The effects of client, designer, and printer operational relationship on the quality of reprographic products

Thesis Abstract

On the premise that close operational relationship is
essential for the production of effective print
advertisements, this study determined the effects of
Client, Designer, and Printer Operational Relationship on
the Quality of Reprographic Products in Borno and Yobe
States. The specific objectives of the study were thus
to; examine the input from the clients in the planning
and designing of print advertisements; determine the
extent of the utilization of the input from the clients
by the graphic designer; determine the individual roles
of the graphic designers and the printers in the
reprographic stage and the effects on the quality of
reprographic products; and determine the operational
problems encountered as a result of inadequate and
inappropriate raw materials as well as faulty or inferior
quality equipment.
A total of ninety-nine respondents, thirty—three for each
set constituted the samples drawn from the clients’,
designers’, and printers’ establishments. Three sets of
questionnaires, one set each for the clients, designers,
and printers and examination of existing records/ were
used for data collection. The data were assigned scores
which were converted to means and percentages using the
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approach of the statistical package for the social
sciences. These were used for computing the results for
the study.
The results showed that the clients did not make properly
structured advertising plans, mainly due to their
inadequate knowledge of design processes and narrow
financial interest in advertising; that the clients have
failed in their responsibility of developing and
encouraging effective operational relationship with the
designers, and this imposed constraints on the designer’s
creative output; that the designers lacked clear
perception of their audiences’ culture, the central goal of
print advertising, compromised with the client’s
subjective design ideas, and neither pretested their
designs nor followed these up at the reprographic stage;
that the major causes of poor registration were due to
the designer’s failure to produce good colour separation
and incompetence on the part of many of the printers;
that the rigid control by the managements of the
client’s, designer’s, and printer’s establishments
considerably hindered direct and meaningful participation
of the relevant personnel into the advertisement process
as well as hindered the provision of adequate materials
and equipment for design production; that the nonavailability
of some of the essential materials and
equipment for reprography, the absence of equipment
maintainance personnel in the private printing houses,
and the improper utilization of those in some government
establishments who had them very much affected the
production of jobs of good quality prints. It was thus
concluded that the preceding results indicated a
breakdown of effective communication in the operational
relationship between the clients, designers, and
printers, and this very much affected the quality of
reprographic products in Borno and Yobe States.