My client, Fuckwit Inc

[Tansu]

Idiots. FUCKING INCOMPETENTS. Idiots.

Let me share with you some of an email I just wrote. I will remove references that might identify the company.

The scanned graphics were quite honestly of an unacceptably low standard. There are several fundamental problems with the drawn graphics and the graphics files, which I shall summarize for you:

1. The graphics were drawn at the size at which they were to appear in the book. This is the wrong way of doing things. Illustrations for scanning in should be drawn MUCH BIGGER than they are to appear, and shrunk down after scanning. In this way, any little anomalies get shrunk down to an unnoticeably small size.

2. The graphics were scanned at too low a resolution. This is a very basic error.

3. The graphics were scanned in using a random and incorrect selection of colour modes. To avoid problems, illustrations for inclusion in a four-colour printing procedure should be scanned in CMYK.

4. The graphics are not fit to place. They all have a grey background, and the black isn’t always black. The graphics should have been scanned properly by someone who knew what they were doing, and the image levels set correctly. (so that the white is white and the black is black)

5. Following on from 4, the graphics all need at least 2-5 minutes each of touching up work. Bear in mind that this is 2-5 minutes from someone who knows exactly what they are doing. Even then, some graphics can not be brought up to an acceptable quality.

6. This is a design and technology book. The accepted format for engineering and design work is Autocad, and the acceptable format for product illustrations is vector graphics, such as Illustrator or CorelDraw. I am at a loss to understand why scruffy pen sketches have been deemed suitable for a book that you want design teachers to pay money for. The sketches are OK when one wants to give the impression of a rough sketch, but for an actual illustration, it just looks awful.

I have made vector graphics of most of the illustrations in this chapter. They look very good. They have a similar style to your previous books. I am somewhat concerned about the rest of the book. Will the rest of the book have the poor scans, or will there be decent graphics? If you want nice vector graphics, I’m happy to do more. I enjoy working in CorelDraw.

I understand that quality is at the discretion of your department, and of the editor of this book. If you want the scrappy grey pen illustrations in the book, that’s up to you, and I’ll shut my big mouth. But if I don’t understand why a book produced by a supposedly professional outfit should have rubbishy, incompetently scanned illustrations, you can bet big bucks that the boss won’t either.

How could these people be so hung up on corner cutting that they didn’t realise that pen illustrations would actually end up being more hassle than decent, clean vector illustrations?
How could they not know that when you DO illustrations for scanning, you do them BIGGER than they’re going to be and then scale the fuckers down?
How could they scan in the shitty pictures without consulting someone who FUCKING KNEW HOW TO SCAN STUFF IN PROPERLY?
There were SEVERAL CLEAR CHOICES here between doing things WELL and doing them BADLY. FUCKWIT Inc chose to do things BADLY, and that just fucking offends me on principle.
The capital letters are there because I actually AM SHOUTING. GRAAAAARGH!

[Ethilrist]

That’s because they’re trying to look cutting edge. They want people to think their graphics are so good, you can’t tell them from hand drawings.

Yeah. That’s it.

[Tansu]

Cutting edge of turd.

I’m offering to fix the problem for them by doing neato vector illustrations. Should be acceptable to all. I really needed to rant, because I was ANNOYED. I’m still annoyed, just on principle. It tits me off when people choose to do things badly.

[elf6c]

Hmm, I think I had them as my legal client too-- We liked to call such clients “Kruger Industrial Smoothing” for obvious reasons and joked about requiring payment for our legal services to be upfront, in cash, by hand- as that was the only possible way they could not fuck it up.

Each time they would call all I could think of was the Seinfeld episode when George worked for Kruger i.e. “Looks like we took it in the shorts again” and the delightful mix of incompetance and apathy show by all invovled.

[Otto]

*Originally posted by elf6c *
**We liked to call such clients “Kruger Industrial Smoothing” for obvious reasons and joked about requiring payment for our legal services to be upfront, in cash, by hand- as that was the only possible way they could not fuck it up. **

I suppose I’m the only one who’s not getting what the “obvious reasons” for the name are? Explanation please?

Why do I have the feeling I’m going to feel very wooshed when it’s explained?

[Encinitas]

I work in the graphics department of a large biomedical research institute. We used to do all the scientists’ illustrations for publication. Now they have some post-doc or grad student do them in Powerpoint.
Then they come to us and say… “The publisher won’t accept our graphics. Can you fix our Powerpoint file[sub]beg…beg, sniff…sniff[/sub]?”
I say, “No I can’t. But I can redraw the whole damn thing the way it should have been done in the first place!”
They say, “But it needs to go in the mail today!”
I now have to drop everything so that I can redraw their frigging graphic to meet the deadline.

grrrrrrrrr

[pesch]

Otto, judging by elf’s second paragraph (where george goes to work for Kruger), it sounds like a Seinfeld reference.

[friedo]

I suppose I’m the only one who’s not getting what the “obvious reasons” for the name are? Explanation please?

Kruger Industrial Smoothing was the name of a fictional company on the show Seinfeld which was full of incompotent jerkoffs who all knew they were incompotent jerkoffs. George worked for them.