CD and 7" sleeves, all the 7" labels (which they attached to the vinyl) and all the CD ondisk printing too.
The problem was that flouro pink is totally opaque, so instead of just making the white of the paper pink and leaving the text and graphics showing black through... it just obliterated everything leaving no band name, no track title, not codes... nothing... just pink.
They entire run, of fucking thousands and thousands of units, was printed and delivered back to the UK for distribution.
By the time the mistake was discovered, I would have been liable for all reprinting, all vinyl and CD manufacture, all collation and packing, all transportation, and the distribution costs. All that is aside from the fact that the band would have missed their publicity slots, radio slits, PR slots, and sales slots.
I sweated long and hard with no sleep for many days, desperately trying to build a defence for the term 'overprint'... I asked people in the record manufacture business how they would have interpreted the 'overprint' request and they all said without fail they would have looked at the job and underprinted it... so that was all I had to hope for, that if I got sued in court I could call on a number of expert witnesses who would testify that any printer worth their salt would have underprinted the pink. As a safe guard I told my missus to look into having the house put exclusively in her name so we wouldn't lose it.
I thought I was going to die with worry. I got a call to say I had to go to the record label to discuss the situation, and I got on the train.
By the time I had arrived, they had decided to play one of the 7"s and had discovered they had pressed the wrong tracks on it. That changed things in my favour and made the production outfit look really incompetent.
I was off the hook.
- CUCKY LUNT!!!!!!23kon
- Aye.SkyPoo
- I guess the moral of the story is, its never too late to avert your worst nightmare Helvetica.SkyPoo
- you don't send proofs to a foreign printer so he knows what you expect it to look like?mhr
- Yes. There were many things I could use in defense, but at the end of the day, my instruction was to overprint...SkyPoo
- so it was one of those ones where it was so much money that each side was going to fight as hard as they could.SkyPoo
- It was clear on my proofs how it SHOULD have looked. It was negligence on their part I am sure, but legally it was a murky situation.SkyPoo
- situation and the person who could afford the best representation would have won I am sure of that.SkyPoo
- great story...Mishga
- Holly shit man your lucky.roundabout
- great story agreedpoolio
- aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa the fucking suspense!!!!! amazing story! turn it into a short film or something._niko