THE EFFECTS OF CLIENT, DESIGNER, AND PRINTER OPERATIONAL RELATIONSHIP ON THE QUALITY OF REPROGRAPHIC PRODUCTS

By

Author

Presented To

Department of Environmental Design

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 viii 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.