Print Design TipsTips and Information About Printing

Offset printing may still provide the clearest print quality available, but digital printing allows for much faster speed and this may be necessary in a fast-paced, business environment.  Digital printing is not only fast but it is dynamic and susceptible to change in a manner which offset printing is not – making alterations to a work-in-progress can be handled in minutes and not hours or days.

While offset printing still holds the top slot for quality, digital printing is catching up very, very fast and for many projects, the level of quality is perfectly acceptable.  Full-color, high quality marketing brochures may be better left to offset printers, but when you have a constantly changing catalog or a newsletter, you should look to utilize a digital printer instead.

Size & Shape

Digital printing allows for quick and simple customization of sizes being used – offset printing requires the use of standard sizes with labor intensive cutting to size which significantly adds to cost.  It does not matter whether you are producing a poster or business card, an offset printer must use standard sizing and there are limitations on the dimensions in any event; changing between different sized jobs is time consuming and labor intensive, which again serves to dramatically increase the cost to you.

With a digital printer, you can specify virtually any size and any shape – you are only limited by the actual size of the printer capacity, which is not likely to be a practical limitation given modern digital printer sizes available.

Production Time

Digital printing is extremely fast, much faster than offset printing methods and especially so when color printing is involved.  Rush jobs can be handled overnight, even for full-color projects compared to two to three days for traditional offset printing methods.  More than this, digital printers can be changed from one task to another very quickly which also serves to increase turnaround times of multiple items required for one project while the inks used in the digital process are faster drying.

Versatility & Adaptability

Digital printing is run by software which makes it easy to manipulate images and text elements when setting up your piece.  There is no need to make major changes to the printing machine, which is the case with offset printing.  This allows you to play around with effects both virtually and in print so you can see how the finished product will appear when using differing design elements and techniques. This also does not require much in the way of manhours, which serves to keep the cost down even further.

Cost

Digital printing scores over offset printing in terms of cost – all the flexibility and speed of turnaround do not come with a premium but rather, they serve to make the process faster and minimize the involvement of expensive labor. With offset printing, the initial product is usually the most expensive because of the high set-up costs involved, but digital printing provides an evening out of costs throughout the run and removes the heavy direct, fixed costs involved – you end up simply paying for the size of the run with minimal set-up costs involved.