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!

Many printers and designers belive the design is the key to a good piece of printed media, however, this is not the case for many readers looking to find your message within the content – design is critical and the visual impact and style play a great deal in the success of your material but ultimately, do you wish to produce art or send a message that your target market will easily see, read and understand?

A sound principle is to place content first  and design second – assuming you are following this, let’s now concentrate on some design issues.

Inversion Impact

When you read a headline of a newspaper, you will frequently find it has been inverted, that is the headline is in white against a solid, black background.  This leads to a greater visual impact than simply printing teh headline in, say, larger typeface.

This can also be used for grapic imagery and photographs may be particularly effective but you need the help of a skilled designer to garner the most out of such complex imagery.

Less is More

Buy no means are we advocating the minimalist approach but if yiou are trying to pack as much content into one page or one document, you are going to overload your readers.  Marketing and company brochures in particular are prone to this common error and it pays for you to take a huge step back and look at what truly is vitally crucial for your readers to understand and cut out the extraneous pieces of content you are stuffing in.

Work with the Grid

The grid is a design technique for arranging layout and especially for simpler pieces it is best to “Stick with the Grid!”

You don’t need to strictly follow the grid and settle for the staid 3 column layout; try experimenting with different combinations and personally I find the 7-column setup expands the possibilities enormously with sidebars, 2-column overlaps and so on.

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.

Designing your printed materials is something we all must face sooner or later, but whether you are experienced with the process or a first-timer, the results are truly only limited by your imagination and the ability of your printer to render the imagery created.

This is one area where good communications with your printer are essential as there will be some things that to you as the customer may seem a little off the wall and “out there” but to him are pretty straight-forward pieces to create.

To get your creative juices flowing and hopefully help you with your next meeting with your print partners, here’s a few hints and tips for you to use.

Think Outside the Paper

The mind works in funny ways sometimes and one of the quirks you can capitalize on is the m nd w ll f ll  n th  bla ks.

You can use this to your advantage when designing your marketing media so when you are looking at layout, don’t focus simply on what will fit in the space – use the borders too and don’t worry about overlapping the edges.

Paper Standards

Depending on the purpose of the printed communication you are likely to use the established paper sizes bu, there are times when you shouldn’t and there is no reason why you have to follow them religiously.

If you are looking to get your brochure noticed, use a non-standard size so it doesn’t fit precisely into a neat pile of letters and other documents – make sure it overhangs or peeks out of a stack of papers and this will help get it noticed in the sea of junk that everyone accumulates.

Content is King

Foxus on the content – this is where your message is contained and not within the imagery – don’t let design take over your project, it is important but remember people read so focus on that first and make teh design revolve around the content.

Finding a printer who delivers a quality product can be hard enough but finding one who delivers the same standards repeatedly as you order and re-order should not be a life or death issue that takes over daily life.

There are two issues with printing quality – the objective standards that can easily be measured and the more subjective aspects such as color tone, design layout and ideas that flow between you and the print shop.

When you are checking through the work produced, and particularly when you are making your selection for an initial print run, check out the objective issues first as these are straight forward and errors are simply and quickly found:

·         Are the pages in the correct order?

·         Is the binding straight?

·         Have the pages been printed positive with no mishaps with over-printing and the colors merge properly rather than casting color shadows due to misalignment?

·         Have the pages been properly typeset so they are printed with correct margins and footer and header spacing as well as appearing straight and true rather than offset at some angle?

Once you have this out of the way, you have to consider the more subjective issues which for the most part will be dealt with by a combination of your gut feel which will significantly improve over time and the feedback you get from others, especially the readers and users of your material.  In particular, consider the following:

·         Color scheme and mix; how the subtle use of color is brought to bear on your printed materials’

·         The ink coverage on your materials – is it acceptable across the whole spectrum of the publication or medium you are using?

·         Editorial and physical layout – make sure you do not allow the graphics to dominate your written message.

·         Compromises over colors and how your requirements are interpreted, this really comes down to how well you work with your print partner and the quality of communication between you.

This brings about one of the issues you need to consider; if the print quality is not up to the grade what is your position when it comes to getting the printer to accept responsibility for work that is not up to scratch.  You shouldn’t have to be looking over the shoulders of the printer at the shop, nor is it practical – you have every right to expect consistent quality, run after run, no matter where you happen to be situated and if a printer isn’t prepared to step up to your mark when it comes to quality they really have no justification for expecting your repeat business.