Oct 6 2022

Ask ten people what the most important phase of graphic production is and you will get ten different answers. Though one cannot deny that a quality printer is a must, there is one factor that in my experience as a business owner trumps all other aspects of production—people. It matters very little if the printing machine is the best of the best if the operator is the worst of the worst. Remember, actions speak louder than words.

I came into this thinking of UWE as a brand, looking toward our future. If my posters are a mishiva of disjointed skewed images, fifteen different fonts and spelling errors, what's that say about my company?

Now before I continue it is important for everyone to know where UWE Pro Wrestling originated. This company was born from Eric Freedom's pure and undying love of this crazy business and the desire to keep the business he loved alive. So, how did I get involved? Easy answer. It was out of the love I had for Eric Freedom and my desire to help him achieve his dream.

The Long Road

I have been running UWE Pro Wrestling in Michigan since 2003 and have dealt with so many people just to find that the designer and print house I needed all along was me. At the beginning of UWE there was NO, and I mean NO, operating budget for print. Hell there wasn’t even a budget for shows back then. A family member of a student, we will call him awful English, offered to put our event programs together for free if we let him write a column in the program. Sounds like a sweet deal right, WRONG. Even if supplied with the file written by me there were spelling errors, and if it was his copy it was worse. For example: upcomming instead of upcoming, and the punctuation was missing or completely in the wrong place. When his son said he would take over because he was an aspiring designer we thought, “Great no more spelling errors.” That may have been the case but we discovered a new problem.

Even though the spelling errors lessened, a new monster raised its ugly head; huffy revision monster! By this time I had begun overseeing the production of the programs and posters and when I saw an image out of kilter, a font I wanted changed, or a totally different color for the font or background you would have thought you were asking Michelangelo to start the Sistine Chapel over again. The huffing and eye rolling began, and the revisions became more of a chore than they were worth. Exit huffy, enter dyslexia.

Yep, we were on the third designer for the company in almost as many years. Now to his credit dyslexia did have some original ideas, but they were not enough to hide the fact that on an 11x 17 poster November and Saturday are both spelled incorrectly. Now dyslexia became a bit like huffy when you told him to spell both aforementioned words correctly, it seemed to escape him that these were how we were going to advertise our company and the wrestling events, and that correctly spelled words are part of being a professional. Another issue was dyslexia didn’t seem to think it was a ‘big deal’ to use WWE, WCW or TNA TRADEMARKED LOGOS on our posters when we brought in superstars. Eventually dyslexia blew out and went on a public forum bashing me and the way I always nagged about this being spelled wrong, that is spelled wrong. Oh well, did I mention that none of the above knew how to set a bleed for color printing? Not really noticeable when the program is black and white but when we started using color…you guessed it; there was a white border around the poster and program. Dyslexia out; busy in.

Now busy was much easier to deal with when it came to spelling errors, let’s face it we all make them from time to time, no big deal. The drawback was I was told busy knew how to set bleeds, well not so much. I realized it on her first poster and asked her to correct it on the next and it was still incorrect. On some things it would be ok but I think that was due to my printer pulling the image a bit (without causing too much image or text distortion) to fully cover the page. The other problem with busy was her designs were, well, busy. Lots of different fonts and colors on the same page and the focus was not the wrestling event. Hell, on some posters it was hard to tell what it was for. Images of the wrestlers got lost in the background image and there would be on line of information not even close to the colors in the rest of the poster. Then the inevitable happened, busy blew out. That left no one to design the advertising material, well not quite.

As owner of the company I took it upon myself to make this work. I learned to set the bleed so I had full coverage on a page, size images so they were not horribly pulled or squished, but most importantly I learned that the people you use for your design need to prove they are capable of providing you with what you want. If they can’t keep looking until you find the right fit, why settle for the miller’s son when Prince Charming is out there if you look hard enough

In short, it is best to know a little about the processes your business is using so you can make sure the work is done properly and to your satisfaction. I have a designer that knows exactly what I want, even if it is more work for me, it is done the way I see it in my head. And I have a printer who knows what I am looking for in the end product and makes it all happen on time and budget. Designing the program; 12 hours, designing the poster; 6 hours, 250 full color posters; 35.00, having it all the way I want it; priceless.

Until next time! Good Night and God Bless.