Ad error in this month's Dragon?

[The Harbinger]

Just curious if the error that appeared in my Dragon was shared by any of you. In this month's Dragon there is an ad for "XCrawl" in which the headline appears correctly, but the body copy's fonts are all defaulted - i.e. you cannot read the majority of the rest of the words because the right font was not chosen when the ad was printed! I work in publishing and was horrified. Although it goes to show no one is perfect (we editors are especially not!) I just wondered if they'd caught the mistake on some of the printing.

 

[Prince Atom]

I noticed something similar. Did your ad not have any body text? Mine had some, but various words were conjuncted or overlaid. It made it very hard to read the ad.

I'm not going to buy XCrawl until they have a more legible ad. Surely their books won't be the same way, but the ad was not pretty to look at.

TWK

 

[Tsyr]

Yeah, same way in mine.

But did anyone really get excited over the add on the bottom of page 43?

 

[Jesse Decker]

Don't Judge XCrawl by that Ad

Don't judge Xcrawl by that ad. The ad looked fine on the proof that we saw in the office, there was just some kind of production glitch at the printers that screwed up the font. We're making things right with the XCrawl folks by giving them some free ad space (with legible type even), and we've flogged the printers.

 

[The Harbinger]

Wait, you guys get to flog your printers? I've wanted to have that option many times.

I wasn't meaning to point fingers or lay blame - I was just curious.

I feel your pain in regards to the printers. Throw in some flogging for me too!

Just be glad they got the colors correct.

 

[The Harbinger]

PS

This thread is basically dead now, but Jesse in case you reread this I'd like to express my appreciation for the excellent job you guys do. Dragon is as well done as any magazine out there - in artwork, content, and design. You and your people do a fantastic job (I've even brought in Dragon or two just to show nonplayers here in the office how well designed an issue is - especially the one with the TOC as thumbnails)

It also speaks volumes that you keep up with the community - evidenced by your post here. How many other hobbies can claim such involvement?

Thanks again.

...and XCrawl has gotten a little free publicity in this thread to boot!

 

[Voneth]

Speaking of printer errors.

I got a graphics guy who claims that the upside down fireworks pic in a brochure we did was done by the printer. Is that really possible?

 

[Fast Learner]

Speaking of printer errors.

I got a graphics guy who claims that the upside down fireworks pic in a brochure we did was done by the printer. Is that really possible?

It depends on what your graphics guy did. Most good graphics folks these days do all of the layout, including putting all of the scans in place. In this case it's entirely your graphics guy's fault.

It's possible that your graphics guy either (a) had the printers (or wherever the film was output) put the scan in place, or (b) had the printers paste the film of the fireworks in manually. It's unlikely, most definitely, but not at all impossible.

 

[Arravis]

well...

Voneth, depends how they output it...
Were they given a computer file? If so... things can go wrong with files and many of the pre-press guys tend to be pretty lazy in most printing companies (in my experience). Unless the computer states that it has an error, they won't mess with it, just print it.

If they were given negatives and the picture negatives were seperate, that could easily happen, but if you guys gave them the negatives directly with the pics embedded... I don't see how it could happen.

 

[Gizzard]

I'm only tangentially familiar with the printing business (my honey used to edit manuals), but from watching her work you should get a "blue line" back from the printer after you send them the disks; this is a rough so you can check the layout etc and make any final corrections. If your fonts are all screwed up at this point, or your fireworks are upside-down you should mark it on the "blue line" and have it fixed.

Its actually pretty funny to watch her read any publication; she notices (and is actively upset by) things that I just skim right by. I get a general sense of how much various people spend on editing just by watching her reactions. ;-)