The printers 'fixed' my Humble Pi show flyer.

Find a glitched poster* and get free tickets to my Humble Pi show in Edinburgh!
www.pleasance....
Or see me on tour around the UK in October and November 2019.
standupmaths.co...
People in North America: I'll see if I can get over there in 2020.
*Loose leaf single posters only. I've seen it once or twice as part of larger design with loads of other posters. But in that situation the person putting it up has no choice to include it or not. I am yet to see a single glitched poster where the person putting it up had discretion at the time to remove it because it looks broken.

[@kilbert666]

"surely nobody would ever send instructions as a handwritten note like that, right?" All the time. People do that ALL. THE. TIME.

[@RoyalFusilier]

This joke is predicated on people not occasionally being massive fucking idiots who really do this stuff, which is why it's not much of a joke. Comedy must be rooted in reality, after all.

[@ArrowRaider]

People. What a bunch of bastards.

[@Huntracony]

I love how you're desperately pushing against the world, trying to have it make mistakes, and the world is just like, "No! I fixed it!"

[@Thammarith]

It was a parker attempt

[@davidwuhrer6704]

It was a mistake to fix the mistake.

[@TheAechBomb]

666th like

[@ezeposada1276]

Parker Mistakes

[@efari]

wait, did Matt just solve the Entropy in the Universe?

[@matsuretro]

As someone who's worked in a print shop for most of a decade, that front is *far* from the strangest format for instructions we've gotten, so I completely understand why they thought they were legitimate. This is a story I'll have to share with peers, for sure. XD

[@zockertwins]

Do they usually print one test flyer before printing in bulk?

[@zorod5475]

The shop I worked in did. But it is not always standard practice.

[@matsuretro]

@@zockertwins I know we didn't, at least, but we *did* typically send proofs back to be approved before printing. That said, if we were supplied art, it was usually a marketing company (i.e. a rush job) that we didn't have time to even do proofs for. This basically taught us to not bother proofing anything with supplied art, so I wonder if we're looking at a similar situation here.

[@wobblysauce]

They send the file, you print file... not my problem...

[@ge2719]

Yeah he really should have been clearer to them and told them he wanted them to print the entire page, including the hand written message because the theme of the event is making mistakes.

[@iabervon]

What I find impressive is that they didn't just crop it and scale, they actually reconstructed the end of the white stripe you'd covered with the color test. Someone was probably cursing your incompetence for five seconds while they carefully undid your joke.

[@lucas29476]

iabervon as nice as I think that’d be, based on the flyer, they just cropped inside the color test bars

[@m.sierra5258]

If it's a vector graphics PDF without rasterization first, the information behind the bars is probably still in there, and they can just delete the bars

[@deluxeassortment]

It was probably a layered PDF. I always send layered files to the printer, because sometimes there are errors in the stroking of lines that leave infinite stroke curves and whatnot. They probably just removed the layer containing the fake color test.

[@peepopalaber]

? they reconstructed nothing, they cropped it correctly. there are real crop marks inside and crop marks with the bleed (on white)

[@clarabrandaog]

As a graphic designer I spent WAY TOO LONG thinking "What's wrong? That's exactly what you asked" until reality hit me Honestly I would do the exact same thing.

[@technoguyx]

Same! I watched the complete first part without even realizing what was wrong with the flyers.

[@richardmattocks]

Clara Brandão me too. I had to watch it twice to work it out. I’ve had these sorts of instructions from clients who were making extra-sure we printed things as they wanted. My question though.. surely a final proof was sent before the run was complete. Who signed off on that?

[@guard13007]

I knew what was wrong the moment he showed the back. "Oh no, he gave them this literal file and they edited the front because they thought he formatted it wrong.."

[@catherinebernard3282]

I had no idea what he was talking about, I had to rewatch it.

[@inthefade]

@@richardmattocks For something as simple as flyers there is rarely the time or budget for "final proofs" unless it is a really big budget operation and the event is planned very far in advance.

[@chenseanxy]

That is actually a computer science joke: looks like data is mistakenly read as instructions

[@Qbe_Root]

Arbitrary code execution!

[@emdivine]

@@Qbe_Root Gotta love running ACE exploits on humans

[@josiahroberts4184]

Where my DEP at?

[@88porpoise]

陈欣洋 Oh, little Bobby Tables what have you done now?

[@YoavZilka]

At least now it’s not an SQL injection or something

[@Viniter]

You should've sent them a even more zoomed out version with hand written instructions saying to ignore the handwritten instructions.

[@Peter_1986]

If he did that then he would have probably got the whole thing printed instead, because Murphy's Law.

[@Viniter]

@@Peter_1986 And wouldn't that be even more theme appropriate?

[@Autoskip]

Viniter …Yes, yes it would.

[@Vegas242]

@Viniter but then you wouldn't be able to read the front lol

[@ExtantThylacine]

Flyer inception.

[@Splungified]

Our wedding cake was covered in geeky love quotes from various movies and TV shows. One of the quotes we chose was "I am your density" from Back to the Future. When the cake arrived, we discovered they'd "fixed" it to read "I am your destiny".

[@kimeojin1234]

Very understandable and very funny. Did anyone get the reference?

[@ChristophPech]

They seem to be very dense.

[@HidekiShinichi]

Thwy did not contacted you and made a change.If that would be me I would request a refund, not even for not doing it properly but for treating me like and idiot who cannot doublecheck what is in there.

[@CatCube2]

@@HidekiShinichi It may not have even been a deliberate correction by the cake maker, so raging about them "treating [you] like an idiot" might be premature. When I read Splungified's original post, I misread the first quote as "I am your destiny" because that makes much more sense disconnected from context. The person writing on the icing may have done the same.

[@peepiepo]

Yeah, we generally auto correct what we read as we go. They probably just read it as "destiny" without even realising

[@photonicpizza1466]

That's the cutest thing. Since some people could actually make requests this way, I'd say it shows the value of the human component in a production chain

[@jmsta2011]

I think they've done a good job actually, just misunderstood the gag!

[@pleasedontwatchthese9593]

I think in reality they know they have to put up with paying people to stay in business. Sometimes what the customer says they want and what they actually need are diffrent. Though funny enough in this case the customer did know what they wanted.

[@photonicpizza1466]

@@jmsta2011 Oh definitely! They did what they were asked, and the cropping and adjustments were wonderful, a sign of very good service. Matt's query was simply a bit unusual, haha

[@zorod5475]

They just missed one important step. Showing the client a test print.

[@natheniel]

@@zorod5475 Or maybe it's on Matt side for choosing not to do a test print (because it often will make the printing process longer so I sometimes choose to not do one too)

[@DanTheStripe]

When a flyer is really close to what you want, but not quite... Parker Flyer.

[@pordzio]

Parker square of a flyer You mean :D

[@TheGreatSteve]

@@pequalsnpsquared2852 For when you don't quite want to reach your destination, but that sounds like Ryanair.

[@ze_rubenator]

@@TheGreatSteve Parker Air gets you to an airport relatively close to the one you intended to go to.

[@malbacato91]

@@pequalsnpsquared2852 depends on your definition of "good" also nice parker username ;)

[@DukeBG]

When you try to make a joke in the youtube comments, but end up with a Parker Flyer. Well, at least you've given it a go!

[@JonathanChute]

I feel so bad, because somebody got your print and honestly thought they were doing something good for you. They worked very hard on it, and felt that they did a great job (I know I've had these sort of customers who send in shit instructions) and now they will know that all that effort is wasted. For a future reference, I would have highlighted that the instructions were meant to be printed on the image as part of a joke or whatever. You can't give someone too much information (well you can give them bad information, but not necessarily too much).

[@1996Pinocchio]

*insert THANK YOU gif from the office *

[@Noxonomus]

You can absolutely give too much information. I work in print there are at least two problems I have with that. One as a professional it is rather insulting to be told that the pages should be collated in numeric order and then stapled, do they really think I might staple them uncoated!? You also sometimes lose the important non obvious instructions because they are buried in the mundane. If you tell someone that page 2 goes on the back of page 1 and 4 on the back of page 3 for every sheet of every file it's really hard for them to know if the solitary deviation is a typo or a notable instruction (if they notice it at all). In this case those notes probably would have helped of course, but that doesn't extend out forever. In drafting class they told us not to over dimension the drawing, you have to trust that the machist will know that in a 5" part a hole 3" from one end will be 2" from the other.

[@JonathanChute]

@@Noxonomus I thought I covered that with "bad instructions". You can't have too many instructions you only have bad instructions. Clearly anyone can do a bad job at anything.

[@JamesChurchill]

100% this. If you're going to deliberately include things that have specific meaning to the printer and *don't* want them to accidentally follow them, you have to be extremely explicit that they're *not* instructions and should be printed as is. Otherwise they're going to do their job and literally follow the instructions you put on there.

[@Noxonomus]

@@JonathanChute to my mind a bad instruction is one that is inaccurate or creates ambiguity. The sort of instruction I was referring to are accurate and unambiguous, individually they are good instructions, it is their volume and presentation that brings about problems. Also I want to make sure I am clear I agree that lack of sufficient instruction was probably the problem in this case, it is only the blanket statement about never having to much instruction I object to. People rarely use the word micromanagement in a positive way.

[@julia_ruby]

90% of IT work is fixing obvious mistakes before someone asks why you didn't

[@AlexKing-tg9hl]

Josh Gosh 100

[@justincoleman3805]

IT is?

[@guepardiez]

Is IT not weird?

[@guspolly]

My bet is that printers are so used to having to fix the submissions of less-than-illuminated clients that when they saw the marks and the instructions, they just “fixed” it, because they’ve gotten submissions like what you sent and the client actually expected what you got back.

[@fishnutter5219]

Both the flyer printer and the folk hanging your posters are EXACTLY the kind of folk I'd want to hire to do the same thing for me (I'm never going to need either services, so that's a sort of moot point really, but still). A lovely example of people who take pride in their work, know what they're doing, and can compensate for issues their clients might have. It fits the theme too, and in my opinion in a far better way than your original idea would have.

[@NetAndyCz]

2:08 I think Matt needs to talk to printer people more often, they actually do get stuff like that from time to time. Even worse than that.

[@damientonkin]

All fodder for the follow up book.

[@DukeBG]

agreed. With the nature of things I do I have to deal a lot with artists sending in stuff and people would totally do this naturally

[@asailijhijr]

He'll talk to printer people who happen to attend his shows and it'll make it into anecdotes on the channel and in Spoken Nerd etc..

[@kevinvermeer9011]

SO much worse.

[@rebmcr]

This is why we can't have horrible things.

[@dawn8293]

rebmcr ++

[@DrMcFly28]

I did a treasure hunt for a bunch of kids last summer, with a series of various puzzles they needed to solve, and one part had fake instructions what they need to do with the actual instructions being given through spelling mistakes (one of the kids was a huge fan of Unfortunate Events series so I was sure the kids would get it). A bunch of people were helping me organize the thing, and I sent a PDF to a parent of one of the other kids who offered to print a few copies of it. When the Treasure Hunt started, it was going amazingly well, until it suddenly ground to a halt. What's worse, the kids couldn't continue even after getting all the hints I had in reserve, right down to the one which explicitly told them how to solve that particular part. I ultimately decided I would give away the solution, only to stare in horror at the "secret document" which was completely bereft of all the carefully placed mistakes. It turns out that the parent in question, instead of just printing the PDF, decided to read it first, and was apparently so horrified by all the mistakes she decided to retype it in full, removing each and every mistake, without telling me a thing... allegedly thinking I would be embarrassed, obviously having some really poor grammar skills. I even heard later how annoyed she was since the whole ordeal meant she had to get up extra early in the morning, and was especially irked I sent a PDF instead of a Word document which would make the job of "fixing" it that much easier.. :D

[@33screamingfrogs34]

this made my brain melt,,,

[@martijndekok]

LMAO Printers must be so confused with you. First you want a book with the pages numbered back to front. Now you want intentional errors. They must LOVE you. :P

[@MrCheeze]

This is the first time I've ever seen the Bojack Horseman "don't write that on the banner" joke done IN REVERSE.

[@mollistuff]

I swear I saw a picture of one on Reddit. I can't recall the details but let's say that it was a banner with the words "Happy birthday in black letters but just type it all in, it's a reference to a show we like"

[@realspacemodels]

Back in the day of film and prints, a photographer friend of mine had shot a family portrait. They chose one pose from the small proof prints and ordered a very large 30x40 inch print. When the print was made it became obvious that one of the children was sticking out his tongue. So at great expense (no PhotoShop at that time), my friend had the boy's tongue retouched out. When he showed the final product to the client the first thing they said was "Wait, why isn't Timmy sticking out his tongue? That's why we picked this image!"

[@philipcorner574]

RealSpaceModels During the original Star Trek, they were doing test shots of the green Orion girl, which, amazingly, always came back as normal skin tones from the developers. After several rounds of this, turned out the processors were "fixing" their colour mistake for them

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@philipcorner574 They did that for Spock's skin tone too in many cases, just making it a bit too pink. Which also made the chartreuse uniform look more gold.

[@elliottmanley5182]

There was (allegedly) a London Times cryptic crossword puzzle many years ago with the clue: Embarassing mistake (8) The typesetters corrected it so the answer ("spelling") was no longer obtainable by cryptic means.

[@ryaneakins7269]

I was completely confused as to what your problem was, Matt; I also assumed you wanted an A5 print.

[@KOTYAR0]

I still can not understand...

[@ladymercy5275]

@@KOTYAR0 I *think* what he is trying to say is that he wanted the entire picture--with the instructions that were intended for the printers--to be printed on a page. However, he seems to be having a lot of difficulty completing a sentence in this video, so I am merely guessing, based on the possibilities. There is also an embedded set of cursor watermarks within the inner image, that was cropped out, so it could be that Tray had designated those cursors for the printers to measure by. \(O__o)/

[@matthewfranklin8427]

@@ladymercy5275 I had the same problem trying to work out what his problem was.

[@Wertercat]

He wanted the full file, with the message, the measuring marks, and the color test bar in the final print as a gag about things being imperfect.

[@janemorrow6672]

wertercatt Oh, now I get it.

[@colinflashman6946]

I am a prepress operator at a printer and if I saw that artwork I would have been on the phone asking if this was intentional. Incidentally, the two sets of crop marks are bleed marks on the outside and trim marks on the inside. No doubt had this design printed as intended, I guarantee EVERYONE involved in the printing process such as the person running the press or copier and the guillotine operator would ask the same question

[@jordantierney6495]

colin flashman I’m sorry there’s something in the printing business called a guillotine operator? Is the correct term not executioner?

[@firstsurname9893]

@@jordantierney6495 Seems reasonable as a Guillotine Operator may also do the binding and finishing ;) By curious coincidence, my father worked as a typesetter/printer and had a workmate named Lionel Flashman.

[@frankharr9466]

I know, right?

[@FoxDren]

​@@jordantierney6495yes, guillotines are used to cut paper all the time, I used to work in a corporate print room (mainly invoices, packing labels and assorted outgoing mail) and this one one of the many jobs I had to do.

[@paco10000001]

as a graphic designer who worked in print, can confirm some clients ill send instructions just like that

[@Pentium100MHz]

This is an example of why, when you want to have a design with a mistake in it, you have to explain to people that this is intentional. I'm sure that the printers or the people who put up posters get quite a few designs or posters with genuine mistakes in them and the client is grateful that the mistake was fixed. Conversely, someone else may have sent in a similar file with instructions and gotten angry that the printer printed it exactly as received. Or that someone put up a poster with an obvious printing error. So, when you receive a design that has an obvious mistake on it, which is more likely - that the client actually wants you to print the mistake or that it's just a mistake and you should fix it.

[@zorod5475]

As someone who has worked in a print shop getting instructions from clients comes in every shape and form. If you want something to look wrong you have to be very clear about it. Mostly because very few people know how to create documents to be formally printed. Honestly they should have shown you a test print. So they didn't print thousands of their mistake. But they should be commended for their diligence for formatting.

[@frankharr9466]

I know, right? I wonder how much time he gave them that they didn't send a proof.

[@amyshaw893]

thattook me far too long to understand what was going on

[@jarkjek]

Still don't get it, what happened?

[@amyshaw893]

@@jarkjek he wanted them to literally print that picture, with the small version of the flyer, and the handwriting on it. but they assumed he actually meant "print this small image at a5"

[@darkshoxx]

@@amyshaw893 Thanks, been wondering for an hour

[@litigioussociety4249]

@@amyshaw893 Thank you. I thought he meant the words "A5, thanks," were on there somewhere. I would have made the same assumption as the printers.

[@KOTYAR0]

Uhmmmm... sorry, what is wrong with these flyers he got? I'm looking fairly hard, and I seriously can't find nothing wrong with them. He wanted that small flyer to be in a center of A5, 2 inches wide? What?

[@bayushiyoda1865]

Another prepress guy checking in, I would have sighed and "fixed" it too. I get stuff like this maybe once a week. People often get jobs designed at one size and want to reuse art to save money. I would check with you first before printing the whole lot though!

[@fernandocabette6050]

Can confirm, i've received photographs of printed material with instructions written but absolutely nothing beats the transparent_background.jpg grey checkered and all.

[@ScarfmonsterWR]

A badly formatted non-proportional Excel file full of 12 DPI heavily-compressed jpegs found on the internet beats all and everything. I'm not even joking, almost every time we do something for any sort of HR or safety departments it's always in excel. ALWAYS. And they also get all annoyed that they even have to pay for a design when “the design is all done and ready to print”. Once we couldn't explain why we are unable to fit a A4 design saved as jpg (inside Execel of course) to a DL size.

[@kabobawsome]

@@ScarfmonsterWR I tend to find that the kind of people who work in HR or safety departments are almost invariably the same people that go to college for business degrees. They pretty much know only one thing: Excel. And usually not even that well.

[@mhelvens]

I can't quite believe Matt wouldn't include explicit (meta-)instructions, in triplicate, to prevent this from happening. So I guess I'm accusing him of making up this entire story after the fact. 😜

[@roguishpaladin]

Well, but if he does that now, he'll end up with all three sets of instructions printed out. All bets are off with this printing relationship now.

[@kouazur]

As a designer I couldn't spot the mistake lol, I would've done the same xD

[@NAT0P0TAT0]

*tries to make printers look bad -printers do their job 0.0

[@arcanealchemist3190]

As someone who's worked for a print shop, this is the kind of thing that is perfectly normal, and we have to fix often. This is not so much a mistake your printer made as you not providing enough information to your print shop to leave this joke in. I doubt they have the time to familiarize themselves with the topic and nuances of every customer they have, to be sure that this file they received that's got clearly written instructions on it (admittedly in a dumb an poor quality medium) isn't a joke.

[@JTrillo]

To be honest, I thought the mistake you were going to show would be printing it WITH the added text.

[@stan.rarick8556]

Are you a printer? ;-)

[@stevenr6397]

rules 1) always provide the final image with no edit required 2) always provide a written note explaining any unusual details 3) always always ALWAYS ask for proofs

[@ntdscherer]

And yet there are photos of cakes that say "Congratulations and then on the next line Matt"

[@Vertelemming]

I was genuinely having trouble figuring out what was wrong with the flyers until the crop marks were being pointed out. I have seen people do this. I believe it.

[@SavageGreywolf]

it took me until he talked about the posters meant to have big smears across the front of them to look like a printing error

[@pbp6741]

Seems a little goofy he expected the printer to ignore his request. Well done, printer.

[@Noxonomus]

I work and print and can confirm having instructions in files is obnoxiously common. It doesn't help at all that customers can be quite bad at recognizing, acknowledging, or correcting errors so you sometimes roll your eyes and fix the problem instead of trying to talk to them.

[@sidbell929]

If you want something doing wrong, do it yourself!

[@dawn8293]

Sid Bell +

[@guepardiez]

I'm resisting the urge to fix the tense of that "doing" so bad.

[@sidbell929]

@@guepardiez hah! I've always used "doing". "done" implies (as you say) the past tense, whilst "doing" is more open-ended. Maybe it's a regional thing?

[@guepardiez]

@@sidbell929 Well, in "something doing wrong", it sounds like the "something" is actively "doing wrong", rather than being done wrong by someone.

[@Drew-Dastardly]

I hope the printing firm wasn't blamed for this. Ambiguous instructions that appear definitive to the proof-reader are all on you. Besides, you should have had a final proof that you gave the OK to? In this case it's no big deal.

[@adamburns5201]

I did think this. Really to be clear he should have specified when submitting that the image should be printed as is, including the instructions

[@harrylane4]

Sure, it's his fault for not being clear, but it's equally their fault for not sending a final proof. They didn't do their due diligence, and it showed

[@ThePoxun]

As an ex-printer people do send hand written notes on a scan like that....

[@MiniLennii]

I like this, it’s very meta. You put in a deliberate mistake which was mistaken as an honest mistake. I think that the lore behind this flyer is pure gold

[@LauraMFoleyDesign]

I had to watch this over and over before I realized what the printer error was. If I'd been working prepress at that printing company, I'd've reset the artwork in exactly the same way and assume that the designer didn't know how to make a PDF without crop marks (at least for the front). Shows you the value of clear client/vendor communication!

[@samuelmowforth]

AS someone who once worked in printing... You'd be surprised the types of things that we had to fix!

[@kimeojin1234]

Now you've got me curious. Tell me!

[@HebaruSan]

Hmm, to the naïve observer, that mistake (had it gone through) would have appeared to have been made *by the printers.* In effect you were asking them to make themselves look unprofessional.

[@kimeojin1234]

Never thought of it that way.. oof

[@stockyphilb7663]

I thought of that when he went to the flyers in the tube station. "Do we make it look like crap, the way the customer wanted? Or do we make it look 'right' because we're professionals and the customer might not know better?" It's silly, but it points out a major flaw between individuals and society. Society has to be perfect, individuals are not, and sometimes we want to see that imperfection in the world. Perfect isn't always better; the way "I" want it sometimes is. ;)

[@sarowie]

Why would the print house look unprofessional? it is not like they have their name printed on the flyer or something. On the other side off course: Just with his glitched poster, his flyers maybe would have disappeared, because they look like a draft, not an official flyer.

[@inthefade]

Printing doesn't have huge margins, and just printing the file given to them seems the more obvious mistake that will waste their money and make them look bad to the client. They took what seems the obvious course of action. Why Matt didn't send them VERY clear instructions to print the "fake" instructions seems to me that it was almost deliberately trying to confuse them to make this error for the anecdote...

[@clockworkkirlia7475]

@@inthefade I don't think that it's fair to assume malice in this case. It is entirely reasonable that Matt, as a tech-savvy not-a-printer, would assume that almost no professional performer would *EVER* send a print to a printer in such an unprofessional manner. In a world wherein that is a correct assumption, such a submission is likely enough to be a joke that surely *someone* would have called up. Unfortunately, the world just isn't that reasonable; that assumption is incorrect and neither Matt (ignorant of the printing industry) nor the printer (unaware of Matt's sense of humour) is really at fault. That said, you make a good point otherwise. They made the right decision from their point of view. I just don't think it's likely to have been deliberate.

[@Yupppi]

It's amazing how the one time they do perfect job for an inept customer, it's wrong. I feel like they get so many terrible files and so many misprinted posters that it's their daily skill and they're proud of how dedicated they are to their job, to both do the work for the customer and to prevent misprints being spread, that if they don't get specific separate instructions that the mistakes are actually intentional, they would never send the bad posters forward.

[@sjm0rr1s]

As someone interested in patient safety in healthcare, you have found a perfect example of "systems resilience", showing that despite the chaotic nature of our world, people (and systems) find a way to correct mistakes, sometimes without even realising they are doing so. It's interesting you put "intentional" mistakes and they were corrected. Something we can't really do in healthcare due to the risks involved. There's probably a thesis that could be written on this one video!

[@CoPoint]

Maybe not exactly like you intended it, but it fits the theme, at least 😄... Your printers seriously deserve a honorable mention in your show 😂...

[@saiskanda]

Maybe send a written description next time 😂 but sweet that they took their time and effort to "correct" it

[@kylecronin3212]

Even if they realized it was a joke, maybe they didn't want you making a joke at their expense

[@admiralrooster]

Because the name of the printer is on the flyer? If they realise the joke but didn’t want in on it.... don’t take the job?

[@aok76_]

The work ethic of these people is commendable honestly.

[@rareroe305]

I can't believe that whoever puts up your posters ignores the glitchy ones, while I have co-workers who will pump liquids against closed valves and ask me what's wrong.

[@WIMMine]

To be fair, if I was printing it, I would have done the same.

[@steamsuhonen9529]

@matt you missed the fact, that your colour scale check thingies were within your crop marks, but your printed product doesn't have those.

[@steamsuhonen9529]

Hmm ... WTH does my comment appear multiple times....

[@laurendoe168]

I just looked at the glitched poster that is linked in the description. If I was putting up the posters, I would not put that one up. If I had not been given any choice (if they had all been glitched), I would have contacted the printer and requested posters without the glitch. I would also have not put any posters up until the replacements arrived.

[@scaper8]

You kind of have to applaud the company for that level of dedication, professionalism, and satisfaction to the customer. Kudos for that.

[@CristiMoisii]

I work in graphic design. You would be surprised how many times I get scanned or photographed printed pages with hand made correction/alterations/additions on them.

[@columbus8myhw]

Doing 'doing it wrong' wrong

[@lunafoxfire]

+

[@rikwisselink-bijker]

Love the xkcd reference

[@saeklas]

Holy crap, I'm flying to Edinburgh in a few days, I'll actually be able to see a show, I'm glad I saw this video

[@yuvalne]

Such a ridiculous amount of intentional mistakes. Love it.

[@praveenb9048]

Here's an idea for your next flyer: A photo taken over your shoulder, showing you looking at an iPad. On the iPad's screen is a flyer design (with hand written comments). The flyer has a photo (over your shoulder) with you looking at an iPad, and its screen shows a flyer design... and so on. I wonder what that "Turing machine" printer guy would do with this input.

[@groszak1]

and the actual flyer design is like 3×2 pixels in the final photo

[@DoctorX17]

Man, when you want your posters to look right, they make mistakes, but when you want it to look messed up, they make it perfect!

[@Marconius6]

You'll notice they even cropped out and fixed the little color swatches around the flier design! Top notch mistake fixing!

[@TheVHVlogs]

When I was working as a DTP, I got sooo many of these files. And yea, as you said. Manually fixing it. Sometimes when client wanted it really fast, my boss told me to repair it manually. It cost less time than calling them, asking for a new files etc.

[@yvrsalazar2586]

We saw the show last night, and loved every Matt second of it. I saw glitched poster in the wild, but didn't t think to take a picture.

[@sharpfang]

"Surely no one would send to a printer..." Goddammit, man, you have no clue. When I was working in engraving, I had an engraved hot-printing die project FAXED, in a corner of the fax page with the order, about 3x3cm thingy where everything blurred up and the fax noise made it almost unreadable. And I was supposed to use the CNC machine to create a die for pressing golden foil onto the final product to create the logo. Spent about 4 hours cleaning it up and fixing to make it presentable, because I know for a fact the customer did not want the mess of a fax printout stamped in golden foil. Can't count the times I got small bitmaps, too low resolution to vectorize well. Printers deal with worse. Way worse.

[@FoxDren]

This just highlights the importance of sending a cover sheet with instructions

[@KonradTheWizzard]

...you just know some print house will print the cover sheet - right? Send instructions in the same email and then call them to talk about the weird print job.

[@fiskurtjorn7530]

I've done a few of these jokes. It's fun. Crop-marks within crop-marks, visible markers & baseline, Page upside down, thorn edge revealing page below, etc. Always made sure outside the crop-marks explaining what was intended to. Especially because I'm not a professional designer at all, I wanted the printer to know I was not messing up.

[@Reydriel]

Honestly, this video about the fact that they actually fixed it is worth them ruining the intended joke, because this is just as funny XD

[@22kaybee22]

Stared at the thumbnail for ages before clicking on the video. Genuinely thought those were real instructions and they did the right thing

[@hikingpete]

The story of the cropped poster reminds me of a story Knuth told about the development of TeX. Same thing, he was testing the insertion of crop marks, and couldn't figure out why they weren't showing up on his prints. Turns out the print shop was cropping them for him.

[@recklessroges]

Oh no! These professionals that are used to dealing with human error are "helpfully" compensating. (I would have cropped your flyer and not hung the glitch posters.)

[@vaalrus]

I did a two page flyer once, but as it was a wrap-around cover and a spread page on the interior, I left the “front” page empty. I sent all the files off to a printer in another city, (email, it was the early days of industrial internet) and a *week* later, while I was on a short leave from work, I get a call saying the printers have a blank document. After telling them to “Check the next pages” it all printed well...

[@jshariff786]

Before seeing the video, my prediction was that maybe the printers would have altered the title to read "Humble Pie"

[@Feuermagier1337]

I GUARANTEE you that someone did this the other way around.

[@xM0nsterFr3ak]

you could say: they made an mistake, by correcting the mistake

[@antagonistictherapy]

Do printing companies not ship you an example before mass printing the full order?

[@RealCadde]

Sending one example is probably going to be very costly. This is a batch process. It's clearly Matt's fault for not being specific enough in the instructions that this is supposed to be used AS IS. Same with the glitched posters, they should go with instructions to be put up AS IS.

[@malbacato91]

usually you (or your designer) can go on site to check that everything is fine, (colour, cutting, jokes, etc.)

[@FoxDren]

Oh gods no. Have you any idea how much waste is produced setting up a print job? Once you get something going you do the lot.

[@jazthejitterbugster]

As people are observing here, for this type of job I would expect, at minimum, an emailed image of what they planned to print. Not including explicit instructions mentioning the intended joke is daft, and the designer should have known better. Any idea how many of these jobs are being churned out right now? Poor buggers are having to correct errors on every one, at speed.

[@sarowie]

@@polocatfan if the costumer wants it to be printed and shipped by ... and the backwards calculation says you have to prepare the job to get it done in time, you have to do an "best effort". You know how often people make rush orders because they screwed up their planning? and guess in which case people take the most idiotic approach to communicate last minute changes. If you always want a printed proof send to you by mail: Fine , agree that with you print house. They will say "sure" and add the clause "printing takes ... business day after getting the draft approved", making it impossible for you to order last minute flyers via e-mail. Also note that when you have such an approval process, you as costumer have to assume that you will have to add in 1 or 2 cycles per order. You may usually approve the first draft for final printing - but when you really need the flyers "perfect" and "on time" you need to add extra buffer time for mistakes - or you order it clearly as "rushed job - print as is" and accept that you sometimes receives flyers that contain various typos. (and reorder the corrected version on a latter date)

[@EvilDMMk3]

You know what? I'm impressed.

[@francisxavier8374]

they probably didnt even think this was a joke, they probably get weird files thrown at them by clients that then expect them to just figure it out and give them what they want

[@ChrisRulewski]

All confusion could be lost with a simple phone call or message 😂

[@zdog90210]

Haha it took me a hot min to understand what was wrong because that is what I would have done lol what a great guy who did that work!

[@1996Pinocchio]

I don't get your joke tbh. I'd have done exactly the same if I got your pdf as you've shown it in the video. You really could've noted that these mistakes are jokes and intended.

[@rikwisselink-bijker]

Maybe he did, but 1 person fixed it before confirming it was a mistake. It only takes 1.

[@soup1322]

This video is 10x better once you understand what’s happening..

[@bazzers]

Hee hee, Matt. You go that meta with someone you don't know, you gotta super-explicitly disambiguate. Easy to miss modeling just how the consummate printing professional models the minds of hapless customers. The real surprise was the amazingly professional poster hangers! Clearly, the entire Festival needs Special Instructions procedures and information channels that reach all participants, all materials, all activities.

[@philipcorner574]

Bazz Bazzers I absolutely agree: the printer doesn't know you, he has no way to tell you're not just cluelessly putting instructions in the graphics because you don't know what you're doing. This is obviously something that happens, otherwise it wouldn't be a joke! 100% Matt's fault for not foreseeing this entirely predictable outcome

[@__dane__]

The first time I watched this I somehow didn’t realize that it was supposed to be printed with his handwritten instructions on the flyer

[@deannaj4265]

The use of hexadecimal in a poster is underrated anyway!

[@himothaniel]

This man can't even Parker print his flyers without messing up

[@user-vn7ce5ig1z]

• To be honest, you should have expected this; it's on you. What you wanted was clearly unusual (who makes a flyer with a tiny picture in the middle of a field of whitespace?) You don't need to work in the industry to know it's different and not what they normally see, so you should have been specific in the email or whatever contact you had with the print shop to clarify that the big white area was part of the design. If they don't charge you at least 50% for a re-print, you should count yourself lucky. • 2:08 - Don't you know what they say about assuming? 🤨 • 2:57 - Again, it's on you to have been clear about doing something unusual. (I'll admit, I have low expectations of humans and don't expect most of them to bother thinking, but still, it's better to be safe than sorry.)

[@benjaminmiddaugh2729]

This. If your joke is working against standard expectations, explain that to those you are working with. You should also have distributed instructions with the posters explaining that the different ones were intentional and should be installed as usual. People are doing their jobs to make you look good, even if what they're doing goes against what you wanted.

[@keiyakins]

Honestly the story behind this makes it 100% more amazing

[@benjaminbrady2385]

That's hilarious Parker Print Instructions

[@FalcoII]

I love it, it just speaks to the point that there is human error. It took me quite a while I was like, they did correct didn't they?

[@Autotrope]

Yeah you brought this on yourself. Your instructions were clear enough and they followed them even though they were weird

[@Twyzan]

I was so sure the mistake would be that they changed Pi to Pie.

[@VacantPsalm]

Yea, I used to be the layout editor for our school newspaper at my community college, and that's better than par, IMO. I believe those crop lines and color tests are standard, because most ads I've gotten had them. Re-cropping was just a part of my job. (In InDesign, cropping is the default over resizing. It's not a problem at all.) I would of actually loved to see a signed hand note on the side like that, that would be adorable.

[@chiptankgirl]

I think this is great because everyone has had an experience like it. I once ordered a pair of pink Chuck Taylors and they 'fixed' the order by changing it from a men's size. 9.5 to a woman's 9.5 because obviously a man wouldn't buy pink shoes.

[@Robi2009]

"He has a square named after him, but he doesn't want to talk about it" xD Brilliant

[@Jellylamps]

Such a professionally done mistake

[@wolfgangmcq]

0:30 "We think [he's] probably joking" - UK government, petitions committee, House of Commons

[@brycemw]

Wolfgang Faust I bet that is from when he petitioned for the road signs pointing out stadiums to have a mathematically correct football (soccer ball) on them. I signed that petition and it was denied

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@brycemw I signed it too. I can understand not replacing existing signage but I don't really understand denying a future change when it would still be identifiable as what it is within reason. Not every road sign across the EU is the same with colours or line placements but they follow the same unified motif.

[@DoRC]

I've worked with proofs. Handwritten instructions are very common. You would be surprised at the crap people will send.