Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Proof Checking at Fedex Office

As part of keeping my Dominion box organized, I print off dividers that a wonderful soul has freely published onto cardstock via FedEx Office nee Kinkos.  The divider's I hadn't printed were for the latest release (Guilds) and so while having other fun Christmas-y stuff printed, I had these done as well.
The results are shown below.


Compare the above to the original file shown below:



Two problems here:
  1. Clearly the file didn't print properly.  Where the name of the card should be in the title banner a black box exists.  No PDF viewer, including the online proofer provided by FedEx office shows this black box so I don't know how it ended up getting printed but it did.
  2. Here is the full text of the pink note attached to the printed document.

    "PRODUCTION REVIEW SAMPLE
    Dear customer,
    I have compared the proof (if applicable), originals and the job ticket, and determined that it meets the FedEx Office standards of quality.
    All subsequent copies were produced to match this sample.
    We appreciate your business and look forward to meeting your needs in the future.
    (Team Member Signature)"

    Knowing that sometimes things get messed up, FedEx Office has a system in place where each print job is examined to ensure that it is getting printed properly and has an employee sign this verification. As the note clearly states, this includes comparing the printed product to the original. I know from trouble-shooting the problem with them after the fact that no digital representation of this file showed the problem, only the printed version.  They had a clear definition of the final product to use in comparing to the printer output and yet kind of blew it.
In my mind, the second problem is bigger than the first. 

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