When print shit happens

It goes like this: A client calls after discovering a typo on his newly received printed tote bags – we’re talking a print run of a few thousand and the target audience librarians and school teachers!

You keyed in the text with said typo, gulp, and worse it was an Einstein quote. Not kidding.

Of course the client wants to blame you yet they signed off on the artwork. Still there are questions to be asked – yes I created the typo and yes there were many opportunities for multiple sets of eyes to pick it up, yet it wasn’t.

Spot the typo… when you see it, remember the target audience is librarians and school teachers – ouch.

Being an incredibly lovely client, I wanted to help and wracked my brains how we could prevent another print run and the associated wastage. I couldn’t bare the thought of 3000 bags going to landfill and nor could the client so we came up with a swing tag acknowledging the error. The client found a suitably apt quote around imperfection and get this, it just happened to be another Einstein quote. Perfect. So we turned it into a bit of a teaser.

We titled the swing tag ‘Fun fact’ to draw attention and hoped the additional quote might stir curiosity to cause peeps to read the reverse side with our admission.

(Tell me one person who doesn’t flip a tag or business card over… we’re naturally sticky beaks so most peeps will flip it over, read it and hopefully smile.)

There are multiple upsides with this approach and what could have been a total debacle. Instead we’ve had a laugh at ourselves, sucked it up and made it a positive fun exercise for both us and the recipient of the tote.

The bonus for us was when the tote bag had its first outing, a big player approached the client commenting on how they loved the graphic and asked if they could do a co-brand on another print run!

So if/when you end up in this dire situation, be honest about it and watch a success story play out. It did for us.