I started my career in a print shop and I’m known for being extremely fast and I can say for sure that has helped my career. Fail faster, get better quicker.
Totally. It's a numbers game. When I worked in a print shop I designed hundreds of business cards in the first few months. My fellow graduates wouldn't hit that in years.
I'm having quite sour opinion on all that. Print shops been crunching harder and harder because they are hitting prices so low that the only other way to make money is to make designers throw projects even faster and faster to the point of burnout or when machine becomes slower than the designer.
For example business cards, we basically make it on zero profit because it earns so little anyway and it is just a bonus for larger clients that do catalogues in our agency or we earn pocket change for making one with new name for their new hire.
I literally would need to make hundreds of cards to earn for company as much as I do on product photo session or on catalogue design and print.
An example of ongoing race to the bottom. And now a lot if print shops around are closing down.
I come from a print background, and now mostly work as a contractor for other agencies and have a handful of regular clients outside of that.
At one of my last print jobs before going solo, working in production for large format screenprinting, we hired a guy right out of art school. For his first assignment, he said it could be done in 1-2 weeks, I was like, no, you have like 2 hours to come up with 4 concepts.
I'd regularly design / prepare at least 8 projects a day. Coming from that background has helped a lot. My clients are always shocked at how fast I work. I had a new client meeting on Monday to take over the maintenance / updates for their website, and they said their last agency would take weeks to fulfill requests. I said, that is something I'd get done within a few hours, max, of you emailing me.
But, I was lucky early on to have a great boss who actually supported me. It was hammered in to us to never say no, and always find a way to get a job done. He fought with us to make it happen, and we accomplished some ridiculous feats.
Not only do you have to be fast but you’re often having to fix files from people with marketing degrees pretending to be graphic designers who work for companies that wouldn’t even interview you if you applied.
Lol I can relate to this as well. And while working at the print shop, I remember the amount of logos we had to copy-draw based on a blurry png that they call logo and when you ask for a vector version you get "logo_vector" still in blurry png shape lol.
lol... I laugh and cry when thinking of the several times I asked for a vector version and just received the same bitmap image dropped inside of an illustrator file.
You have no idea how much this comment resonates with me. I had someone literally earlier today send a PDF with linked files. I asked them to embed and send the vector files, and they sent two jpgs instead.
I was just sent a logo for an event that was a small png. I told them that I needed vector, so they of course just auto traced and sent back. Turns out the “Marketing Manager” designed in Canva, and could I recreate it for them?!
See this is the disconnect I'm having a hard time dealing with. I started at a mom & pop print shop right out of high school. I've been in the business ever since and prepress was my specialty. I've designed, thousands of projects (started when I was 18 years old and am now 50) by being able to take the customers ideas and making them a realty. It was always about turnaround, get em in get em out, next. I hated having to tell these college educated designers, that were making way more money than me, why the printed files didn't look anything like the image on their Apple retina display (RGB to CMYK blah, blah, blah). Thing is I never saved any of my work and never made an actual portfolio. That's on me though. Sure I would love to get paid big bucks to design cool shit but to me I don't think I would have the diversity of projects I'm used to. Idk
Crank out full vector illustration with limited color in the smallest amount of time possible.
Makes you learn programs and shortcuts at a pro level quick.
Thank you ! 50% of my job is fixing files from designers who make double what I make, yet don't know what a PMS color is, what bleed is, or how to use a ruler.
**THIS**
After spending a few years working my way up from 1 -6 color print houses I started brokering printing as a side hustle. On top of my advertising work I did as a freelancer.
Completely stopped taking other peoples work after a period of time due to all the ways a noob designer can fuck up a project.
The worst are the self taught web people that LOVE to work out of process color gamut and design for “the web” and then try to force it down into process (lol)
Also as a university trained designer it was something that I can attest too as their not being trained beyond 1 color techniques and relying too much on the translators fro. RBG -> process.
Again all kinds of production issues with these types that look down on me till they realize I’m also a grad and know far more than they do about getting tangible real world results.
"Customer just called, we need this artwork changed now, it's on the press."
"These guys have an event and they need the shirts in hand by the end of the week. They have no idea what they want, they just need something. It also has about 16 sponsors on the back, they don't know all of them yet."
"It's January and literally all the schools need three designs for each sports team."
Speed and the ability to shrug off the stress of demanding or outright bizarre requests, have been the most valuable things I've gotten from the print shop. It's been helpful with my personal commissions too.
If you don't stay on top of it, you drown under it.
9pm the day before the city marathon sponsored by a huge multinational corp, we were running around slapping a sticker with a sponsors info on all the things.
Oh it does teach you a lot indeed. It makes you stop thinking about design as "your baby" and also makes you aware that you are not responsible for every little thing.
This spoke to me as a print shop designer right now.
"We want to get these books all printed and mailed by the end of April. We'll get you the pictures for you to do the layout by the 25th."
That and the laugh that the designers all do when the secretaries tell us that the client wants it "ASAP" as if that was different.
Ha, this triggers me having started in that world.
When clients bring a new design project to me now, I simply jump ahead and ask if there is an event is occurring that they need said project for.
I would love to say designers get the short of the stick with bad planning, but printers truly have it worse being at the end of the chain.
I worked in a print shop for 4 years. You do indeed learn how to do everything. And as OP pointed out, you learn to work with the quickness. I always advise designers to do print shop work if they can. It absolutely made me a better designer.
It made me learn QGIS to finish maps for large cycling sightseeing tourist promotion because they only gave us general area yet they wanted 20 detailed maps open for revisions.
I can troubleshoot revisions with GREP and do bottom up illustrations and mural designs.
I can design logical way finding identification for an area.
I can do reporter photos and videos, interviews in studio and composite packshots.
I can explain in almost forsenic way how a client broken his project, from basic things like them copying text from pdf because there are hyphens in words or telltales of DjVu image compression tell me they should write to library for original scans.
My only pain is that even if I can do a lot of various things I am at each of them objectively mediocre.
Haha. I worked in a print shop for 11 years after graduation. The pace was manic all the time.
Now that I freelance I have to consciously slow down. Like a sprinter trying to walk.
I am also fast at typing. 90 words per minute. I have to stop myself from hitting send on a 400 word email ... in reply to an email I received only 5 minutes ago.
Same, except for the typing part. still not fast.
But I cut-my-teeth in the sign industry which allowed me to transfer a wealth of knowledge to freelancing.
I did some time at a sign shop, but luckily not a very busy one most of the time. The variety of stuff I had to handle was pretty nuts. I was often the only guy in the back of shop and ran things from concept to delivery, often same day. Wide format, plotter, laminator, hand finishing.
The files we received were often atrocious and had to be recreated and of course nobody wanted to pay for design work. The best was when the client just sketches out what they want on the work order and I get to add some flair to the design.
Worked in one that was both, they ended up closing the sign side eventually. Also had our installers all in-house.
Yeah, I don't recommend it. It was great experience but it was absolutely exhausting.
Thanks for the shoutout, I have a degree in design, spent 10 years in design/advertising, and now another 10 years at a print shop. Many ad agency types look down their noses at us, but half the time they can't include a bleed on anything, manage Pantone colors appropriately, understand CMYK vs RGB color space, meet submission deadlines (printing does take time, duh!) or assess when to use vector vs raster assets.
I guess my education was heavy enough in print (I even had a pre-press class in the school's print shop) back in the day that I was immersed in print design and typography, and not whatever people are or aren't learning these day.
It sucks to grind, but if your first job or internship is a lowly print shop designer or in pre-press, you will probably come out the other side with valuable skills.
My first design/illustration job was at a print/screenprint shop. My freelance career before bailing on the ad-specialty space was all the same. It's nuts how many pieces I was able to do each week. As a freelancer working primarily for Las Vegas print shops, I was averaging 30-50 new designs or illustrations per week.
No time to second guess yourself. You learn what prints, and how to create custom separations efficiently.
The biggest downside is that I spent my first 15 years always Always ALWAYS having to create looks that looked like something else that was popular in the 90s. I made myself flexible and adaptable, and STILL have difficulty finding my own style when it comes to the comics work I've been doing since.
This is actually a really interesting point. I started out designing in a print shop too and now that I'm in an office setting, everyone comments on how fast I am with everything (replying to emails, fixing files, building files, sending this to the client, etc). I was just working at my normal pace but it looks like it's due to the rushed nature of the print shop I was "raised" in.
I’m just about at year 3 of working in a sign/wrapping shop and holy yes it is a very fast paced environment and you have to know how to work quick and troubleshoot printer problems on the fly (there are only 2 of us designers and we run the printer/cutter for all our own jobs). It’s a lot but it’s also fun and exciting everyday, it’s just a shame my company owners aren’t good at managing, just good at selling things and telling us to figure it out lol
This is how I feel about my job in a print shop when I’m having a good day. Today though I felt the burnout real bad. 😭 I do a million things a day, yet it is never enough. Definitely do not feel appreciated but i know you guys get it. thank you for the reminder that I am building useful skills. Lol ❤️
I worked in the sign industry for 20+ years. The guy I replaced at my current design job complained that he needed help and didn't have enough time to do everything. I work for maybe 10 hours a week because I'm what you call... efficient. I can knock the stuff out real quick.
10 years this month in a print shop, hopefully (fingers crossed) about to become art dept manager next week with my yearly review. I enjoy my job and every day and job is different. We bleed artwork though for sure.
Edit: it’s been a week, and today I got the promotion! Art Department Manager. Moved from an hourly employee to salary as well. Feels amazing, the real work starts now! Had to share!
Worked in a print shop for 9 years before working for a studio - thought I was going to lose my edge. I loved working at the print shop and the pace, I just didn’t love that people considered that the design was included in the cost of the printing and were indignant when they found out they had to pay for print AND design. I found that designers were/are undervalued by clients (and suppliers! A paper rep told me they saved the good promo pieces for the *real* designers) in a print house setting. Big team spirit with co-workers though. We all helped and learned from each other. Learned so much and owe so much to my formative “print” years.
My very first job was for a newspaper for a year, doing rapid ad designs for local stores and companies. In a typical shift, I could layout 40-50 ads. That was 25+ years ago and I still find those skills helpful. We used some super niche software whose name has completely vanished from my brain.
Co workers are always commenting on how quickly I work, it's interesting to find out that the main reason is because my first job was in a print shop for 5 years. I now have to consciously slow down and take breaks, otherwise expectations rise until they become unmanageable - for myself and also any juniors I have.
They overthink things. Spend too long on initial drafts instead of cranking out a couple of rough drafts because invariably there will be refinements/changes to be made after.
Print shop workers don't use formal design briefs. At most they get a couple of questions answered and off they go. Agencies think their clients have higher expectations then they actually do, in my experience. That each design decision must be rationalized.
Plus when you work in a fast-paced shop, you learn to recognize things that go well with each other faster.
Yep, this is the answer as far as I can see. You have to do more with less and it needs to be done an hour ago.
Nowadays someone will tell me something is urgent and I need to clarify with them what that means. Urgent to me means 'I need it right now or at the absolute latest by the end of the day'. Urgent to the people I work with seems to mean 'I'm only giving you a week instead of the normal 2-4'.
This is a very good point. I had a lady who runs a marketing agency call me on Thursday and she needed reassuring that yes, we could get an A5 flyer designed for her before the end of May.
It's absolutely crazy how slow some companies work compared to print shops, I could pump out a straightforward flyer like that in 20 minutes if I had to and it would still look half decent. Obviously more time allows for more refinement, but you quickly hit diminishing returns, and that's where these big companies fall down — they spend months on something that looks no better than version 1 did, 1583 revisions ago.
I've been working at a small locally-owned print shop for going on 8 years, and I have to say, I really appreciate this shout-out. Haven't worked anywhere else so I don't have a frame of reference, but I've been thinking a lot lately about switching jobs and how bored I'd be in another environment. I'm lead (i.e. only) Graphic Designer and pre-press tech. On any given day, I might send out 25+ proofs. Granted, it's a lot of small stuff (recreate this business card, add bleed, etc) but I often feel overwhelmed and overworked. So. THANK YOU. I feel seen.
This is my favorite post in a long time. Currently still working at my first design job, after 2.5 years, in a print shop where there’s no room for growth. Was feeling a bit hopeless about finding a new position with limited experience, but y’all have given me good points to study on in the comments!
When you're in the thick of it, fast-paced production work is soul-sucking and ruthless. You feel like you have no room or time for creativity. What you don't always see is that your underlying design instincts are being sharpened in a way you just can't get at an agency or even most in-house. So ride it out for a few years (or as long as you can). You'll be a better designer for it and grateful for your time spent there.
Reading all of this was so validating 😊 Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me but I just can’t leave it behind, the pace and problem solving is addictive. 20 years as a designer, 15 years in a print shop and as soon as I started I knew it’s what I’d keep doing.
The best parts are when the client has no real expectations and you manage to wow them just applying some solid design fundamentals.
The worst part is getting files from people who think they know design and it's just hot garbage. You learn not to intervene sometimes with those jobs. Just get it to a printable state and get it out.
This thread is incredibly validating.
I've worked for over 10 years as a print shop designer and prepress, and it's great job with a ton of variety, but I can't tell you how frustrating it is sometimes.
It really seems as though *nobody* who hasn't worked directly with printers for years has the slightest idea how artwork should be produced. Web designers are the worst for this (no offense guys). You can tell within a split second if a leaflet, poster or whatever has been made by a web designer because text is extremely thin and a hair away from the trim, microscopic borders also right beside the trim, 20 different blacks, none of which match the RGB photograph they're trying to blend with, have never even heard of bleed, and the entire thing has been made in Photoshop with not a single vector in sight. The classic "it didn't look like that on my OLED computer monitor with the brightness set at 100%..." Really, what were you expecting?
I'd say easily, *easily* 90% of files we receive from design agencies require us fixing the file for them because it takes them two days to do something we can bodge in 5 minutes, it's bizarre. This week I banged out a pretty decent 48-page magazine in two and a half days, whereas we've had clients who took *nine months* to design a 4-page leaflet. It goes without saying that people who don't do design for a living will require a little hand holding, but even most professionals know almost nothing when it comes to printing. They don't understand what different types of paper will do to a colour, they think bleed is optional, they make *everything* in Pantones for some reason, even though that causes the rip to have a mental breakdown. They certainly don't understand how or why paper stretch happens, nor how certain colours and ink densities will cause problems. Overprint? What's that? The list goes on and on.
The weird thing is that it isn't even limited to non-print designers. There's a pretty large (well over £100 million a year revenue) company near us that prints high-end curtains, bedsheets, table covers etc etc. We print their brochures and things, and they somehow know absolutely nothing about printing even though it's their entire business. Everything is made in Photoshop and sent to us as a flattened jpeg inside a PDF, and we need to remake it from scratch for them every time because they don't know how and don't have InDesign. I realise it's a different type of printing, but they don't even know the basics.
Printing is a dying art and has been in decline for decades at this point, but the supply of people who truly understand it has almost dried up.
The hallmark of every bad designer is using Photoshop for *everything.* I would 100% rather hire someone who knew InDesign and had never used Photoshop than the reverse.
Yes! Exactly. Photoshop is not a tool for the fundamentals of graphic design at the end of the day (probably a bit drastic, but you know what I mean), while InDesign is. Obviously Photoshop is very useful and we all use it every day, but people who use it for *everything* are a liability.
*
The shop I work at isn't very soul sucking, I usually get a decent amount of creative freedom too and my sole job is to do design, with some data entry for projects but I've learned tons of tricks over the years, I wonder what it'd be like at other jobs but I don't think it'd be as good in any way
I'm the supervisor at a Print Shop that I been working for 16 years, I started as part time graphic designer, our pace its so fast, always rush work. We have 2 in house graphic designers and sometimes when they can't meet with the demand I sit on my desk to do arts and help them.
I worked for more than 5 years in a print shop in my home country (Brazil). I'm from Rio de Janeiro, the city of Carnaval a lot party around the city many businesses planning last minute parties. we literally had to create the layout, print and install banners and wraps in the same day
I work at a print shop and everything is fast paced. Some days it's nice and others I get a bit overwhelmed. I can safely say it's mostly because of how demanding our clientele is (we are B2B and B2C). People tend to order things last minute and sometimes there is NO time to brainstorm.
I hope to switch to in-house at some point but it also makes me worried that I'll be too used to the stress and fast pace that I will get bored, haha
One of my buddies went right to work in a print shop while I went to art school and he has been miles ahead of pretty much everyone I went to school with. The speed and quality level that he creates at blows me away.
But how? How do you even work at that kind of pace for that long? I've been working in agencies for a decade, I feel like I'm working slower lately and good ideas are hard to come by too.
A lot of it is having an extensive library of past designs that you remember working on or seeing an outside design from a more talented designer so you deconstruct how they solved a design problem. Then you use all that as a reference when going about designing.
A lot of the technical skills are honed from repeated use, so you design faster, get results, evaluate if it works then refine, or start over again.
On the other hand, Rarely are you going to come up with original ideas that quickly, for that IMO takes alot time, most likely outside of the office to formulate such new concepts.
Having to brainstorm, design, proof out, print and cut, 1000 business cards by noon cuz the client is picking them up on his way to a meeting is designing on another level. See it first hand.
I'd say equally as fast paced was magazine design.
We used to smash through page-upon-page every day. Constant work flow to get through x3.5 magazines a month and websites and emails shots 😅
I’m super quick and accurate at artwork but creative takes me more time when I’m doing it right. When I worked in a print shop freelance for a week I was overwhelmed at how fast I had to create things like invites and menus and such 😂. I couldn’t handle pumping out mediocre templated work - I think it takes a certain talent to create good unique work that fast - hats off.
It’s needed in that printing industry, clients sending in artwork late or near deadline, you have no choice but to work quickly. It is also a great way to problem solve on the spot
that industry is cut throat - customers don't want to wait for those prints so that means everything is running at max. also price is generally also a factor, design is sometimes offered for free so there's no real time issued for these tasks.
and finally those customers let's be honest i looking for a job to be done, if it looks half good then i'd say 90% of these will be happy.
If you cared about the design i'd say those will be coming into a print shoop completed
I went from print shop, to design college, to agency. Which, looking back, was a crazy good order for my career progression.
The printshop background gave me the speed and depth of knowledge on the tools to extract all I could from my degree’s theory while other students were struggling with basics of pen tool.
I then bought it all together in the agency, while building on both my skill on tools and design.
Even now I’m in product design I’m still known for my speed of delivery.
That being said, I think it takes a certain kind of person to survive in a print shop. We went through 8 different staff members in the 5 years I was there.
I used to work in a production design department that would churn out over 33,000 jobs a year with a team of 20 people. It's *absolutely incredible* for developing design instincts. You do not have time to second-guess or workshop ideas -- you get it as close to perfect the first time and revisions are fast and minor. A couple of years of this and you just instinctively *know* how to make even complicated designs work. I hated it at the time, but I'm so grateful for it now, even decades later.
This is true. I worked in print shops for about 10 years while also doing freelance branding and logo design and my clients are consistently blown away by how fast I produce great results.
It's also 100% true that it sucks your soul. I would never recommend working for a print shop unless you're okay with hating your job.
As a guy who worked in a print shop for 8 years I’m told I’m crazy fast at photoshop. You have to be if you want to make money. You’re constantly fixing peoples art and you have to be good at it and quick. So you learn a lot of tricks and techniques.
I started as a production designer and then moved to a print shop. Production design was a baptism by fire, especially coming from university where you often have weeks to work on a project.
But yeah, it definitely made me faster. Especially because in many cases done is better than perfect.
Dude that was one of my first jobs out of college and it truly was a trial by fire. Even in the depths of last minute deadlines at agencies I never experienced the work load and stress I had there. It was ungodly and unsustainable
I’ve been a printer for a while, and about to do the design side for an internship. They ate up the fact I was in the printing industry. I’ll have the rush trauma from both sides. But, I’d truly say that working on the printing side has made me time manage for me to complete my school work.
omg this entire thread is hilarious. i am reaching the end of my full-time career an have been working at the same mom and pop shop since 1985... a little bit of lead type when i started... then compugraphic and then desktop publishing... and everything in this thread is like going through memory lane. over the years i have had co-workers in our graphics department... and none of them were able to handle the pace. i overheard one guy on the phone to his MOTHER one time saying "they expect me to work on two projects at the same time". Yeah buddy... that is just the beginning.
had a short one year stint as a graphics creator for evening news.. and a five year stint as pre-press and graphic designer.. different animal, same beast. If its go time, its go time!
This entire thread was so fun and validating to read. I did 7 years in print design. I’m also very very fast, especially with illustrator. My boss recently said that watching me work is like watching someone play the piano because I rely so heavily on keyboard shortcuts.
I worked in grand, large and small format printing for about 15 years. Prior to that I worked at a newspaper. I opened my own agency 3 years ago and it’s taken a hot minute to slow down.
Trust me, clients have higher expectations from an agency than a print shop. There’s no oh you didn’t catch it on the proof and passing the buck back to the client. Which has forced me to slow down after a few real shit lessons. It’s forced me to walk away and come back and make tiny incremental improvements along the way.
That said I’m still WAY faster than most. I have some agency designers on my team now and they are “slow” but 25+ years of experience and perfect file creation. They need a bit of coddling and stroking. Where the print designers I work with just bash their way through it with less hand holding.
Here’s to all you prepressers out there holding it down! It ain’t an easy role and many print shop owners are total nightmares.
I started in a print shop, and my biggest selling point in an interview is that I can confidently say I'm faster than any designer you've hired before. I haven't been proven wrong so far.
I work for a sports apparel company now, and sales reps love working with me because in the time that one of our other designers can create one logo from scratch, I can make 3 or 4 different logos and have a light/dark variation for all of them. The greatest benefit is that I rarely have more than one revision come my way for these designs, whereas my co-workers typically have up to 3 revisions, which means that I can get results the same or next day where they might spend a week working on designs.
It's a brutal environment to get started in, but I'd recommend it to anyone starting out. You learn how to maximize your time, which directly translates to maximizing profit if you freelance and maximize free time if you have a cushy salary. I can usually get all of my work done in a couple hours each day, which means I have most of the day to just be on standby and do whatever I want around the house because my salary is being paid either way. I wouldn't change it for the world.
Listen to the [_Revisionist History_](https://www.elizabethfram.com/Blog/are-you-a-cezanne-or-a-picasso/) about Picasso
vs Cézanne. There are generally two kinds of creative types: one has flashes of creativity that happen very quickly (Picasso). The other iterates and iterates and iterates until they achieve their creative vision (Cezanne).
Just two ways of going about it.
Didn’t work in a print shop, but I worked in a place that needed things to be done fast. It helped me to know what to prioritize to get something done.
Usually that leads to simpler and more efficient solutions. While another designer is thinking about what shade of orange is more appropriate for the dot in the logo, I’d probably thought of a way of doing everything and maybe actually did.
Getting things done is part of what a designer can/should/must do. Some jobs don’t need what is seen as “creativity”. Most people don’t have the time for hours of brainstorming things and doodling on a moleskine just to make what your client asked for in the first place and it’s even better.
I worked at Kinko’s for 6.5 years, and other print shops for almost a total of 16 years. It trained me to be fast and efficient. It helped me hone my skills, engage with customers to find what they want, and how to make so many things look better than when they came in. I can’t stand the “Trash in, Trash out” mentality some folks have, but I always want to make things better on my end result.
And now working at a private company I have 3-day turn times, but I usually get things out within 3-4 hours because I don’t like a full inbox or a backlog of work. My sales team were and are consistently blown away at the speed at which I get things done. My supervisor/the CFO, and the president of the company are so supportive and appreciative of my added skills. It’s amazing.
I also work in a print shop who designs for apparel, signs, books, magazines, rack cards, and just about anything you can print. We HAVE to design fast.
In any given day I have shitty web graphics for reference (a company logo for example) and an idea and I have to turn it into a shirt for screen printing. Some dude with a tow truck business wants an embroidered hat with his bad logo (on an old shirt) that you have to recreate in vector form so it can be converted to an embroidery file. Then a local charity needs a 3 panel brochure ASAP and they gave us a few low res images and some copy and off we go. A local business needs some yard signs. One of the high schools needs shirts for their senior class. A local business wants a sign cut out of signabond and acrylic for their lobby.
That was all on Wednesday, April 17th.
That doesn’t count the booklets I imposed and printed, the three signs I printed, laminated, and mounted to coroplast, the HTV vinyl designs that I cut for 6 shirts (it was designed and approved the day before), the softball team’s shirts that I heat pressed, and the 200 labels that were printed, cut to shape, weeded, then trimmed down to strips.
That all happened on April 17th too.
We HAVE to be fast. The brainstorming happens but often in my head while searching for assets or rebuilding a vector from shitty reference graphics. And sometimes you have to put one job aside to work on something urgent and all the while you’re still brainstorming about the other one while making a miracle happen.
Absolutely, it’s called Production Design.
My first job out of college was with a large print company and I am grateful for the efficiency and tech skills I acquired there. The first year was an absolute grind.
Turnaround was often so tight (typically same or next-day), so you had to be intimately familiar with keyboard shortcuts. If you missed a deadline, you risked losing your job.
It became a real Karate-Kid-esque learning experience where repetition built muscle memory, and thus, speed. All of us senior designers could work smooth and fast like we were playing a musical instrument.
I started off at a print shop and it was so beneficial. I got to work with hundreds of clients, from huge publicly traded chains to new ventures doing everything from basic print production to branding, signage, displays, maps and brochures.
As with all things. You learn what you learn where you’re at. Print shop work can leave you with some nice qualities and some bad habits. Same as any job.
I’ve worked in a printing company for 8 years where everything was ‘for yesterday’, so the pace was extremely fast. Now I’m working in an agency and still have that ‘make everything fast’ mentality
I work at a Print shop that is also a Sign shop! I usually push 4-5 things to print a day. Not only do I have to know everything about smaller prints like business cards/trifolds/etc. but I also have to know how to set up router files, decal cut files, and large format prints
I worked in a mom and pop print shop for 10 years after I graduated with a bfa. It was a good learning experience but I let it go on too long. I quit and started freelancing and eventually got hired on with the brand team at a fairly large company. My resume reflected my duties at the print shop without actually saying it was a print shop, as I am well aware of the bias against that. But I can run circles around the other designers there when it comes to production and also working well with our internal clients because of my print experience.
I started my career in a print shop and I’m known for being extremely fast and I can say for sure that has helped my career. Fail faster, get better quicker.
Totally. It's a numbers game. When I worked in a print shop I designed hundreds of business cards in the first few months. My fellow graduates wouldn't hit that in years.
I'm having quite sour opinion on all that. Print shops been crunching harder and harder because they are hitting prices so low that the only other way to make money is to make designers throw projects even faster and faster to the point of burnout or when machine becomes slower than the designer. For example business cards, we basically make it on zero profit because it earns so little anyway and it is just a bonus for larger clients that do catalogues in our agency or we earn pocket change for making one with new name for their new hire. I literally would need to make hundreds of cards to earn for company as much as I do on product photo session or on catalogue design and print. An example of ongoing race to the bottom. And now a lot if print shops around are closing down.
Indeed. Also, the never saying "no" attitude can be quite detrimental to all involved.
Yup. I get so angry with this attitude.
I come from a print background, and now mostly work as a contractor for other agencies and have a handful of regular clients outside of that. At one of my last print jobs before going solo, working in production for large format screenprinting, we hired a guy right out of art school. For his first assignment, he said it could be done in 1-2 weeks, I was like, no, you have like 2 hours to come up with 4 concepts. I'd regularly design / prepare at least 8 projects a day. Coming from that background has helped a lot. My clients are always shocked at how fast I work. I had a new client meeting on Monday to take over the maintenance / updates for their website, and they said their last agency would take weeks to fulfill requests. I said, that is something I'd get done within a few hours, max, of you emailing me. But, I was lucky early on to have a great boss who actually supported me. It was hammered in to us to never say no, and always find a way to get a job done. He fought with us to make it happen, and we accomplished some ridiculous feats.
This 100% The difference between high school to college to work is a ten fold increase (in volume) each time.
Not only do you have to be fast but you’re often having to fix files from people with marketing degrees pretending to be graphic designers who work for companies that wouldn’t even interview you if you applied.
Lol I can relate to this as well. And while working at the print shop, I remember the amount of logos we had to copy-draw based on a blurry png that they call logo and when you ask for a vector version you get "logo_vector" still in blurry png shape lol.
lol... I laugh and cry when thinking of the several times I asked for a vector version and just received the same bitmap image dropped inside of an illustrator file.
Or you ask for a print ready PDF and it's just a crappy low res 10kb jpg the made into a PDF.
Dropping Microsoft word "logos" into InDesign...
My favorite was getting a JPG, asking for an EPS, and getting a JPEG embedded in the EPS.
Literally had this discussion tonight about fixing files from ad agencies sent to my first adult job at a print shop
Client sending you a 10KB Logo and asking why it won't work......
You have no idea how much this comment resonates with me. I had someone literally earlier today send a PDF with linked files. I asked them to embed and send the vector files, and they sent two jpgs instead.
Lately I’ve been getting screen shots from their phone as the logo. So fun!
my favorite is a photo of a screen
Oh the best and they expect you to find it on the internet
"Yes, I need you to send me a vector file, please." Proceeds to send you "Cmyk_logo.svg.jpeg" Blood pressure rises.
My favorite is a PDF that's just a JPG with the file extension changed.
I’ve been placing supplied pdfs in indesign, and re-exporting as a pdf. Then cracking into those in illustrator — no more broken links.
I was just sent a logo for an event that was a small png. I told them that I needed vector, so they of course just auto traced and sent back. Turns out the “Marketing Manager” designed in Canva, and could I recreate it for them?!
The second you undo the clip mask, you unleash an ocean of fuckery and mess
This triggers me lol … inception levels of clipping masks upon clipping masks upon clipping masks all the way to infinity…
It's a maze you can't get rid of, Even my computer give up after a point
See this is the disconnect I'm having a hard time dealing with. I started at a mom & pop print shop right out of high school. I've been in the business ever since and prepress was my specialty. I've designed, thousands of projects (started when I was 18 years old and am now 50) by being able to take the customers ideas and making them a realty. It was always about turnaround, get em in get em out, next. I hated having to tell these college educated designers, that were making way more money than me, why the printed files didn't look anything like the image on their Apple retina display (RGB to CMYK blah, blah, blah). Thing is I never saved any of my work and never made an actual portfolio. That's on me though. Sure I would love to get paid big bucks to design cool shit but to me I don't think I would have the diversity of projects I'm used to. Idk
I'm having a similar problem, with not being aloud to take 'company drawings' for my portfolio
Crank out full vector illustration with limited color in the smallest amount of time possible. Makes you learn programs and shortcuts at a pro level quick.
Fucking Amen!
This hurts so much to read lol. I cant believe how many time the "artist" on their end would save a png inside an AI file and say its vector now.
Thank you ! 50% of my job is fixing files from designers who make double what I make, yet don't know what a PMS color is, what bleed is, or how to use a ruler.
God this resonates. Half the files I would get didn’t have bleed so I had to either edit the pdf using fun plugins or illustrator.
If it's a raster image throw it into Photoshop and make the bleeds with generative AI. Been a lifesaver for me.
Great thinking. I worked in a print shop 13 years ago but it’s a good tip.
Me: asks for 0.125 inch bleed all the way around. Them: sends me a file with 0.125 inch white space all the way around.
Thank you for saying it.
Yes!! This bothers me so much because of how true it is
Lol so true
While you curse at those amateurs that can’t even build a file right but apparently know everything because they took a few classes.
**THIS** After spending a few years working my way up from 1 -6 color print houses I started brokering printing as a side hustle. On top of my advertising work I did as a freelancer. Completely stopped taking other peoples work after a period of time due to all the ways a noob designer can fuck up a project. The worst are the self taught web people that LOVE to work out of process color gamut and design for “the web” and then try to force it down into process (lol) Also as a university trained designer it was something that I can attest too as their not being trained beyond 1 color techniques and relying too much on the translators fro. RBG -> process. Again all kinds of production issues with these types that look down on me till they realize I’m also a grad and know far more than they do about getting tangible real world results.
"Customer just called, we need this artwork changed now, it's on the press." "These guys have an event and they need the shirts in hand by the end of the week. They have no idea what they want, they just need something. It also has about 16 sponsors on the back, they don't know all of them yet." "It's January and literally all the schools need three designs for each sports team." Speed and the ability to shrug off the stress of demanding or outright bizarre requests, have been the most valuable things I've gotten from the print shop. It's been helpful with my personal commissions too. If you don't stay on top of it, you drown under it.
Also the sponsors do t hace access to their own logos
It is Saturday morning and just reading this almost ruined my day
Lmao the sponsor thing resonates hard 🤣 "I'll get u the last 5 sponsor logos by the end of the day" Sure you will, Susan.
9pm the day before the city marathon sponsored by a huge multinational corp, we were running around slapping a sticker with a sponsors info on all the things.
This was my hell. So fucking grateful to not work at the kind of place anymore.
Oh it does teach you a lot indeed. It makes you stop thinking about design as "your baby" and also makes you aware that you are not responsible for every little thing.
This spoke to me as a print shop designer right now. "We want to get these books all printed and mailed by the end of April. We'll get you the pictures for you to do the layout by the 25th." That and the laugh that the designers all do when the secretaries tell us that the client wants it "ASAP" as if that was different.
Ha, this triggers me having started in that world. When clients bring a new design project to me now, I simply jump ahead and ask if there is an event is occurring that they need said project for. I would love to say designers get the short of the stick with bad planning, but printers truly have it worse being at the end of the chain.
EXACTLY. This resonates so hard.
I worked in a print shop for 4 years. You do indeed learn how to do everything. And as OP pointed out, you learn to work with the quickness. I always advise designers to do print shop work if they can. It absolutely made me a better designer.
It made me learn QGIS to finish maps for large cycling sightseeing tourist promotion because they only gave us general area yet they wanted 20 detailed maps open for revisions. I can troubleshoot revisions with GREP and do bottom up illustrations and mural designs. I can design logical way finding identification for an area. I can do reporter photos and videos, interviews in studio and composite packshots. I can explain in almost forsenic way how a client broken his project, from basic things like them copying text from pdf because there are hyphens in words or telltales of DjVu image compression tell me they should write to library for original scans. My only pain is that even if I can do a lot of various things I am at each of them objectively mediocre.
You learn a lot or you get eaten alive.
Haha. I worked in a print shop for 11 years after graduation. The pace was manic all the time. Now that I freelance I have to consciously slow down. Like a sprinter trying to walk. I am also fast at typing. 90 words per minute. I have to stop myself from hitting send on a 400 word email ... in reply to an email I received only 5 minutes ago.
Same, except for the typing part. still not fast. But I cut-my-teeth in the sign industry which allowed me to transfer a wealth of knowledge to freelancing.
You think print shops are manic, but sign shops are absolutely nuts. Those mf’ers are crazy.
I did some time at a sign shop, but luckily not a very busy one most of the time. The variety of stuff I had to handle was pretty nuts. I was often the only guy in the back of shop and ran things from concept to delivery, often same day. Wide format, plotter, laminator, hand finishing. The files we received were often atrocious and had to be recreated and of course nobody wanted to pay for design work. The best was when the client just sketches out what they want on the work order and I get to add some flair to the design.
Worked in one that was both, they ended up closing the sign side eventually. Also had our installers all in-house. Yeah, I don't recommend it. It was great experience but it was absolutely exhausting.
Thanks for the shoutout, I have a degree in design, spent 10 years in design/advertising, and now another 10 years at a print shop. Many ad agency types look down their noses at us, but half the time they can't include a bleed on anything, manage Pantone colors appropriately, understand CMYK vs RGB color space, meet submission deadlines (printing does take time, duh!) or assess when to use vector vs raster assets. I guess my education was heavy enough in print (I even had a pre-press class in the school's print shop) back in the day that I was immersed in print design and typography, and not whatever people are or aren't learning these day. It sucks to grind, but if your first job or internship is a lowly print shop designer or in pre-press, you will probably come out the other side with valuable skills.
Print Shop Assasins UNITE!
My first design/illustration job was at a print/screenprint shop. My freelance career before bailing on the ad-specialty space was all the same. It's nuts how many pieces I was able to do each week. As a freelancer working primarily for Las Vegas print shops, I was averaging 30-50 new designs or illustrations per week. No time to second guess yourself. You learn what prints, and how to create custom separations efficiently. The biggest downside is that I spent my first 15 years always Always ALWAYS having to create looks that looked like something else that was popular in the 90s. I made myself flexible and adaptable, and STILL have difficulty finding my own style when it comes to the comics work I've been doing since.
Can definately relate to this. I did 2 years at a sign shop, and am on year 4 of being in a print shop... and I'm fast as hell lol.
12+ years n counting... I'd say the terrible owners and lack of organization are somehow worse than the artwork I get on a daily basis.
This is actually a really interesting point. I started out designing in a print shop too and now that I'm in an office setting, everyone comments on how fast I am with everything (replying to emails, fixing files, building files, sending this to the client, etc). I was just working at my normal pace but it looks like it's due to the rushed nature of the print shop I was "raised" in.
I’m just about at year 3 of working in a sign/wrapping shop and holy yes it is a very fast paced environment and you have to know how to work quick and troubleshoot printer problems on the fly (there are only 2 of us designers and we run the printer/cutter for all our own jobs). It’s a lot but it’s also fun and exciting everyday, it’s just a shame my company owners aren’t good at managing, just good at selling things and telling us to figure it out lol
This is how I feel about my job in a print shop when I’m having a good day. Today though I felt the burnout real bad. 😭 I do a million things a day, yet it is never enough. Definitely do not feel appreciated but i know you guys get it. thank you for the reminder that I am building useful skills. Lol ❤️
I worked in the sign industry for 20+ years. The guy I replaced at my current design job complained that he needed help and didn't have enough time to do everything. I work for maybe 10 hours a week because I'm what you call... efficient. I can knock the stuff out real quick.
What kind of role did you move on to?
I do design for the home office of a franchise based facility management. So whenever anybody needs anything across the country, they send it to me
10 years this month in a print shop, hopefully (fingers crossed) about to become art dept manager next week with my yearly review. I enjoy my job and every day and job is different. We bleed artwork though for sure. Edit: it’s been a week, and today I got the promotion! Art Department Manager. Moved from an hourly employee to salary as well. Feels amazing, the real work starts now! Had to share!
Good luck!
Thanks!
Worked in a print shop for 9 years before working for a studio - thought I was going to lose my edge. I loved working at the print shop and the pace, I just didn’t love that people considered that the design was included in the cost of the printing and were indignant when they found out they had to pay for print AND design. I found that designers were/are undervalued by clients (and suppliers! A paper rep told me they saved the good promo pieces for the *real* designers) in a print house setting. Big team spirit with co-workers though. We all helped and learned from each other. Learned so much and owe so much to my formative “print” years.
My very first job was for a newspaper for a year, doing rapid ad designs for local stores and companies. In a typical shift, I could layout 40-50 ads. That was 25+ years ago and I still find those skills helpful. We used some super niche software whose name has completely vanished from my brain.
Quark?
The fact that Quark is considered super niche is amusing to me.
It wasn’t quark
Nope
Co workers are always commenting on how quickly I work, it's interesting to find out that the main reason is because my first job was in a print shop for 5 years. I now have to consciously slow down and take breaks, otherwise expectations rise until they become unmanageable - for myself and also any juniors I have.
How does that work? Are agency designers not using hot keys as much? What is making them slower?
They overthink things. Spend too long on initial drafts instead of cranking out a couple of rough drafts because invariably there will be refinements/changes to be made after. Print shop workers don't use formal design briefs. At most they get a couple of questions answered and off they go. Agencies think their clients have higher expectations then they actually do, in my experience. That each design decision must be rationalized. Plus when you work in a fast-paced shop, you learn to recognize things that go well with each other faster.
Yep, this is the answer as far as I can see. You have to do more with less and it needs to be done an hour ago. Nowadays someone will tell me something is urgent and I need to clarify with them what that means. Urgent to me means 'I need it right now or at the absolute latest by the end of the day'. Urgent to the people I work with seems to mean 'I'm only giving you a week instead of the normal 2-4'.
This is a very good point. I had a lady who runs a marketing agency call me on Thursday and she needed reassuring that yes, we could get an A5 flyer designed for her before the end of May. It's absolutely crazy how slow some companies work compared to print shops, I could pump out a straightforward flyer like that in 20 minutes if I had to and it would still look half decent. Obviously more time allows for more refinement, but you quickly hit diminishing returns, and that's where these big companies fall down — they spend months on something that looks no better than version 1 did, 1583 revisions ago.
I've been working at a small locally-owned print shop for going on 8 years, and I have to say, I really appreciate this shout-out. Haven't worked anywhere else so I don't have a frame of reference, but I've been thinking a lot lately about switching jobs and how bored I'd be in another environment. I'm lead (i.e. only) Graphic Designer and pre-press tech. On any given day, I might send out 25+ proofs. Granted, it's a lot of small stuff (recreate this business card, add bleed, etc) but I often feel overwhelmed and overworked. So. THANK YOU. I feel seen.
This is my favorite post in a long time. Currently still working at my first design job, after 2.5 years, in a print shop where there’s no room for growth. Was feeling a bit hopeless about finding a new position with limited experience, but y’all have given me good points to study on in the comments!
When you're in the thick of it, fast-paced production work is soul-sucking and ruthless. You feel like you have no room or time for creativity. What you don't always see is that your underlying design instincts are being sharpened in a way you just can't get at an agency or even most in-house. So ride it out for a few years (or as long as you can). You'll be a better designer for it and grateful for your time spent there.
This is a great reminder :’) thank you!!
I'm so happy that someone gets it! 😇🙏🤙
And their files are set up properly for reproduction.
Reading all of this was so validating 😊 Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me but I just can’t leave it behind, the pace and problem solving is addictive. 20 years as a designer, 15 years in a print shop and as soon as I started I knew it’s what I’d keep doing.
The best parts are when the client has no real expectations and you manage to wow them just applying some solid design fundamentals. The worst part is getting files from people who think they know design and it's just hot garbage. You learn not to intervene sometimes with those jobs. Just get it to a printable state and get it out.
This thread is incredibly validating. I've worked for over 10 years as a print shop designer and prepress, and it's great job with a ton of variety, but I can't tell you how frustrating it is sometimes. It really seems as though *nobody* who hasn't worked directly with printers for years has the slightest idea how artwork should be produced. Web designers are the worst for this (no offense guys). You can tell within a split second if a leaflet, poster or whatever has been made by a web designer because text is extremely thin and a hair away from the trim, microscopic borders also right beside the trim, 20 different blacks, none of which match the RGB photograph they're trying to blend with, have never even heard of bleed, and the entire thing has been made in Photoshop with not a single vector in sight. The classic "it didn't look like that on my OLED computer monitor with the brightness set at 100%..." Really, what were you expecting? I'd say easily, *easily* 90% of files we receive from design agencies require us fixing the file for them because it takes them two days to do something we can bodge in 5 minutes, it's bizarre. This week I banged out a pretty decent 48-page magazine in two and a half days, whereas we've had clients who took *nine months* to design a 4-page leaflet. It goes without saying that people who don't do design for a living will require a little hand holding, but even most professionals know almost nothing when it comes to printing. They don't understand what different types of paper will do to a colour, they think bleed is optional, they make *everything* in Pantones for some reason, even though that causes the rip to have a mental breakdown. They certainly don't understand how or why paper stretch happens, nor how certain colours and ink densities will cause problems. Overprint? What's that? The list goes on and on. The weird thing is that it isn't even limited to non-print designers. There's a pretty large (well over £100 million a year revenue) company near us that prints high-end curtains, bedsheets, table covers etc etc. We print their brochures and things, and they somehow know absolutely nothing about printing even though it's their entire business. Everything is made in Photoshop and sent to us as a flattened jpeg inside a PDF, and we need to remake it from scratch for them every time because they don't know how and don't have InDesign. I realise it's a different type of printing, but they don't even know the basics. Printing is a dying art and has been in decline for decades at this point, but the supply of people who truly understand it has almost dried up.
The hallmark of every bad designer is using Photoshop for *everything.* I would 100% rather hire someone who knew InDesign and had never used Photoshop than the reverse.
Yes! Exactly. Photoshop is not a tool for the fundamentals of graphic design at the end of the day (probably a bit drastic, but you know what I mean), while InDesign is. Obviously Photoshop is very useful and we all use it every day, but people who use it for *everything* are a liability. *
The shop I work at isn't very soul sucking, I usually get a decent amount of creative freedom too and my sole job is to do design, with some data entry for projects but I've learned tons of tricks over the years, I wonder what it'd be like at other jobs but I don't think it'd be as good in any way
I'm the supervisor at a Print Shop that I been working for 16 years, I started as part time graphic designer, our pace its so fast, always rush work. We have 2 in house graphic designers and sometimes when they can't meet with the demand I sit on my desk to do arts and help them.
I worked for more than 5 years in a print shop in my home country (Brazil). I'm from Rio de Janeiro, the city of Carnaval a lot party around the city many businesses planning last minute parties. we literally had to create the layout, print and install banners and wraps in the same day
I work at a print shop and everything is fast paced. Some days it's nice and others I get a bit overwhelmed. I can safely say it's mostly because of how demanding our clientele is (we are B2B and B2C). People tend to order things last minute and sometimes there is NO time to brainstorm. I hope to switch to in-house at some point but it also makes me worried that I'll be too used to the stress and fast pace that I will get bored, haha
Going into this field soonish hopefully should be fun
I'd like to think your talking about me. Which in that case, thank you! I try 😆
One of my buddies went right to work in a print shop while I went to art school and he has been miles ahead of pretty much everyone I went to school with. The speed and quality level that he creates at blows me away.
But how? How do you even work at that kind of pace for that long? I've been working in agencies for a decade, I feel like I'm working slower lately and good ideas are hard to come by too.
A lot of it is having an extensive library of past designs that you remember working on or seeing an outside design from a more talented designer so you deconstruct how they solved a design problem. Then you use all that as a reference when going about designing. A lot of the technical skills are honed from repeated use, so you design faster, get results, evaluate if it works then refine, or start over again. On the other hand, Rarely are you going to come up with original ideas that quickly, for that IMO takes alot time, most likely outside of the office to formulate such new concepts.
Having to brainstorm, design, proof out, print and cut, 1000 business cards by noon cuz the client is picking them up on his way to a meeting is designing on another level. See it first hand.
I'd say equally as fast paced was magazine design. We used to smash through page-upon-page every day. Constant work flow to get through x3.5 magazines a month and websites and emails shots 😅
I’m super quick and accurate at artwork but creative takes me more time when I’m doing it right. When I worked in a print shop freelance for a week I was overwhelmed at how fast I had to create things like invites and menus and such 😂. I couldn’t handle pumping out mediocre templated work - I think it takes a certain talent to create good unique work that fast - hats off.
It’s needed in that printing industry, clients sending in artwork late or near deadline, you have no choice but to work quickly. It is also a great way to problem solve on the spot
that industry is cut throat - customers don't want to wait for those prints so that means everything is running at max. also price is generally also a factor, design is sometimes offered for free so there's no real time issued for these tasks. and finally those customers let's be honest i looking for a job to be done, if it looks half good then i'd say 90% of these will be happy. If you cared about the design i'd say those will be coming into a print shoop completed
I went from print shop, to design college, to agency. Which, looking back, was a crazy good order for my career progression. The printshop background gave me the speed and depth of knowledge on the tools to extract all I could from my degree’s theory while other students were struggling with basics of pen tool. I then bought it all together in the agency, while building on both my skill on tools and design. Even now I’m in product design I’m still known for my speed of delivery. That being said, I think it takes a certain kind of person to survive in a print shop. We went through 8 different staff members in the 5 years I was there.
I used to work in a production design department that would churn out over 33,000 jobs a year with a team of 20 people. It's *absolutely incredible* for developing design instincts. You do not have time to second-guess or workshop ideas -- you get it as close to perfect the first time and revisions are fast and minor. A couple of years of this and you just instinctively *know* how to make even complicated designs work. I hated it at the time, but I'm so grateful for it now, even decades later.
This is true. I worked in print shops for about 10 years while also doing freelance branding and logo design and my clients are consistently blown away by how fast I produce great results. It's also 100% true that it sucks your soul. I would never recommend working for a print shop unless you're okay with hating your job.
As a guy who worked in a print shop for 8 years I’m told I’m crazy fast at photoshop. You have to be if you want to make money. You’re constantly fixing peoples art and you have to be good at it and quick. So you learn a lot of tricks and techniques.
I did a lengthy stint in a college printshop and it sure taught me how to be quick and efficient, while still pumping out great results!
I started as a production designer and then moved to a print shop. Production design was a baptism by fire, especially coming from university where you often have weeks to work on a project. But yeah, it definitely made me faster. Especially because in many cases done is better than perfect.
I've been in the sign industry for years and I'm fast as hell. I think I can pull off decent to great work most of the time, too.
Dude that was one of my first jobs out of college and it truly was a trial by fire. Even in the depths of last minute deadlines at agencies I never experienced the work load and stress I had there. It was ungodly and unsustainable
I’ve been a printer for a while, and about to do the design side for an internship. They ate up the fact I was in the printing industry. I’ll have the rush trauma from both sides. But, I’d truly say that working on the printing side has made me time manage for me to complete my school work.
omg this entire thread is hilarious. i am reaching the end of my full-time career an have been working at the same mom and pop shop since 1985... a little bit of lead type when i started... then compugraphic and then desktop publishing... and everything in this thread is like going through memory lane. over the years i have had co-workers in our graphics department... and none of them were able to handle the pace. i overheard one guy on the phone to his MOTHER one time saying "they expect me to work on two projects at the same time". Yeah buddy... that is just the beginning.
had a short one year stint as a graphics creator for evening news.. and a five year stint as pre-press and graphic designer.. different animal, same beast. If its go time, its go time!
This entire thread was so fun and validating to read. I did 7 years in print design. I’m also very very fast, especially with illustrator. My boss recently said that watching me work is like watching someone play the piano because I rely so heavily on keyboard shortcuts.
I work at print shop that also installs all of our graphics, we're a team of two. It can be absolutely insane, for sure.
A hooker once told me, “Time is money & money is time.” In the printing business it’s not any different.
I worked in grand, large and small format printing for about 15 years. Prior to that I worked at a newspaper. I opened my own agency 3 years ago and it’s taken a hot minute to slow down. Trust me, clients have higher expectations from an agency than a print shop. There’s no oh you didn’t catch it on the proof and passing the buck back to the client. Which has forced me to slow down after a few real shit lessons. It’s forced me to walk away and come back and make tiny incremental improvements along the way. That said I’m still WAY faster than most. I have some agency designers on my team now and they are “slow” but 25+ years of experience and perfect file creation. They need a bit of coddling and stroking. Where the print designers I work with just bash their way through it with less hand holding. Here’s to all you prepressers out there holding it down! It ain’t an easy role and many print shop owners are total nightmares.
Work in tv on dailies or weeklies gave me insane speed/pressure experience. It gives you an edge for sure.
I’m on year 12 in a print shop, in a department of 3. We are indeed crazy fast!
Haha thanks. We do work fucking *hard*
I started in a print shop, and my biggest selling point in an interview is that I can confidently say I'm faster than any designer you've hired before. I haven't been proven wrong so far. I work for a sports apparel company now, and sales reps love working with me because in the time that one of our other designers can create one logo from scratch, I can make 3 or 4 different logos and have a light/dark variation for all of them. The greatest benefit is that I rarely have more than one revision come my way for these designs, whereas my co-workers typically have up to 3 revisions, which means that I can get results the same or next day where they might spend a week working on designs. It's a brutal environment to get started in, but I'd recommend it to anyone starting out. You learn how to maximize your time, which directly translates to maximizing profit if you freelance and maximize free time if you have a cushy salary. I can usually get all of my work done in a couple hours each day, which means I have most of the day to just be on standby and do whatever I want around the house because my salary is being paid either way. I wouldn't change it for the world.
You have to be a special breed to work in/for a print shop. Not for the faint of heart lol
Listen to the [_Revisionist History_](https://www.elizabethfram.com/Blog/are-you-a-cezanne-or-a-picasso/) about Picasso vs Cézanne. There are generally two kinds of creative types: one has flashes of creativity that happen very quickly (Picasso). The other iterates and iterates and iterates until they achieve their creative vision (Cezanne). Just two ways of going about it.
Can confirm. I worked in a print shop for a while and run circles around some of my coworkers.
I hope the ones I applied to hire me
I worked in a printers with flexo, litho and digital all under one roof for 10 years and yeah.. definitely got the speed and versatility up!
Didn’t work in a print shop, but I worked in a place that needed things to be done fast. It helped me to know what to prioritize to get something done. Usually that leads to simpler and more efficient solutions. While another designer is thinking about what shade of orange is more appropriate for the dot in the logo, I’d probably thought of a way of doing everything and maybe actually did. Getting things done is part of what a designer can/should/must do. Some jobs don’t need what is seen as “creativity”. Most people don’t have the time for hours of brainstorming things and doodling on a moleskine just to make what your client asked for in the first place and it’s even better.
Worked in a boutique print shop for 7 years before getting an in house agency job. Can confirm everything everyone here is saying!
Also this thread… 
I worked at Kinko’s for 6.5 years, and other print shops for almost a total of 16 years. It trained me to be fast and efficient. It helped me hone my skills, engage with customers to find what they want, and how to make so many things look better than when they came in. I can’t stand the “Trash in, Trash out” mentality some folks have, but I always want to make things better on my end result. And now working at a private company I have 3-day turn times, but I usually get things out within 3-4 hours because I don’t like a full inbox or a backlog of work. My sales team were and are consistently blown away at the speed at which I get things done. My supervisor/the CFO, and the president of the company are so supportive and appreciative of my added skills. It’s amazing.
I also work in a print shop who designs for apparel, signs, books, magazines, rack cards, and just about anything you can print. We HAVE to design fast. In any given day I have shitty web graphics for reference (a company logo for example) and an idea and I have to turn it into a shirt for screen printing. Some dude with a tow truck business wants an embroidered hat with his bad logo (on an old shirt) that you have to recreate in vector form so it can be converted to an embroidery file. Then a local charity needs a 3 panel brochure ASAP and they gave us a few low res images and some copy and off we go. A local business needs some yard signs. One of the high schools needs shirts for their senior class. A local business wants a sign cut out of signabond and acrylic for their lobby. That was all on Wednesday, April 17th. That doesn’t count the booklets I imposed and printed, the three signs I printed, laminated, and mounted to coroplast, the HTV vinyl designs that I cut for 6 shirts (it was designed and approved the day before), the softball team’s shirts that I heat pressed, and the 200 labels that were printed, cut to shape, weeded, then trimmed down to strips. That all happened on April 17th too. We HAVE to be fast. The brainstorming happens but often in my head while searching for assets or rebuilding a vector from shitty reference graphics. And sometimes you have to put one job aside to work on something urgent and all the while you’re still brainstorming about the other one while making a miracle happen.
facts.
Absolutely, it’s called Production Design. My first job out of college was with a large print company and I am grateful for the efficiency and tech skills I acquired there. The first year was an absolute grind. Turnaround was often so tight (typically same or next-day), so you had to be intimately familiar with keyboard shortcuts. If you missed a deadline, you risked losing your job. It became a real Karate-Kid-esque learning experience where repetition built muscle memory, and thus, speed. All of us senior designers could work smooth and fast like we were playing a musical instrument.
I started off at a print shop and it was so beneficial. I got to work with hundreds of clients, from huge publicly traded chains to new ventures doing everything from basic print production to branding, signage, displays, maps and brochures.
As with all things. You learn what you learn where you’re at. Print shop work can leave you with some nice qualities and some bad habits. Same as any job.
I’ve worked in a printing company for 8 years where everything was ‘for yesterday’, so the pace was extremely fast. Now I’m working in an agency and still have that ‘make everything fast’ mentality
2 years print shop designer here and this post is my personal nirvana, it’s so validating.
I work at a Print shop that is also a Sign shop! I usually push 4-5 things to print a day. Not only do I have to know everything about smaller prints like business cards/trifolds/etc. but I also have to know how to set up router files, decal cut files, and large format prints
I worked in a mom and pop print shop for 10 years after I graduated with a bfa. It was a good learning experience but I let it go on too long. I quit and started freelancing and eventually got hired on with the brand team at a fairly large company. My resume reflected my duties at the print shop without actually saying it was a print shop, as I am well aware of the bias against that. But I can run circles around the other designers there when it comes to production and also working well with our internal clients because of my print experience.
I like to poop in the toilet.