Print Design TipsTips and Information About Printing

It may be easy to find a brochure printing company, but not necessarily an excellent one. Since you will be spending a fair amount of money and want to put your best foot forward, it is important that you find the best company available at a price that you can afford. Take note that the company that prints your brochures in most cases will not be the same company that designs them.

Once your brochure has been designed, it is time to send it off to the right company in order to be printed. The following things should always be kept in mind when choosing your printing company: Quantity, Order, Proofs, and Turnaround.

The quantity refers to the number of brochures that you are going to have printed up at a time. In order to keep your costs as low as possible, you should always order in wholesale quantities. Order refers to the size and design of the brochures. You will want a company that is able to provide you with as many options as possible so you don’t have to limit yourself.

Proofs are the examples that a professional printing company should be able to provide you with. It is important that you see what the company can provide before giving them your money. Turnaround naturally refers to the company’s turnaround time. If you are in a hurry you should make sure the company you are doing business with will be able to get them to you on time.

Using images and designs in your document can make or break the impression it creates.  With the advent of desktop publishing, anyone with a printer and computer felt they could now take their monthly newsletter in-house and wow their staff  and colleagues with computer know-how.  Unfortunately, many have felt that they can add some X-Factor with clients and prospects and this is a one-way road to disaster.

Clip-art has its uses but client facing documents and any document which is being used outside of a business is not one of them.  Clip-art is cheap and can be fun when it is being used for the club newsletter or to announce a family event such as a house move or a party.  Clip-art has no place in a document you seriously expect a potential customer to pick-up, read and then contact you with the intention of doing some business.

Clip-art is free for a reason – it doesn’t sell your document, your business or your services and products.

Using photographs is a double-edged sword.  Good photographs and images are usually not free; many images have a copyright restriction attaching to them and if you do not own the rights to the image or have permission to use it, you are in for a legal shock.  Using photographs without the copyright holder’s permission can lead to legal action for damages and compensation.  It can even lead to you having to go through the expensive exercise of throwing your document away in the trash because you cannot get permission at all.

Very embarrassing and not recommended – always make sure you have permission or own the image.

If you are taking the photographs yourself, makes sure they are of appropriate quality.  Nothing speaks “amateur hour” more than a slightly out of focus shot or one where the subject is not properly positioned.  Using a photograph of a product is important because this is establishing the visualization in the mind of the reader – it pays to take the time to get the product positioned in the proper setting and to ensure you are capturing the detail necessary.

It is usually cost effective to hire a professional photographer to perform the shots for you.  Getting the photographs wrong may render your entire document ineffectual and force you to incur extra expense and delay in getting the shots done again.  Frequently, design projects are up against deadlines and tight schedules, and making this mistake leads to additional costs elsewhere in the production process which will more than outweigh the cost of a professional.

You must also ensure that the images produced are available in a format which will allow your print and design partners to manage and manipulate effectively.  Poor or incorrect resolution, ill-lit images or incorrect format can all lead to a significant deterioration of the finished product and may render them unusable when it comes to the final production run.  This just underlines how important it is to make sure that everyone involved in the creation of your document knows what they are doing and what is expected from them as well as the consequences of missing deadlines.