How do I minimize mistakes?

Question

Hello all. I am new to these forums. I hope I am posting this in the right place. I recently had a job for a book. It was supposed to be 80 pages; it ended up being 134 pages. The job came in late and needed to be done in short time (roughly less than two weeks). There were over 50 ads that needed to be created as well. Total time spent on layout and design, over 160 hours (one person spent 140 plus hours). As the book goes into be bound, I notice 6-7 mistakes. A couple of them are rather noticable. One is where a PDF was placed with a transparent background, but should not have been. The back ground image can be seen through the parts of the PDF that are supposed to be white. The book was proofed as we went along. The customer did not catch the mistakes and the design/layout individual did not have the time to print out the whole book before printing started or even along the way because of the short deadline.
So now with all of that typed, how do you keep from makeing mistakes, costly ones, when there is no time to print and review before the printing starts? Literally, we would layout the first 40 pages, send off to the customer, get the edits, make the edits, send to customer again for final proof, plate, print. While the first 40 pages were being printed, we are laying out the next 40 pages, proofing, changing/editing ... and this is not the way a book should be done! Now the design/layout team (mainly me) looks like they do not know quality or how to do their job.
How do you insure that your abilities, your true self gets to be shown in the print, when you have less than two weeks to deliver a job, with all of the things stated above, spend 140 plus hours of your life to make sure it ships on time? Without a major mistake? Remember, there is virtually no time to print out a hard proof copy because the press is running up your back needing more pages to print and the customer is still making edits to the pages to come!?!
Please advise how I/we could have ensured that the job was mistake free.
Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, You are largely answering your own questions...
The job expanded from its original size, came in late, short turn around time, multiple ads to create...
Blame enough for everyone, I am afraid...
In my experience, client are notorious for supplying material late. Persons planning the job like to think they can save or make up time at the end. Designers believe they know production... I have experienced this in every job I have had. (and being the guilty party, too, on rare occasions.)
Without asking a ton of questions, my first thought, is that you mention proofing repeatedly, who was proofing and what were their proofing?
Most use soft proofing of a pdf rather than a hard print out. This is fine for copy and layout but it may not show transparency accurately. The final aspects of the job must include examining Transparance, Colour separation, alignment and proof reading for spelling and grammer. (Spell check is helpful, but does not replace a quality proofreader.) Spelling counts.
In the end, doing something wrong is never faster than doing it right. But if you find a way to make everything mistake free...let us know...We will build a statue of you. Welcome to the club, we have T-shirts