Coaster and sticker development

Sorting out the coasters and stickers after picking them up from digital print was a bit of a whirlwind and gave me lots to think about in terms of production. 

I had asked James before sending off my file if it was possible to cut my coasters out in the print room. He said that unfortunately that material was not compatible with any of their machines so I would have to take it to the 3D workshop instead. 

When I picked up my coasters I noticed the first issue - which was that they were too small. I had sized them correctly, ensuring that they were 94mm in diameter and on an A3 illustrator artboard. I had even specified this to James in the print specification. However, James had flipped my artboard so that it became A4 and printed it on an A3 sheet of mountboard, meaning that the coasters were too small and a lot of the material was just wasted. 

The same issue happened with the stickers. I sized them correctly on an A3 illustrator document but James had flipped them to be A4 so that he could fit two pages on each sheet. This wasn't as much as a problem, it just meant that I ended up with smaller stickers and double the amount that I needed. A couple of them also had ink rubbed off.

In hindsight, I should have mentioned to James that he had printed my files wrong when I picked them up. But alas, as it was so close to the deadline I decided to make do with it and continue. My next battle was the issue of cutting the coasters out:

I took my mountboard to the 3D workshop and asked if I could use the laser cutter to cut them out. I think the guy that I was speaking to in there was a little bit confused. I guessed that because I (obviously) had the illustrator document for the print file it would be fine to set it up on the laser cutter, but even so the guy sent me up to the screen printing room instead as they would have a circle cutter. 

It was at this point that I realised I was at my wits end and there would be absolutely no way that I could use this method to produce any decent amount of coasters. I realised that I was going through this experience because I wanted to have a physical example of what my final zine pack would look like, but hypothetically the production would involve outsourcing the coasters from a website that professionally prints them onto proper beermat material and cuts them out.