This shouldn’t be a game of Russian roulette …

The printing industry runs on deadlines.

They lurk around every corner.

And there’s an unwritten rule that if a customer hasn’t or can’t confirm a delivery date, then it’s guaranteed to be several days sooner than is possible.

We’re used to it.

But what never ceases to amaze me is the pain and anxiety some are willing to go through to take things to the wire.

And here’s a real-life story to prove it.

We recently worked on a funeral order of service for a customer at the other end of the country.

With nearly a month to go before the service, we thought we had loads of time.

After all, if we’ve got all the copy, it doesn’t take more than a couple of hours to complete the design.

But that was just the start of more than three weeks of endlessly finetuning every comma and full stop. A process that only grew more frantic as the day of the service drew ever closer.

Incredibly, the sign-off came just 20 hours before the funeral was due to start. Needless to say, the job was printed and, on the carrier, just two hours later.

Nail-biting stuff. For us … and the family involved.

This is more than taking things to the wire; it’s terrifying and just goes to prove the white-knuckle ride some folks are prepared to endure.

In no way is this meant to sound flippant, but imagine turning up for granny’s funeral and there’s no order of service.  

But they were prepared to take the risk.

The orders of service did arrive, thankfully. But it needn’t have been that way.

With a little more planning, it could have been avoided. Completely.

If you’d got an important print deadline to meet, let’s sit down over a coffee to plan it through before we start mainlining adrenaline.

Until next week.

Alec