Pharmaceutical clients Written on July 2, 2009, by fuzzdecay.
In addition to the condom client at the day job, we work with lots of pharmaceutical companies. We roll out packaging and informational/promotional matierals for everything from prescription supplements to surgical scrub.
One of our clients is a diabetes testing supply distributor. They are quite possibly the most wasteful client I’ve ever come into contact with. They have redesigned their entire product line 3-4 times since I started working here, not quite 2 years ago. The constant redirection is compounded with the fact that they will only use southeast asian printing companies because of cost issues, and insist upon being intermediary between us and the press.
This results in us having to send mechanicals to the asian presses 4-5 times to get something that looks like the product we get from the american press we use for small runs. The language barrier keeps the client from telling the printer that their press isn’t calibrated correctly, so we have to keep 2 mechanicals: one with the correct colors for the american presses, and one with colors that are completely wrong for the asian ones. And yes, the files are set up in pantone (7 color in some cases) and still come back wrong. As you can imagine, this is seriously confusing and results in designers not familiar with the process sending the wrong mechanicals to the various presses all the time.
Also, everything for this client is “super rush, we needed it yesterday”. And then, after we bust our asses getting whatever it is they need done, they wait 3-6 weeks to give us feedback. Recently, we had to roll out an intstruction manual and quick start guide for a new glucose monitor they’re going to put into production. It needed to be done in 2 days, so it was given to me immediately. I do a lot of work for this particular client because I’m the fastest designer in the office and I get most of the rush projects.
I rolled out the quickstart guide in about an hour, and was about to start on the instuction manual, when the client called and put the project on hold because they hadn’t cleared the name they were using with the manufacturer. The manufacturer hated the name and won’t distribute until the client comes up with something more suitable. This sort of thing happens all the time with them.
Another client of ours is a distributor of naturopathic medicine. They offer a wide range of products, but a lot of them seemingly have to do with digestion. One of their larger products is a colon cleansing kit. They actually gave my company two baskets full of their colon cleansing paraphenalia for Christmas.
I have a coworker who hordes everything that’s given away at work. We were recently cleaning out our sample drawer for this client, and my coworker grabbed one of the colon cleansing kits and announced that she was going to try it. For the rest of the day, everyone walked by her desk trying to talk her out of it. It was mostly variations of “what’s going to happen when you’re stuck in traffic and shit all over yourself?”
I was concerned about her taking the colon cleansing kit, because the previous week she’d come to work and announced that she’d sent her toddler to daycare with the stomach flu. We all told her that she was terrible to send a contagious child to daycare, and she suggested that she could take a colon cleansing kit home and give it to her kid. Perplexed, another coworker asked why because it’d just make the diarrhea worse. She said that her kid would “get it out all at once then”.
Luckily, we talked her out of taking home the colon cleansing kit. She ended up just taking home 3 bottles of fiber supplement.
Read more from the Designing category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: 1 Comment. or stay up to date with this post via RSS I found out this morning when I woke up that my mom is leaving today. She really doesn’t tell me these things, I just woke up to her having all of her stuff packed. I feel kind of bad, like she may be leaving because I’ve been a less than stellar hostess. Thursday we hit that sale at Intimacy and I found out that Chantelle has discontinued the Graphie bra. Graphie is quite possibly my favorite bra ever, it saddened my wallet greatly because I then bought as many in my size as I could. Friday we went out to eat at Ted’s Montana Grill, mostly because I wanted the signature salad, no bison was to be had. Saturday I worked half the day and the other half we visited her friend Kathy and had margaritas, pool and hot tub time. I know drinking and hot tubs are a bad idea but, meh, we’re all adults here. Sunday I spent the entire day working, and I think that may be what ran my mother off. I took a job setting up a joomla website, and I’ve never set one completely up. I figured it couldn’t possibly be that hard. I spent Saturday and Sunday working on static comps, and then working on my business website. I’m using joomla for it, and thought it’d be good to practice on. Turns out, joomla is a bit tricky. The parameters are named odd things, which makes the css pretty convoluted, but I’m figuring it out. The good thing about all this is that I got that final push to actually finish up my business’s website. I’ve been dragging my ass about that for a while. Read more from the Life category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: Comment. or stay up to date with this post via RSS mom and i waiting in the "it's a small world" line at disney My mom is spending most of this week with me. She used to be an accountant at a chicken processing plant (i know, completely glamorous), but the plant she worked at was closed by the company, and she decided to go back to school instead of going straight into another job. She’s on spring break for three weeks, and is truly living it up. She went to bed at midnight last night instead of her usual 9pm! She got here yesterday and is leaving Sunday, I believe. I didn’t know exactly when she was coming until she randomly showed up at my work and tried to scare me. I only knew she was either coming up Tuesday night or Wednesday, and that she’d call when she knew for sure. When I called her Wednesday to see where she was, since she hadn’t called me, she only said “I’m not going to tell you,” and hung up. About 15 mins later, she was here and tickling my neck trying to scare me. I knew she was coming up this week, so I spent last weekend painting my foyer and part of my bedroom and cleaning the place up. But since I didn’t know when exactly, my place was still a bit of a wreck when she got there. Oops! I talked her into going to flying biscuit last night. She is the only person I’ve taken there that hasn’t loved their grits. I think they’re not bland enough for her Tonight we’re hitting up Intimacy’s annual bra sale. I’m excited because I haven’t bought bras since last year’s sale and they’re all on their last legs. My mom has also never owned a bra better than one from Victoria’s Secret (who is also having a good sale right now, if you’re interested) and has never been professionally fitted, so I’m excited to take her. I’m still having to go to work, because I need to save my remaining vacation days for a wedding this fall. I left my mom this morning sleeping on the couch. I have no idea what she’s going to do all day while I’m gone. She mentioned hanging out by the pool and reading textbooks. Whatever she ends up doing, I hope she’s having a fun, relaxing time. Read more from the Life category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: 2 Comments. or stay up to date with this post via RSS Ale Paul Sudtipos's Adios Script I love veer. I love their fresh stock photography. It’s so much more rewarding to buy images from veer than say, getty. They’re not as expansive, but what they lack in volume, they more than make up for in quality. Their images are newer and much more targeted to younger audiences. I love their designer geek friendly merch. I’m amassing quite the collection of it, in fact. It’s great that they are working toward building a community full of interesting and inspiring things around their services for creatives. The community aspect and merch definitely are what keep me coming back. The reason I love veer the most, though, happens to be their amazing selection of fonts. I always hated script fonts until I started browsing veer and ran across the work of Sudtipos, which seems to be primarily sold through them. I recently bought Adios Script because veer is running an awesome promotion where you contact a service rep and ask “can I get a deal?” and they actually give you one. In my case, it was a sweet discount. It’s really an amazing font, like all of his fonts i’ve used thus far. There are tons of glyphs to play around with, and the ligatures are just beautiful. it’s perfect for more lighthearted events that still call for script fonts, like contemporary weddings, which is probably what I’ll mostly be using it for. This font purchase is officially the first purchase for my fledgling business. I’ll likely be talking about that more later as it gets more set up. Read more from the Designing category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: Comment. or stay up to date with this post via RSS I was actually angered enough to write bacardi directly. I can’t believe on so many levels how this made it through their marketing department. Not only is it extremely offensive, it’s also not even that well designed. Not that it being well designed would make it better, but the edgy humor they’re grasping at (which is tantalizingly out of reach) demands slick, trendy design. I would like to join the chorus of enraged consumers I’m sure you’re hearing about your new “ugly girlfriend” campaign. I realize, as someone in the design/advertising industry, that sexism is what sells alcoholic beverages, but that campaign goes so far above and beyond what is unacceptable it’s truly disgusting. I have no idea who in marketing let that through, but it was a terrible idea. It should be pulled immediately, although it’s already too late for thousands of people who will no longer be buying your product. And, I actually got a reply! June 22, 2009 Dear Alicia, We wish to thank you for writing to us about the past promotional campaign for Bacardi Breezer. As a Company and as individuals we are also angered and dismayed that such a campaign was ever created and we have taken immediate action to stop it as it violated our stringent global marketing principles that we firmly support. By way of explanation, but by no means an excuse, Bacardi never sponsored nor developed this promotion. But we understand it is our brand and our reputation and you are our consumers. We are also embarrassed that we didn’t catch this breach sooner. We have been urgently looking into this matter to make sure this type of activity is never repeated. What we do know is that a third-party developed and activated this brief campaign in one small market more than a year ago without our clearance. When we discovered this promotion, we instructed our distributor to shut it down as it did not comply with our global marketing standards. We are now urgently looking into the reasons why this program was recently reposted on the internet. In markets where Bacardi does not have a corporate presence, we are represented by third parties; in this case a distributor and its advertising agency, but they must adhere to our stringent marketing principles, which clearly this campaign did not. When Bacardi found out about this recent reposting, we immediately notified the agency and distributor to shutdown the website. Bacardi proudly celebrates diversity and we do not endorse the views of this site or the campaign, as it is offensive and completely inappropriate. We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this campaign and thank you, our consumers for bringing it to our attention. Sincerely, Bacardi Limited Read more from the Designing category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: 2 Comments. or stay up to date with this post via RSS List of projects to complete Having a major client being a condom company leads to some interesting set-ups on my desk at my dayjob. Sometimes a client will be touring the office and I’ll have stacks of condoms and lube on my desk, or sometimes just odd lists of to-dos. Also, this is the only company I’ve worked for with a drawer full of sexual aids which we keep as examples of past work. However, talking about necessary aspects of the projects for this client are somewhat difficult, as they verge on sexual harrassment. me: Hey, did you know that the lamb skin condoms are held on with a drawstring? I found that out when researching the bugs on the box art. coworker 1: A drawstring? How does that work? Is it like a …restrictor ring? coworker 2: Oh, you mean a COCK ring? coworker 1 (as I walk away): Thanks, asshole. I was trying not to yell “cock”. Read more from the Designing category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: 2 Comments. or stay up to date with this post via RSS It’s been a while since I’ve kept a public website. Not that I ever took this one down. I just let it sit there and stagnate as I got busy with school, then school and work, then just work. and it became more and more outdated. I’m still busy, but have a pretty strong drive to have a non-private (hello livejournal!) personal web presence right now. I’ll be crossposting everything from here to lj, which will be the first public posts on there since before I graduated in 2006. I still plan on using lj for more sensitive information, and am keeping comments open both here and there. I make no promises, just going to see how it goes. my inner proud designer would like to point out that I’m still working on the template and my site looks pretty ass right now. This will be rectified shortly. Read more from the Life category. If you would like to leave a comment, click here: 5 Comments. or stay up to date with this post via RSS © Copyright fuzzdecay.com - Powered by Wordpress
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Those of you following my twitter, or actually, just reading the internets this weekend probably stumbled across this horrifically sexist bacardi campaign.
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