Caught a logo disaster 2 hours before a client meeting

I was sitting in my shop last Tuesday, cleaning up after a poodle groom, when I glanced at the promo flyers I printed for a local pet supply store. The logo looked fine on my screen, but on paper the yellow and white blended into nothing, like a ghost. I realized the contrast ratio was totally off, around 2.5 to 1, which is unreadable from 3 feet away. I scrambled to darken the yellow to a deep gold and added a thin black outline on the white parts, then re-printed 50 flyers in 45 minutes. The client loved the revised version, but I lost $30 in wasted paper and a few hours of sleep. Has anyone else had a last minute logo fix that saved a deal?

2 comments

2 Comments

simon_chen1d ago

Jumped in my chair reading this because something similar happened to me last month. I had a logo for a coffee shop that looked perfect on screen (screen lies, always) but printed with this weird purple haze on their branded cups. The contrast was so bad it looked like a bruise more than a coffee bean. I ended up spending a frantic evening manually adjusting the CMYK values in my sleep deprived haze, which is never a good look for anyone. At least you caught it before the client meeting, I found out about mine when the client sent me a photo of the cups at their grand opening.

willow_anderson8522h ago

Omg yes this hits so close to home! I had a similar panic with a logo for a doggy daycare where the blue and green I chose looked fine on screen but printed like muddy swamp colors. I had to tweak the saturation and add a white stroke to the text at like 11pm the night before the reveal. The client never knew how close they came to disaster but I definitely learned my lesson about always doing a test print first on the actual paper stock.