Sagmeister on celebrity, plums, and other stuff

Eric: Can you tell us of a time that a great idea you had resulted in a problems for one of your clients?

Stefan: We designed a charity invite for the New York chapter of the Gay and Lesbian Task Force which contained an actual plum and banana. 5000 invites were produced and sent out in the middle of a New York heat wave.
Knowing that we might run into problems, our producer organized everything to the spot. All New York addresses were to be delivered by messenger, the rest by courier. We had standing orders for 5000 plums and 5000 bananas. We felt safe.
On the day the conversion house were supposed to wrap the fruit in printed tissue, combine them with cards and box them, we had 5000 bananas, but no plums. Plums are arriving in the afternoon, we were promised. So they wrapped and boxed the bananas, afternoon came but no plums. Next day: No plums. When they arrived the day after, the wrapped bananas were brown and leaking. So out go the bananas, plums get wrapped, bananas come, but now there is not enough pre-printed tissue paper to wrap another 5000 bananas.
Reprinting of tissue paper takes 2 days. Now the plums are bad.
Somehow it all got done at the end, most packages arrived fine; the dinner was a success.

Sagmeister on celebrity, plums, and other stuff