So Much Time, So Little Fun?

Over the weekend I looked up jokes about printers and the printing industry and found so little. Personally, I did not know many jokes before, but the results after so many searches on Google left me pretty disappointed. I mean, really, printers have been around since, eh, the tenth or fifteenth century depending on how you define printers (the human kind). And in all this time, people didn't make fun of us as much as they did of Bush or Obama in less than ten minutes? Granted, we are not as sexy or outrageous as the politicians, but come on, there must be funny happenings somewhere sometimes in a printing place.

So here is my challenge to all fellow printers (offset, digital, screen, or otherwise) to collect, invent, expand or modify jokes about us, our tools and our trade - after reading the below list of jokes I have collected thus far. Some does not directly involve a printer, only in relative connection.

The List - what I have found.

Why did you decide to work in prepress? “I got into prepress because I heard of the strippers.”

Why do people start working in prepress?  “I got into prepress because I had heard that they could always use dingbats and dummies and creeps in the gutter…”

What type of hunting do printers prefer? Trapping.

Has anyone else ever had a client choose a paper stock and helpfully fax you a sample?

Printers Law: You will misspell the name of the client's spouse.

The customer is always right . And an idiot.

"Suppose we refund all your money, re-print the job without charge, close the business down and hang the pressman; would that be satisfactory?"

One font meets the other in Rome. He asks: “Hey, are you a Roman too?”

“No,” says the other, “but I am an Italic!”

Who printed the Kmart ad that had ‘flannel shits’ on sale?

Graphic Design Law: The best designs never survive contact with the client.

A single picture tells more than a thousand words. A technical picture has more than thousand bugs.

A single picture has more bugs than be described with thousand words.

Want to holiday in Lake Tahoe? Their brochure tells you to visit www.gotahoe.com.

Think the dude at your graphic department is brain dead? Meet the guy at www.speedofart.com.

Graphic Design Law: If two designs are shown, a third will be requested. If provided, then one of the first two will be chosen.

New girl from the client to estimate dept: "Why is your film cost so high? I could buy it a lot cheaper at the local photographic shop!"

St. Peter met a guy standing at Heaven's gate. He said “I must check your record. Please stand here and wait”. “I see that you drank alcohol and smoked a smoke or two. Fact is, you’ve done everything a good person should never do. We can’t have folks like you up here! Your life was full of sin.” Then he read the last record, took the guy's hand and said “Come in”. He led him up to the big boss and said “Take him in and treat him well. He used to work in Printing. He’s already done his time in Hell.”

Why did the printer forget to say goodbye to his wife? He was pressed for time.


What did the typographer say to the printer who wouldn’t stop talking? “Get to the point.”

Client: "I need price for a 2 color job... black and white”.

The “designer” stored all images in a myriad of arcane directories. So… get this, to make it easy… they searched for all jpg, gif, tif, eps files on their hard drive and copied them all to a CD and sent them to me (so we could relink the graphics). And, from a quick look at the contents of that disk, it was obvious that the 'designer" had browsed certain forbidden part the web extensively.

Printers know how to ‘do it’ between the sheets.

Designer: ”Can you give me a list of printing companies you have a relationship with so I can get an estimate?”
Client: ”No, sorry. We owe them a bunch of money.”


Akpos came first in the class because his teacher get their papers printed from Akpos uncle's printing press.

Teacher: "Children, exams are near, if you have any question you can ask me."

Student: "In which printing shop the question papers are printed?"

“Did you hear? Comma and Period got married.”

“Really? Comma’s a great guy, but who’s Period?”

“Some moody chick he picked up at the Crossbar a year ago.”

“I bet she’s perfect for him.”

“Yep, she’s always finishing his sentences.”

That's about it. If you know of any other printer (the human kind) jokes I'd like you to send it to me via the comment below so I can share them on the net.

Update - Contribution from readers

Printers do it and leave a lasting impression.

Printers do it without wrinkling the sheets.

Printers do it in the dark.

A client came in with a stack of red paper and a CD containing a white on red background artwork. I could tell her suspicious look when I explained it would be better to print red in on white paper, not the other way round.

While working with a client on an artwork for a well known drinks brand, I had the challenge of trying to make their brand orange colour out of CMYK. As it was an advert insert there was no option of using a spot colour. Obviously it was a bit muddy and not very vibrant but I was happy that it was the best of a bad situation. Client wasnt and wanted to change it. 
Client: "Can we add more yellow?" 
Me: "The colour has 100% yellow in it." 
Client: "But its not orange enough, can we make it more orange?" 
Me: "We can only use yellow and magenta to make the orange" 
Client: "Ok, can we add more magenta?" 
Me: "We could but the colour will be too red." 
Client: "Ok, then can we add more yellow aswell to balance it?" 
Me: "the colour already has 100% yellow, we cant add any more." 
Client: "Why not, we need to add more yellow!" 
Me: "But we already have 100% yellow." 
Client:"Ok, but can we make it more orange?" 

Client to prepress: "Can you turn the picture around so we can see the back of the product?" 

Expert author calls in with super, super rush job. The subject - How to avoid last minute jobs!


Charles at iMyck.com