Graph-oops

• Measurements dead wrong
• No bleeds
• Bleed where there shouldn't be one (e.g. between adjacent panels on fold line)
• Text and/or critical image too close to crop
• No crop marks
• No registration targets
• Registration targets specified to print only on black plate
• Spines of traycard upside down
• Spines of traycard missing
• Resolution of raster images too low
• Resolution of raster images WAY too high
• Color Images saved as RGB
• B&W images saved as RGB or CMYK rather than greyscale (unless 4-color black is intended)
• Four-color black mismatch with one-color black
• Colors in two different images that are supposed to match... but don't. (check the ink percentages!)
• "Registration" color used when either black or rich black is intended
• On screen RGB representation of "registration" color manipulated to produce "perfect" shade of yellow for disc surface when viewed on designers uncalibrated monitor [note: until this job, I didn't even know that it was possible to tweak the RGB values for registration color. Kudos to this designer for creativity, even if the solution was totally unworkable. We call this level of expertise "someone who knows enough to be dangerous."]
• Scans way too light or way too dark
• No backup copies of files ever kept
• No working copies (with layers) of Photoshop files kept
• Missing fonts
• Corrupted fonts
• Missing printer fonts
• Incorrect version of font supplied (e.g. Adobe Helvetica (postscript) instead of Apple Helvetica (tt))
• Crappy freeware font utility used to generate corrupt Mac version of a PC font
• Miniscule serif type specified to knock out through 4 layers of film
• Artifacts from design experimentation never deleted
• Image underneath disc (on inside of traycard) placed incorrectly
• Placed files not supplied
• Images saved in inappropriate format (jpeg, gif, pict, bmp, etc...)
• EPS files saved with JPEG compression
• Dirty scanner bed (scan lines, fingerprints, dust)
• TIFF over background:none in Quark (a Quark bug)
• Images radically resized in Quark
• Low res Quark preview used to make critical design decisions
• Automatic clipping path generation in Quark 4 (a new, uh, "feature") not disabled, resulting in gaping holes in placed images where whatever's underneath can peek through.
• Unintentional gaps between objects
• Bar code incorrectly placed/resized
• Bar code placed on nonwhite background
• Vector bar code graphic rasterized as greyscale/CMYK TIFF, resulting in a bar code with fuzzy lines that won't scan
• Pantone colors specified in Photoshop not specified in Quark
• Pantone colors in Quark not specified to print as CMYK separations when they should
• Pantone colors in Quark specified to separate when they shouldn't
• Pantone numbers incorrectly specified - and the wrong color gets printed!
• Multiple plates specified to print at the same screen angle
• Image outside printable area
• Major misspellings (e.g. name of album)
• Major typos (e.g. order of tracks)
• 44 typos in a single layout (a new record!)
• Overflowed text boxes with critical text unintentionally disappeared.
• Overflowed text boxes with text intentionally disappeared (how can we be certain that you did it intentionally?)
• No folding dummy/mockup supplied
• No disc art ever created
• Critical image placed in the middle of the hole in the center of the CD
• Disc art created precisely to size in Photoshop, then placed slightly off center in Quark
• Disc mask destroyed by rasterizing in Photoshop
• Disc mask resized to arbitrarily chosen dimensions that have nothing to do whatsoever with our published specs
• Individual plates for disc created as separate documents - but the plates don't quite line up
• Deeply nested files (photoshop file embedded in an illustrator file placed in a quark file, saved as a quark EPS, placed in Pagemaker...)
• Unnecessarily nested files (TIFF embedded in Illustrator EPS, rather than placed in Quark)
• Free standing copies of embedded images not supplied
• Files supplied in unsupported format (please, no Powerpoint files!)

To be continued...