Worst Postcard Design Ever – How I Got a Spammer to Design a Really Bad Postcard

Nigerian 419 Scam Turns into Comical Lesson on How to Prepare a File for Print

Sometimes opportunities just fall into your lap. In this case, a spammer using a classic Nigerian 419 scam ends up providing the perfect example of how NOT to prepare a design for professional printing.

The first email arrives with a vague request to an obviously spoofed address. The big tip-offs that this was a scam are the lack of punctuation and the question about accepting credit card orders. Nobody asks that up front unless they are fishing for a victim.

From: William Burns <sales.burns@gmail.com>

Date: 3/28/2010 4:58 PM

To: info@postcardsplus.net

do you print postcards and do you accept credit card for this order

Curious, I reply back to see what this is about. I am already 99% certain this is a scam, but who knows, in the off-chance that this is legit it can’t hurt to reply.

From: Clay Butler

Date: 3/28/2010 7:03 PM

To: William Burns

Do you have the right person? What order are you referring to?

He gets right back to me but suddenly his name has changed and he’s using a different email. Well that answers the “is it a scam?” question pretty clearly and the second request about accepting credit cards seals the deal.

From: David Baker <david_baker2g7@yahoo.com>

Date: 3/29/2010 8:15 PM

To: Clay Butler

quote me on 50,000copies and 100,000 copies

Post Card: 6″ x 11″ Standard Postcard

14pt. Cardstock Gloss

2 colours front,blank back

do you accept credit card and are you the sales manager or the owner

david and sons ltd

2384 rusk st

beaumont,tx

77702

Just for kicks I do a search for David and Sons Ltd just to see if it’s a fabricated business or they are spoofing a legitimate company. Turns out it’s fabricated, which makes sense because the scammer can’t have me calling the company to confirm. I could have just dropped it at this point but I was curious – how far could we take this? So I send of a reply.

From: Clay Butler

Date: 3/30/2010 5:40 AM

To: David Baker

I’m the owner.

Do you have the artwork ready?

Sometimes people confuse the concept of two colors. Is this two colors visually (process color) or two PMS spot colors?

David hits me back with an answer.

From: David Baker

Date: 3/30/2010 9:26 AM

To: Clay Butler

i have an artwork ready to proceed so quote me to proceed

Great, he admits to having something that I know for sure he doesn’t. So I give him a quick quote.

From: Clay Butler

Date: 3/31/2010 5:42 AM

To: David Baker

$3,000 for 50,000 print run

$5,600 for 100,000 print run

David gets back to me and now he brings up that this will be shipped to his orphanage in Ghana. I’m so blessed! I couldn’t have come up with a more hilarious response if I tried. And that the orphanage is called “James Orphanage” and the address is “505 Orphanage Street ” just kills me. Seriously, this guy should be writing for SNL!

From: David Baker

Date: 3/30/2010 9:26 AM

To: Clay Butler

Hello I am ok with the price and i will like to order in total $3,000 for 50,000 print run And i will recommend a freight company for the pick up of the unit to my new orphanage home in (West Africa) . Now i want to you to contact them with the total weight of the unit and find out the freight quote to Africa for me . The delivery address is below :

James Orphanage

505 Orphanage Street

Kumasi, 00233

Ghana(West Africa)

billing address

David and sons ltd

2384 rusk st

beaumont,tx

77702

Freight company email address : freightlinersshippinggh@hotmail.com

And including the pick-up location and they will surely get you a freight quote .As soon as you her from them let me know so that i can proceed with transaction

Best Regards

However, I’m not caving. He needs to send me the print ready file.

From: Clay Butler

Date: 3/31/2010 10:02 AM

To: David Baker

I need the artwork. Can’t start the job without the print ready file.

Thanks.

David then tries to change the subject.

From: David Baker

Date: 3/31/2010 10:09 AM

To: Clay Butler

well the artwork is ready here but first thing is to get me the shipping cost asap to proceed

Now it’s time to see how much David is willing to invest in the scam before bailing. I hold firm but assure him that once I get the file I will call the freight company so his orphanage can get their postcards.

From: Clay Butler

Date: 3/31/2010 5:09 PM

To: David Baker

Perhaps this is your first time ordering such a large print run but we don’t make the order without the artwork. My print department needs to review the file to make sure it is print ready and our your color quote is accurate.

Please mail me the print ready file and remember you must include a 1/8 bleed, convert all fonts to outlines and all images converted to CMYK.

Once I have that I’ll contact your freight company.

Thanks,

Then the totally unexpected happens. He sends me the file and it’s awesome! I haven’t laughed so hard in weeks. Below is a gif thumbnail but you can view the original PDF if you’d like.

From: David Baker

Date: 3/31/2010 5:49 PM

To: Clay Butler

attached is the file so advise

I open the file in Illustrator. It was clear he made this in Word as it’s 8 1/2 by 11 and in giant Times New Roman – no PMS colors, no bleed and no fonts converted to outlines. I’m shocked he actually even tried and even more impressed that he knocked it out in under 40 minutes. Not bad. But what cracked me up the most is I’ve actually gotten “print ready” files from clients just like this. I’ve had business cards mailed to me so I can scan the logo from the card to use on their website. I’ve had 150 pixel by 100 pixel images pulled from random websites to use in print brochures and posters. I’ve received images embedded in Word documents and “hi-res” logos that were just jagged gif images or bitmaps. If it’s non-standard, non-compliant, and non-usable, I’ve gotten it. Sometimes there is no other choice because the client has nothing else to give you – it simply doesn’t exist – so you need to work some miracles. However David is not my client, he is a criminal, so he gets it straight.

From: Clay Butler

Date: 3/31/2010 6:44 PM

To: David Baker

I reviewed your file and I’m glad I had you send it. There are several problems with it.

1. You made the file 8.5″x11″. The Postcard’s dimensions are 6″x11″ with a 1/8 bleed

2. You didn’t specify what PMS color we should use for the yellow

3. You didn’t convert the fonts to outlines

The good news is that these are not difficult fixes. If you’d like, my graphic department can get it up to spec for $50. However I would need to be pre-paid for this. I can give our company PayPal account and you can pay that way if you choose as we accept all major credit cards and you don’t need to have a PayPal account yourself.

Your other choice is to fix it yourself and send it back.

Thanks,

Unfortunately I never heard back from David which is a bit disappointing because I really wanted to turn the tables and have the scammer pay me. Now that would be rich!

Now if you’re a business person and not a designer you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. Your source images look big on your screen and you designed your poster in Word which is a “professional” program. For the business folks out there I’m going to give you a quick lesson that will not only help you, but help your designer.

What Designers Mean When They Ask, “Is it Print Ready?”

or

The 4 Most Important Things You Should Know About Printing Requirements

1. Bleed Requirements

So what is bleed? Bleed is when the artwork goes out of the final trimmed print area. If your brochure, postcard, or business card has anything, be it color or images, that go right to the edge you need bleed. So a 6″ x 11″ postcard with a yellow background needs to have the yellow ” bleed” another 1/8 inch around all sides. That means your print ready file will need to be 6.25″x11.25″ (an extra .125″ all away around).

This is because your postcard will be printed on giant sheets of paper. There may be eight duplicates on one sheet of paper. After printing these sheets of paper are cut down to 6″x11″. The extra yellow bleed gets cut off leaving you a perfect background of yellow that goes from edge to edge.

Think of it like painting a room in the house. You mask out what you don’t want painted and then paint slightly over the mask. When you peel the tape back you have perfect edges with complete paint coverage.

2. Print Quality or Print Resolution Images

When designers talk about print quality images they mean images that are of sufficient size to print without having to enlarge it beyond its native size. We use pixels per inch (screen resolution) and dpi (dots per inch) interchangeably. Common printed jobs are typically run at 300 dpi. That means if you were to count the little dots that make up a printed image, you would find that for ever inch you would find 300 dots in a row. These little dots combine with other dots to form full color pictures. Full color printing (process color) has four colors of dots. The dots are cyan, magenta, yellow, and key black and are commonly referred to as CMYK. Each color is on its own screen and each one passes over the paper with the black going on last. If you’ve ever seen a full color image in a newspaper that looks blurry like a 3-D projection, it means that one or more of the four-color plates (screens) was off register.

So what does this really mean? It means images that look big on your monitor will print much smaller. But why do they look big on the monitor? Because your monitor is displaying the images at 72 or 96 pixels per inch, an image that is only 300 pixels wide will look pretty decent. But with print we reverse the formula.

If you have an image that is 300 pixels wide it will print only one inch wide. A 600 pixel image, like the one below from a Russian spammer trolling for a husband, will print two inches wide.

So if you have a 6″x11″ postcard that needs an image that covers the entire print area it needs to be at least 1800 pixels x by 3300 pixels (6 inches times 300 dpi and 11 inches times 300 dpi). That’s a big image and most likely you’ll won’t be finding that on someones website. Now, designers can enlarge a good quality image a bit, so you could probably get by with something around 900 pixels x 1750 pixels if sharp details weren’t crucial. But overall keep this formula in mind (divide the pixels by 300) and make sure source images are big enough to print nice and clear.

3. Fonts – Embedded, Installed and Converting to Outlines

The number one thing to know about fonts is that just because you have that cool font installed on your computer doesn’t mean your designer does. The same goes for the company printing your design. If you send a file to your designer and your designer doesn’t have that font installed, his system will swap it out with a default. If he’s not paying attention he may not even notice. So if you have a particular font that you must have, you must email it to your designer so he can install it on his system. If you’re on a PC you can find the font by going to your Control Panel and then opening up the Font folder. Find the font you want and attach it to an email.

The second thing to know is that because not everyone has the same fonts installed, you printer will want you to convert all text to outlines before sending them the file. This means that editable text will be converted to shapes. So the letter “o” will no longer be a letter in the alphabet that you can change but an image in the shape of an “o”. Don’t do this to your master as it’s not reversible. Make a copy and convert text to outlines on that one. If you want a designer to edit your file, don’t send them the one that’s been converted. He will not be able to make changes to the text.

There is a hybrid between these two options and that is fonts that are embedded in a PDF file or other documents like Microsoft Word or PowerPoint. Depending on the restrictions put on the font it may instantly install the font on the user’s system (fully installable), allow the user to edit the document but not have the font on their machine (editable), just be able to see it (print preview) or not see the original font at all (do not embed).

Most common fonts can be embedded into a PDF file. If you send a PDF, Word, or PowerPoint to your designer, and the fonts are embeddable, he will be able to make edits even if the font isn’t installed on his system. However, this doesn’t work with programs like Photoshop or Illustrator. If you send your designer one of those files you’ll need to send the fonts if it isn’t already installed on his system.

Confused? That’s ok. The most important thing to take from this is that your designer needs to have the fonts you want to use.

4. Spot Color (PMS) Versus Process (CMYK)

When someone says a design is two colors they don’t mean it looks like two colors. They mean it is two specific spot or PMS colors. PMS stands for Pantone Matching System and it’s a set of industry standard pre made colors. It’s a lot like picking paint for your house. You look through swatches and then pick the color you want.

A design that looks like two colors may actually be process color (CMYK) – meaning it took four plates of color (blue, red, yellow and black) to make those two colors. This is an important difference for if your two color design is actually achieved with four colors (process/CMYK) you’ll be paying for process color.

Normally this doesn’t matter as typical trade printing (business cards, brochures, flyers etc) is so cheap it’s not worth stressing about. However, when you get into other types of printing – like for packaging, signage, and garments – it may make a big difference.

So know which method you are using. If you are using spot color your printer or designer will expect to know that before they start and assume you have the PMS colors picked out. Remember, picking PMS colors is like picking paint for your house. They both come right out of the can looking that way. No mixing is done.

So there you go, a quick lesson about what your printer and your designer means when they say “print ready”.

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File Under: What Does Print Ready Mean – Explain Print Ready – Preparing a File for Printing