Print Design TipsTips and Information About Printing

Maintaining quality over your printed materials is essential and here you have to manage not only yourself but your printing partner so you continue to achieve the standards you are looking for.

Tip #1 – Choose a Partner Where the Quality is in Control

This may mean abandoning printers who focus on price at the expense of quality; achieving the quality you are looking for time after time requires a state-of-mind to deliver consistently.  You cannot expect either yourself or your partners to deliver the standards you are looking for on the cheap or by cutting corners while if you are thinking quality, that is much more what you are likely to get with the end result time after time.

Tip #2 – Get Organized

Being organized will help you both to maintain clear communication which in turn avoids silly mistakes between initial enquiry and final product.  If you are not organized it also means more work for your print partner which in turn means more cost to you or a loss of interest in your account – neither is good for you!

Tip #3 – Punctuality

Your printing partner needs you to be timely with submitting and approving drafts – they have to do their share when you have done yours and they have other clients to cater to as well as you.  Being late, or leaving things to the last moment is not good for you either as you may be putting your print partner under undue pressure to get the job delivered on time when in fact you are the one holding everyone up.  Rush jobs usually mean more mistakes and poorer quality – be on time!

Tip #4 – Be Clear what You Want and What You Expect

Don’t let your print partner second guess your requirements – if you want cheap and cheerful, you’ll get that but if you want top of the range quality, you must make it clear to the print partner this is what you will be demanding when the final product is delivered.

Don’t hold back – be very clear what you expect and what you will accept.

Tip #5 – You Decide What Your Quality Standard Is!

You are the one who sets the bar when it comes to quality so never let anyone tell you what constitutes quality  - you set the standards and everyone will judge you by the standards produced!

If you select a bad typography for your content representation then it is going to impact all of the media you are using – bad typography = lack of interest; poor readability; printed material thrown in the trash!

It really doesn’t matter that you have highly interesting content, fantastic visuals from a really good photographer or graphic designer and a superb product finish – get the typography wrong and it all follows from there.

The type fonts you use will set the tone of the document and content; if you are unsure, stick to the established neutral fonts such as Ariel, Times New Roman, Courier and so on. Many experienced hands will recommend you look at Helvetica, Swiss or Akzidenz-Grotesk but personally I recommend you experiment with a range of between five and 10 fonts and see how you feel reading them.

The font size is important as this directly impacts the readability – if you are targeting seniors, use a larger font size to aid vision – I’m in my mid-40′s and have noticed my vision has deteriorated significantly from my 20′s, so larger font sizes are welcome for me too and I am not unique.  Small print is also frequently associated with the writer or publisher seeking to hide something, so be aware of the connotations of using smaller font sizes.

So, for the non-typofiles amongst you here is a brief checklist to follow:

1. shortlist between five and 10 fonts; use some you know and some you don’t for a good mix;
2. try out each font with both large and small font sizes and gauge the effect – you will notice some will slightly alter in perceived appearance and not always pleasantly; and
3. check each font type in both upper and lower-case letters as again, a font may look good in lower-case style but appear ugly when capitalized.