Get blamed for trying to help

One of the difficulties of our business is that the products we are asked to make are often brainchildren of marketing, advertising and design people with limited knowledge of production process. The fact that they may not understand what it takes to actually produce their idea is perfectly understandable. But what I can’t understand is why they do not want to listen when we try to explain or give suggestions ? And it does not stop there. When things go wrong, exactly as we warned them they would, we get blamed …

I have a fresh example. We were asked to produce a special packaging for a product for children. Rather simple item but with a bit complicated artwork. The item had two parts - body and the lid - and the image was to be printed over the entire product. This would also be OK if not for one thing. There were few important details on the design that we split up - part of it was still on the body part already on the lid.

The moment we received the artwork we could tell that this simply will not work. There was no way that the lid and the body can match that well. We told the client right away that the part of the detail on the lid will shift to the side (left or right) and will not match the part that is on the body. We also explained why. We recommended adjusting the artwork and print those important details on the body of the package only. We were told off and told to do what we are asked to do.

So we did just that. But knowing the result in advance we went the extra mile and without bothering the customer we did some adjustments and prepared an alternative sample as well. We simply wanted them to see how it could look. As our client refused to even think about adjusting the design themselves we did it for them, at our cost as a favour just to speed the whole thing up. The time was running and no one would consider moving Christmas to February. We had no idea what parts of the design can’t be touched and what parts can, so we did as we though would be fine. Our alternative sample was never meant to be a pre-production sample, only an example how it could be done if the original idea does not work.

What happened ? Well, of course the sample made according to the original design was rejected as unacceptable. Client decided to go ahead according to the sample we made up for them but … Of course there was a “but”. It had to be redesigned because we did not do the adjustments correctly in line with their manual (that we have never seen) …. This of course took extra time and delayed the production. And it is all our fault …

Can’t complain our business is boring .

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