Holy shit.

So we used Wonderdrug for this record since they had competitive rates and since people recommended them. I will never use them again. Horrible horrible fucking job. Every fucking part of this record they could have fucked up, and I mean EVERY part of it -- from sound quality to the artwork to the delay after delay after delay to the fucked up templates to the retards at their "design" group -- it was all fucked up.

Thanks Ken for wasting $1500 you asshole. I completely regret using them, and here is my list of grievances:

-Initial delay due to an error in the templates on Wonderdrug's site, which they still may not have corrected
-Delay due to the color warping from the "design" group (reds, oranges, and other colors drastically shifted)
-Delays due to the printer printing from low-res proof files and not the sources. Then when I had them reprint, he only corrected the one most notable file.
-Ken telling me to "put white where you want the CD face to show" on the CD face design, then printing white there. Brilliant. Especially since there's a note right in the fucking design saying all white is where NO ink should be
-Retards at the design firm not knowing Illustrator 101 and thus not shutting off one fucking layer that was, quote "1mm off". Just turn it off then, retard. I called them up after almost a week or two delay (while I was on tour) and he said "Oh, yeah we just realized we can turn off that layer". Welcome to the world of computer design.
-Charging me $100 extra because they are the only CD manufacturer I have ever worked with that can not do their own color seperation, so they "upgraded" to 4 color
-Shipping only 600 out of 1000 CDs. If that. Where the fuck is the rest? 3pm today - "Oh, I'll make some calls and call you right back". Haven't heard from him yet.
-The "design" people putting the WRONG FUCKING BARCODE on the CD package (ken never had an answer for this), then leaving me to do it with minimal time to get it to look right.

His two weeks turned into a month and a half. The colors are off, the sound quality has some changes to it when I compare it to my hi-bit rip from the masters. The CD face has white where they were instructed not to put it. This was the most complicated, messy, shoddy CD job I have ever encountered...except for maybe Imprint down in FL, but whatever, who the fuck uses them?

Also - Ken never even ONCE, not ONCE, offered any kind of rebate or compensation of any kind. I think he apologized once in passing.

Although this doesn't describe the detail to all this, I should also point out that if this was my money, I would have pulled the project from them and demanded a refund 2 weeks ago. But it wasn't, so I couldn't.

I used them for the TERATISM CD, I would never use them again, it cost $300 more than the place I normally use.

Yeah and I ordered 2000 and I had to wait an extra week for half of the order.

oh really? He claimed that the possibility of a split shipment was kind of out of the ordinary

what an ahole

you got f-ed in the a

you know who is really good for CDs is Omni www.iconomni.org or .com or something

they did a fucking sick job with the 800 mountains CD.

And, truth be told, my experience with Discmakers, albeit a pricey one, was tremendously satisfactory.

I only use http://www.dgrinc.com/ now.

Check out how the DESENSITISED and EMBALMER came out, those rule.

AUTOPSY_666 said:

This is kindof weird. Under the full color packages for 500 4-panel cd's it's $1,040.00 but for 1000 it's $1,100.00. For an extra $60.00 you get 500 more.

We didn't have any issues going through Wonderdrug. Sorry to hear things went shitty for you.

Yeah, also Joe has gone through them for every NC release, and those've all been fine.

I e-mailed Ken to let him know about this thread, he is a good guy and has always treated Watchmaker very well so I though he should know about it. So hopefully he will respond to your grievances.

Yeah that's the worst part. Ken IS a good guy. He was really nice the whole time, just in a business sense it's like "fuck this". I would never let this many problems arise with a project and then not even once go "Ok, I'll give you a $100 back. This project is not representative of how we do our work, and I don't think it's fair to charge you full price to have to go through all this".

I've been really fair and open and made a lot of phone calls back and forth, but when I saw the CD face, it was just the icing on the cake. I've finally hit the point where I am just not going to be OK with all the shit that happened with this project, and to be frank, I was the last man standing when it came to composure on this fucking thing.

Sounds out of character for him.

I have had great luck with super dups so far. I'd look into them at some point.

I had a really negative experience with Superdups, but it wasn't as bad as this and they DID offer a rebate because of their mess-ups, and also they do their stuff in house so we actually got to go down to the work area and see what was going on. Whereas this took WAY longer and at this point I feel taken advantage of since it's cost us full price, plus my $100 that I only spent to rush this job along with the CD face.

Here is what the CD face looked like, and you can see the CLEAR-AS-DAY note at the bottom, and I had a conversation with Ken to verify this is what I should do. I left the guides in as this is a screenshot:

Wow, that does sound like a major major fuckup.

Here is what I sent as a note to the printer. I also sent this in an email:

"The files I have are for Dan, and are located at ((EDIT)) . It is the only file in there (HT004). The zip file is quite large (320+ MB) but it contains the EPS files -- along with some PDF and JPG proofs of these files -- that he needs to run our job with Wonderdrug Records. It will take some time to download, but this appeared to be the best solution. Please call me with any questions or when the file is being opened so I can comment on the files." (they didn't call me, I had to call them)

And this is what I sent to Ken. I also sent several notes to the printers saying "DO NOT RUN from the EPS" along with a text file that I will post the screenshot of in a second, but (this was to the printer):

"Again, to make sure that back panel of the tray card looks smooth, I'd like to run from the EPS files (should be the exact same thing) for at least that particular portion of that job."

It appears that my communication with ken about the EPS files was both a voice mail and a phone conversation where we spoke live. Anyway, here is what I sent as a note to the printer, along with several conversations to 2 members of their staff about what I needed:



This is what I got back from the printer:



As you can see, this is a screenshot from the PDF. It's very blocky. As the printer was opening this, and I looked at it, I told him that I was uncomfortable with that and just run the job from EPS, a vector based format. He said ok but then proofed from the PDF proofs (like a copy of a copy of a copy... kind of thing). I called him back and said the color looks better, but please don't run from the PDF. He said he wouldn't. Here is what the back was supposed to look like, and did look like, after they ran from the RIGHT files:




The other files, unfortunately, were run from the PDFs as well, which I told them I would only send as proofs because the printer claimed that the proofs he had, which were JPG, weren't enough (I would never send just JPG proofs, this is from Sands Media Group who, for some reason, Ken uses for "design".)

I wonder what would have happened if I didn't make a gillion phone calls and know graphics design software this well. What if your band can't make all those calls, doesn't get involved completely, doesn't know the software so in depth? What gets risked then?

We put over a year of our lives into making this CD, and I would have liked it treated with more care.

Oh that first shot of the back, btw, is EXACTLY what the print of the back looked like. Apparently Sands was using PDFs as master printing files, and not as just proofs.

I would definitely be at least this pissed off if I had to deal with this shit.

Here are the barcodes. The one they "used" is very pixelated because the printer was proofing from lo-res JPGs, which still doesn't make any sense to me, especially cause I was told I'd be sent PDFs as proofs.




I know that Ken sent them the barcode on the bottom, so I don't know what happened. I caught this just before we went to final print.

menstrual_sweatpants_disco said:


It is when you choose eye-catching shiny silver and then end up with matte white, but you had to pay $100 to make that happen when you didn't want it to happen and it didn't speed up the project at all.

maybe he didn't like your music and took it out on your cds?

titfrost said:


that's incredibly unprofessional if he did.

just sayin

Here is what I went through as one of our earlier bumps in the road. This is what I got sent as a 72 dpi JPG proof from the printer. This type of format and resolution has no scalability whatsoever. It gets blocky at like 110%. Anyway, this is the file, scaled down from SEVERAL FEET WIDE to 500px:



I couldn't understand why it was so big with so much white room. Plus, even with cropping, at 72 dpi I couldn't make out exactly what I needed to see on this thing. The colors were totally off if that file served me correctly, and it was blocky, so who knows if that would be on the final print or not.

Normally, with Illustrator to EPS conversions, if something is pushed off of the immediate artboard, it will be included in the EPS when it is rasterized. It's a long story, but it happens and when you first learn Illustrator you come to learn that fact. This is very basic if you know the software. So I guessed that's what it was, though I hadn't moved ANYTHING that far off the artboard. I found that when I shut off the layers that I edited, it did not solve the problem. I determined it was in the locked, template-originated layers. I opened the templates Ken provided, and zoomed out to about that area. Here is what I saw:



Clearly there appears to be nothing that far off the artboard. I went through layers (a time consuming process) and then switched to Outline mode which can reveal the center of pretty much any object that is still part of the file (imagine if you didn't know to do this?). Here is what I saw then. I have added an arrow and circled the dots so you can see what I found:




these are what was forcing the EPS file to be an amazing amount of square inches. The "design" group didn't catch this, the printer didn't catch this. Ken DID catch this, but didn't preface this to me when he sent the files. Why? I don't know.

When I took out the objects (garbage, btw, unnecessary for the templates at all, it turns out) the files then proofed fine. If you had trouble following this, then you understand part of the frustration. It's also key to note that this is in the ORIGINAL TEMPLATES, so it still may be there on their site.

yea this was bonery.... i vote icon as being most effective to date.

Since I like taking screenshots and because I feel like the proof lies in seeing what went on with this CD, here is what happened with one particular case thanks to the amazing Sands Media Group (i am being sarcastic). The inside of our booklet was supposed to look like this:



Then Sands became involved, and it looked like this:




As you can see, the orange went to peach. Ken said that reds and oranges can shift, BUT I KID YOU NOT, when I sent MY files to the printer MYSELF, I got back a proof that looks not very much like that second photo and more like the first one. There was no peach at all (you can see in the final print) and even if the black did shift (it got whiter, which, although I bet I know why, you can see from the Raising Kubrick split that places like Discmakers don't have this problem) it avoided the work that Sands did. I really think Ken should use a more professional "design" group if I can do my work more professionally (is that a word?) than they can.

fuck discmakers tho they cost so much

they cost a lot, but you have to admit, they were very professional and the final product looked really tight.

SteveOTB said:


Nah that's actually pretty normal. Most of the cost that you see in the first 500 is for setting up films, screens, the glass master, blah blah blah. Then after those costs, it's really only a little bit for each additional CD case, print, and actual disc. $1.10 per CD is still a really good price, though, especially for a 4/4 Four panel if that's what you're saying. Usually it's like $1.20 or $1.30 per CD in the end.

the_taste_of_cigarettes said:


OK few questions.

What color mode were you working with? Was it CMYK, RGB, Pantone?

Was the art sent as 300dpi?

Were the text layers rasterized?

Was there bleed on the template?

Sometimes when working with CMYK I find out the color doesn't come out as exactly as planned. Pantone should give you the best results because it's so precise.

If you made the artwork to fit the template then it's a pretty easy job from there, there should've been no reason to give you all this trouble.

As for the abundance of white room my guess is they were working in Illustrator, made the size of the document much bigger then the artwork and then when you export it as a JPG or something you get the white area because it exports the document based on the size not by what's on the artboard.

Also they could've been messing with the art so that it works better for them and possibly pleases you more (which obviously it didn't) maybe they changed the orange in the background so that the black text could stand out more?

As for the UPC code being pixelated they're clearly just idiots then because last time I check UPC codes need to be solid black not shades of gray.

1. I did it as CMYK at originally 400dpi I believe, but I went with 300dpi in the end. Normally I do color in 400+ dpi when it's a print job that really matters like this, but I went with the specs i was given.

2. Ken told me I would be given a Pantone book and could color match the paper proofs to that. This never happened, but yeah, I did ask because i wanted to Pantone match.

3. I normally do not Rasterize text. I convert them to outlines, again, because I was asked to do that by Ken.

4. There was bleed, yes.

5. the artwork is fit to the template, and this is because I used clipping masks from the guides on the template. it may deviate from +/1mm but I am almost positive that it does not. This wouldn't explain any of the problems, however.

6. The abundance of white room is because when you go from Illustrator to EPS, it makes room for stuff of the artboard. Give it a shot... put something outside the artboard, save as EPS, and then open in Photoshop (it won't create this problem if you use AI to open it, you have to cross platforms - This was confirmed when I was told that the printer use PS and not AI).

7. I thought they were trying to "fix" my art, too, but there was shifts between 100K 0Y 0M 0B and some different black that was leftover from an RGB switch. They should have fixed that if anything, and they didn't. There were minor things left and right they could have fixed but didn't, and since the colors ended up printing close to my files, I think that whatever they did was in vain.

woops, that was TOC not Alex

You know what it this probably all boils down to? Somebody somewhere in this chain of events has probably got interns doing their work for them.

I don't know much about design, but this happens a lot with video production. There are a lot of flimsy ass organizations that hire an assload of interns, don't pay them, and have them do all the work. I remember there being this one company that used to post job ops on Craigslist regularly, and every so often someone would post about how miserable they were. One guy said he took a job there, after being interviewed by an intern, never met more than 1 or 2 people in the company that weren't interns, nobody knew what they were doing, and the company itself has worse equipment than a 3rd rate wedding videographer. Don't you love this shit?

I mean maybe that's the case, because Ken has put out some great CDs in the past and has been doing this CD duplication thing for years now. I find it hard to believe my experience with them was so unbelievable cataclysmic, but perhaps this does explain it.

If there's one thing I've learned from working at my job is if possible have them send you an actual physical (not digital) proof, something you can have in your hands before proceeding with the rest of the order. Some places will do it if they want the business enough. Even if it costs extra it will save you more money in the long run.

I agree.

As a side note, the printer explained to me that they've requested that Sands do this, and yet they still don't. I feel like it would help with color proofing and dimensions. <shrugs>