Chapter Eight. Job Submission

The planning that goes into your job should begin long before you hand your job files to the print service provider. As you’ve seen in the preceding chapters, it behooves you to anticipate the challenges presented by the physical processes of printing. It’s less traumatic to prevent problems early in the game than to frantically fix something as the deadline looms. And it’s not just the big stuff that bites you. It’s no fun to be leaning blearily over a printed sheet on a 3:00 a.m. press check and have a pressman remark, “Hey, didja notice that this guy’s name is spelled three different ways in this brochure—is that right?”

In the heat of battle, it’s easy to overlook the basics while you’re focused on the tricky parts of the job. And tunnel vision can cause you to lose sight of the big picture. But if you break the process into several smaller chunks, it’s easier to catch problems at each stage.

This chapter serves as a reminder of some of the issues you’ve read about in earlier chapters and provides a number of checklists to review while you’re preparing to send your job to the print service provider. You’ll find expanded information on many of these topics in other chapters. This chapter is meant to provide a starting point, and to call your attention to key issues.