Best Practices - Production Tips

Did you hear about the recent Agency / Auto Account debacle? It appears that a local agency ran ads with the wrong phone number. I can't blame them, this has happened to pretty much every agency. Luckily, we have Joppo's Production Tips to save us. A former producer once created this list of production tips to help our creative and account people ensure that we don't face the same fate. For your own good, follow his advise.

• Map out & matrix versions, codes and lettershop plans, with the client and as close to the beginning of the project as possible.
• Create mockups of ALL components before building mechanicals and again after final mechanicals are built and sent.
• Perform tap tests before sending final mechanicals. Put together the mockups & tap each side against a flat surface. Check envelope windows to make sure the shipping address and other desired information stays visible with each tap.
• Send a set of tap-tested mockups to both vendor and client.
• Call all phone numbers & visit the URLs before the piece is printed.
• Don't make up an address as a placeholder for any address on a DM piece. Use the merge field placeholders: Example:

{FName} {LName}
{Address}
{City}, {State}, {ZIP}