In graphic design as with any profession mistakes cost money. I am often envious of web designers, if they make a minor mistake it just takes a few minutes to put right, but print, when something is printed that’s it, there’s only one shot (after proofing) to get it right.
As a freelancer if you are handling print most designers will take standard precautions and give their client an approval form to sign off a wet or digital proof stating that the liability beyond that point for any mistakes not spotted rests with the client. Of course you would generally build in some sort of margin for error so that in the worst case scenario and you have to run another set of proofs, you are not too out of pocket.
What about the grey area though? What about the work you design, but provide artwork on disk, who does the responsibility lie with then?
Take for instance you design a brochure, the budget is tight for both design and print and the client wants to use their own printer. You supply the disk but inadvertently forget to change one of the photos to CMYK. The client orders proofs and of course the image does not print correctly. So who pays for the reproofing, it’s the designers mistake, but of course you haven’t handled the proofing or print and so have not been able to build in a margin for error. The cost for reproofing could be nearly as much as the design (especially if they have wet proofs) so if the designer was to cover the cost in effect they have done the job for free.
Worse still would be if the client didn’t notice the image problem and went ahead and printed 20,000 brochures. In my opinion this would not be the liability of the designer, at most liability should only lie at proofing stage.
Perhaps the answer is to build a margin in for possible problems, but on a tight budget I doubt if a lot of design only jobs would allow for this.
Fortunately I have never (touch wood) been in this situation, but I have often debated what I would do if I was. What do you think?
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19 Comments
For these types of design-only jobs which I’ve done as a freelancer, I have tried where possible to remain involved at the print stage, i.e. I tell the client that I expect to examine the proof and have a say before it gets its final sign-off. I have found, though, that this doesn’t always work smoothly in practice – I had an experience a couple of months ago where alterations had to be made but the client had already signed off on the job (without telling me), so it was lucky that the printer was reasonably good in liasing with me, and they also hadn’t started the print run yet by the time I got the alterations to them (it was only a turnaround of an hour but if the printer had been in a hurry the consequences could have been costly for the client and embarrassing all round).
For this reason, and others, I’m much more comfortable working in design for screen-based media than print.
I usually try like mad to pursude clients to print through me, it’s so much less hastle using my own printer, and makes me more money too.
If a client wants to handle their own printing I will make sure I point out that they are opening themselves to extra risk. That if they print through me I will add a print management charge which buys them both my expertise and also acts as an insurance policy, i.e. if I or the printer cocks up the cost is covered. If they print themselves it is made clear to them at sign-off that even if there is an error that is my fault it is their responsibility to spot it and they have no financial come back. I also print out the cheap printer they’ve found is probably cheap for a reason!
This usually makes them rethink and put the printing through me, which means less stress and more money!
Hi Tracey, sounds like you had a lucky escape. A lot of the work I do, I don’t get to print. When I used to receive finished print back I never dare look at it for two long. I would have a quick look to make sure all was ok, as the more I looked at it the more things would bug me, maybe a word which would have looked better turned on the next line etc.
Hi Dave,
“If a client wants to handle their own printing I will make sure I point out that they are opening themselves to extra risk. That if they print through me I will add a print management charge which buys them both my expertise and also acts as an insurance policy”
This sounds like a good idea in theory but I am not always that brave. Last year on one of the rare print jobs I handled the print cost to me was nearly £10,000, it scared the life out of me! However many checks etc I did and a signed off approval form. I decided that next time I got a job that big I would let the printer quote direct and add on a commission for me (less stressful).
You’re right that with a job that big the risk is far to high and it’s just not worth losing all that sleep! But then I hate jobs where the printing costs 5 times more than my design and I don’t see a penny of it! Makes me feel undervalued.
Dave I know what you mean, a while ago I went for a briefing (working through a third party) to design a brochure for a company. They were talking about possibly using a spot silver spot UV + CMYK, then I was told the budget for the initial concepts was £250. So they were prepared to spend money on a spot silver and spot UV but not design ????!!!
That sounds scary! So much money and risk. I think if I were freelancing and handling such large budgets, I would look into some business insurance, if only for the peace of mind.
I have had people tell me that getting the printing done themselves is the way to make a lot of money because you can combine different jobs on the same sheet (I believe this is called ganging), which costs less money for the designer, who in turn would still charge the same amount–as if it were not combined–to the client.
Hi Lauren,
That print job was a rarity for me, most stuff I supply on disk. My accountant did a check on the company to check their credit rating etc. Unfortunately I don’t get much print work at the moment. I do a lot of work as a third party (through other people) – they do the print. Its definitely a way to make money, as you are not physically working by the hour for that income. If I had more big print jobs I would definitely get insurance and probably go Limited rather than work as a sole trader.
I don’t really se that as a gray area. The designer made a mistake and should of course handle it. I don’t really see how you could forget to make an image cmyk. Now if the designer was provided with the wrong icc profile… That would have been a different story.
Hi Thomas
“I don’t really see how you could forget to make an image cmyk.”
This was just an example of a mistake, but if you are supplied a large number of RGB files you could easily miss one. You could have a colour set to spot not CMYK, you could have the trapping set wrong for an item etc etc.
The grey area, is that if the designer was printing the project, they would have course added a mark up to cover the print management (would be profiting from the print). If the design is handed over on a disk, the proofs come out wrong – of course the designer re-supplies the files, but who pays for re-proofing? If the designer pays in effect the cost of proofing (wet proofing) could wipe out any money they would charge for design.
“I am often envious of web designers, if they make a minor mistake it just takes a few minutes to put right, but print, when something is printed that’s it, there’s only one shot (after proofing) to get it right.”
I completely agree about the lines being blurred in print reliability, but I found the comment about web development to be misinformed. In my experience and experience of others in the field, web development always takes longer than print layout, I would say at LEAST twice as long, for the same income from client but for less profit. I began to type a long list of instances in which horror stories of web work could occur and it just became too long! Web development fixes can take months and sometimes the errors are not fixable – and since it’s user/technology based, a multitude of problems could occur outside of the developer’s realm that would ultimately come down to the developer fixing. Yes, some problems can be fixed within minutes and we should all be thankful for talented developers who knew their job so well they can do that. No matter the experience or talent though, most problems take a lot longer than five minutes to fix. I know the third largest web development/design company in my area alone took over a week to fix a certain issue that had occurred with more than 4 people working on it. I would break it down like this:
Web vs Print (whether design or development, the lines there are blurred these days in the web world.)
Time to make- Web
Reliability- Same
Cost to client- Same
Lifespan- Print
Basically, all of us have our problems with the same issues and it’s up to us to draw the lines, ultimately decide what’s the best solution. Our fields are very difficult to pinpoint everything, it’s a creative-service industry so you can’t really help that. You should do whatever feels right to you and put that within the contract. Ultimately I find though that if the designer and the printing house(company, what have you) are communicating with each other there shouldn’t be a single problem outside of the clients themselves. Sorry for such a long reply! =)
HI Louisa,
No need to appologise for the long reply you raise some good points
I guess I hadn’t looked at it from the angle of major web problems more the idea of needing to change a typo or image. Whereas once a print job is printed the job is finished whereas a website is always a work in progress. The cost of web mistakes is down more to a cost of time – manpower, whereas print is both time and materials
Thanks for giving your imput from another perspective.
As freelancers, we are always looking for ways to increase our profit margins, but that increase has to come with the additional risk and responsibility. Even though I have the ability to make more if acting as my own print broker, I just am not all that enthusiastic to front thousands of dollars and hope that the client will honor the contract.
The hybrid method that I seem to work well with is that I invoice the client for the design, and suggest a printer that I work very closely with do the printing. The understanding is that the client is hiring the printer directly, and all I did was arrange the meeting. The exception here is that I am the first one to see the proof, and if I approve it, then the client sees it. At that point, it’s between the client and printer, and I’m out of the loop.
And to address your example of forgetting to change an image to CMYK before going to print, many places around here use digital presses for their proofs, which will print an RGB image without much issue…certainly not enough of a color shift for the average client to see it. When they try to create the plates for the final job is when they run into problems.
“Even though I have the ability to make more if acting as my own print broker, I just am not all that enthusiastic to front thousands of dollars and hope that the client will honor the contract.”
I know what you mean there. Its difficult when people start paying you later and later too. Its bad enough when you are waiting for money to cover your time, but when you have to pay out yourself too, thats even worse.
i dunno how it works elsewhere, but here in India we get a free copy from the printer.. its been proof read by the owner/company… 50% of advance is paid before printing.
and designers are safe.. Whatever mistakes its company’s or the owner’s problem/..
And almost a regular printer of mine is a friend.. I get my % promptly after the deal is done..
Yes i did make thousands by brokering
Make money wherever you can…
I see it as a separation of designer and prepress production. As a designer alone, you are responsible for the content and the look, not the printing, prepress and proofing.
Unless a designer has specific experience and training in prepress he has to hand over that responsibility to another party. You need to spell out to the film house that they need to preflight the job before they make proofs. It takes 30 seconds to run a file through FLIGHTCHECK and spot RGB or resolution issues before running that proof.
But – if you feel you have no control over your supplier you have other options to minimise the risk for you.
In an agency environment the risk can be offset by having the job preflighted or quality checked by another party before sending the disk out.
For a freelancer, purchasing and using FLIGHTCHECK can save you significant reprint costs by having it flag RGB or low resolution images for you.
Ultimately, if you lack prepress experience and Flightcheck I advise to write in marker on the lasers going to the printer: THIS IS A CREATIVE LAYOUT: PREPRESS CHECK AND TRAPPING ARE THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PRINTER. DESIGNER MUST SIGN OFF PROOF BEFORE GOING TO PRESS.
Sounds officious but it may cost you less in the long run.
I feel it is the designer must make sure he has taken it to his level of design…then the proof readers…before going live!!!
you should get you’re client to also sign this off..if there is any hitch..you have built this in to cost..I run as a progect..with contracts/agreements..Good Luck..
I agree it really is a gray aria. What’s more web designers really do have it easy in comparison.
When I went to a web designers last year for a re vamp of my sight I told his exactly what I wanted with clear page by page written notes and illustrations. However he was unable to follow them. One every page he had missed thinks I have asked him to do.
I am a freelance designer looking for advice on this matter.
I recently created a design for a client, which took a long time going back and forth with changes colours etc etc.
Once the design was finalized, i sent over a print ready proof for him to sign off. Which he replied to, and confirmed he was happy for this design to be used for print.
Since receiving the design back, we have discovered that there is a letter missing in a small address line. This was included in the proof which was given to the client. I do not have a disclaimer in place or anything like that, but i did ask the client to check the proof over thoroughly before he confirmed it to be used for print.
Does anyone know where i stand with this?
Thanks!!!
J :-/
Just stumbled across this forum and even though it’s old I just had to add my two cents in! I’ve been freelancing for a specific client for a long time, and unfortunately they don’t know much about design or print. For the first 6-12 months everything ran smoothly, until one day I got an email stating that a big job had come back from the printers with a transparency issue. My client wanted me to take responsibility for the issue and contribute towards the re-print cost.
This is the grey area – I was given PMS colours to match when doing the artwork, hence the finished file was set up as PMS. I was never given the name of the printer my client was using, or their specifications – which, it turns out, needed to be CMYK (yes granted, most printers are only CMYK, but there are a few that print Spot colours).
I argued these points but my client wouldn’t budge. In the end, I contributed $2000 to the re-print cost just to keep relations with this client happy as they fed me 80% of my income (and in hindsight, i felt i should have been more proactive in getting those specs) – but when doing so, I specified that I still didn’t feel responsible for the error. Everything continued smoothly.
Since then, I have covered myself by ensuring each set of artwork is set to the printers specs, and a standard sentence explaining final proof responsibility for the file now lays with the printer.
HOWEVER, in the last week, my client has once again returned to me saying that a 2011 calendar design i recently used has some minor errors in it, and that they have used that file to print several thousand magnets. when doing the design, the client came back with changes to layout/contact details etc, but no changes to the calendar section (even though I specifically mentioned somebody would need to double check all dates etc). So i could only assume that section had no errors right?
She is now trying to get me to once again contribute to the re-print costs – even though my clients client signed an approval form (in my mind that leaves the clients client responsible for reprint, but she says “i feel i should reprint as that’s just the kind of person i am”) so not only is she trying to lay responsibility with me for a typo that should have been checked by both parties before signing the approval form, she is also casting aspersions on my character because I refuse to once again foot the bill for somebody else’s oversight!
And to make matters worse, the calendar was used on the huge print job that had already been reprinted due to the initial file error.
So now I’m unsure how to proceed and found this forum as I was trying to discover how responsible a freelance designer has to be. I always work as a designer full time for a company, and i know that if a client signed my approval form then discovered the error after printing, they were responsible and had to pay the re-print – so far they’ve all understood that completely.
My client is also emailing me saying she’s worried that her client is going to take her to court over this – which i take as a threat to me. i informed her the client had no reason to take her to court, as she was going to foot the re-print bill – even though the client had signed an approval form! I’d like to see that stick in court…
Sorry this post was so long, and years after the first comments were made, but i just had to get this out there in the hope somebody will still post and let me know if i’m way out of line or well within my rights to hold my ground… judging from previous comments the first issue is still a grey area, but the typo is definately not my fault.