Print Design TipsTips and Information About Printing

Customer newsletters are one way of keeping yourself connected to your customers and prospects. Good newsletters inform and educate and bring interesting information and opportunities to the reader. Just as there are good newsletters there are bad ones, so take a look at these fast tips to ensure you create the former and not the latter.

Be Relevant, Be Meaningful

We touched on this briefly; to be interesting you need to be relevant and give meaningful information. Readers will follow what you have to say, but to be sure you are not simply sending tomorrow’s trash complement the promotional, sales orientated aspects of the newsletter with practical tips and advice or Q&A’s.

Use Templates

You don’t have to re-invent the wheel and there is no need to have journalistic or editorial experience. There are plenty of newsletter templates already designed and freely available for you to use – save time and energy, not to mention money, and select a template for you to populate with your content.

Write for Your Audience

Address the reader directly – we know you can’t call them by their name, but you can refer to them as “You” or “Your”, avoid using “Their’s” or “Them” because you are talking about someone else and be ruthless with using “I” or “Us” because you are now just talking about yourself. You can also include items which the audience can use such as calendars of trade events or deadlines, coupons and special pricing promotions as well as including your contact information in a handy format.

Use Your Customers

Everyone likes to see their names and faces in print, and your newsletter is no exception. Use your existing customers as case studies in your newsletter so they see how you solved their problems – this is a great testimonial for your business.

Turning a print project around quickly is sometimes an urgent necessity, but whether you are under strict deadline or not, everyone likes to have a job go through the print production process smoothly and without a hitch.

You can help to make the process go faster and without excess hassle by considering these two “fast” tips:

Don’t Submit Print Design Files as PDFs

Adobe Acrobat PDFs should not be used to submit your design files – they are great for making sure the content within is not changed but Adobe will automatically set the control defaults for web presentation and not for printing to paper. This will require your print partner to work around the default settings so true reproduction is achieved when the design files are used to print out the content.

There are a large number of design applications – PhotoShop, Quark, CorelDraw and so on – which are far better for creating and storing your design files. If in doubt, speak with yoru print partner for what is the fastest and best method for your particular print project.

Avoid Taking the Design Close to the Edge of the Paper

If your content runs close to the edge of the paper being used to print it out with, then there is a risk that the ink will not completely covering the full sheet of paper and parts of the content either being poorly printed or missed altogether.

The “bleed” is the space around the edge of the sheet of paper which is used to bound the content you are printing out. Bleeding is the process by which the ink is deliberately run off the edge of the sheet of paper to ensure full coverage of the content. Typically, the bleed is trimmed off the sheets of printed paper so they then conform to the actual paper size required – this means printing with paper which is larger than the finished product.

Offset printing makes use of plates and ink to create an image on paper (though originally, the technique was used to create images on tin in industrial England).  This requires plates to be created which is time consuming and labor intensive; the plates are created by burning and mounting reverse images upon the film, typically now computer driven, and by adjusting the output to balance the color and contrast. For this reason, offset printing is not susceptible to making changes, and especially not in the middle of a print run which makes it imperative that proofs are carefully checked prior to giving approval for the print run to proceed.

Digital printing does not require this heavy labor-input or the cost of creating the plates upfront – everything is software driven, so the first printed piece can be created without incurring great set-up costs.  The catch with digital printing is that offset printing provides greater quality of reproduction and when large print runs are involved, the overall cost drops dramatically because the high set-up costs are spread over a large number of pieces.

The question arises as to when a client should opt for offset printing as opposed to digital printing, so here are a few guiding hints and tips to consider.

Quality

If you are seeking to create a great impression with a glossy marketing brochure, you are going to want the enhanced quality provided by offset printing methods.  Digital printing does deliver high quality reproduction levels and which is catching up with traditional offset methods, but it still lags some way behind them.

Print Run Sizes

The size of print run will determine the economics of the case – print runs of less than a 1,000 will favor using digital printing methods as the high set-up costs are not present, however the variable cost of digital printing is relatively higher than for offset printing.  Larger print runs will cause a financial argument to move towards using offset printing.

The number of repeat print runs you are likely to need will also form part of the financial case.  If you are going to need extra print runs, you should ensure the printer is aware of this so they keep the plates – this will avoid the need for incurring the set-up costs all over again when you place a re-order.

Turnaround Times

If you have a rush job that needs to be done overnight, it is unlikely you will be able to source an offset printer who can manage the job for you.  Digital printing on the other hand, involves setting up the print run using a computer and software – changes can be made on the fly and there is a dramatically reduced turnaround time.  Offset printing is more suitable when you have enough time to provide adequate notice to your printer so proofs can be created and properly checked before the print run takes place.

Summary

There are obviously more issues than these few factors in determining whether you should use an offset printer or opt for digital solutions – quality, time and cost are amongst the most important ones however, and you should discuss your immediate and long-term job requirements with your print partner to assess which is the best method of delivering the material effectively for you.

In part one we covered why books are still the main form of dissemination of information – more so than the internet, TV or radio and any other form of printed media.  Books have credibility and in-built authority which can be tapped into by producing booklets – a cut-down version of a book which contains nuggets of information and allows you to mix your sales message into the content.

Here we continue with Booklet Design 101.

A guiding principle is to add value to your reader and their investment of time in reading what you wrote.  Provide information which is practical and usable by the reader.  A good example is a home improvement company – give advice on how to fix a shelf; a garage – car care; a doctor – healthy living or how to give up smoking.

Maintain the “uniformity of message” and this means being consistent throughout the booklet – a simple way of doing this is to ensure you use the same images throughout the booklet or if you are using different ones, that you ensure they are all to the same consistent quality, subject and format.  If you use diverse images and formats, you will detract from the impact and allow the booklet to deteriorate into a patchwork of ideas which will become easily lost, not least because you will easily lose the attention of the reader.

It’s a good idea to allow for some space for your reader to make some notes – a “jotting pad” at the end of each section or page,   By doing this you are personalizing the booklet to your reader and this is especially effective if they make use of the invitation – people rarely dispose of a document upon which they have written some notes!

As with any business literature, make it easy for a reader to find your contact information.  It may not be possible for you to have your telephone, email address or mailing address on every page but it is certainly practical to try or to have contact information repeated throughout the booklet.  Do not ignore this because when a reader encounters a piece of information in your booklet, they are likely to experience a “Eureka” moment – that is, they understand how your information can provide a solution to an issue they have – when that happens, they will want to contact you quickly.

Though a booklet may not be a purebred sales document (although it can be), this does not mean that you abandon marketing principles – as a reader goes through the booklet, there should be calls to action provided.  Examples are: an electrician – make sure you perform an annual electrical equipment safety inspection; medical – contact your doctor for a cholesterol test on a regular basis; garage – make sure you rotate your tires every 7,000 miles.

There are many other issues to cover but just because the document is a booklet and not a full-blown book does not mean you should skimp on the creativity or thought behind developing it.

We will continue with Booklet 101 in Part 3 with more hints and practical tips for you to improve the effectiveness of your efforts.

The Internet has revolutionized all aspects of life around the globe but it is not unique is a technology in creating such a paradigm shift in mankind’s development – before the Internet, there was the book.  Even before the invention and distribution of the printing press, books held great power over those who could read them, and they in turn held massive influence and power over those who could not.  Books are the main mechanism for disseminating knowledge and information and no matter how hard other media tries to replicate or surpass this success, the alternatives always wind up competing against a front-runner that has dominated knowledge and information for centuries.

Form and content are crucial to getting your message across, and while form may not improve the content, failing to pay attention to form may simply result in your message never being heard.  Form is crucial to getting your message and information read, understood and acted upon.  Remember AIDA from sales courses – Attention, Interest, Decision, Action – form is involved in all four stages while content acts as the driver for each of these buying stages.

The humble booklet is a miniature book, usually of a smaller size, far fewer pages and using materials which are of lesser quality or longevity than we normally associate with a bound and printed book.  Nevertheless, a booklet conveys the same authority as many publications and has some distinct advantages over a brochure which is more closely associated with sales, marketing and selling generally – a book conveys information and is authoritative – a booklet capitalizes to a lesser extent on that credibility.

Booklets can also be smaller than a regular book and certainly a brochure – this is highly attractive to prospective readers who may come across the booklet precisely because it is of a size which makes it easily stashed in a pocket or purse and lends itself to being read on the train or during a lull in an otherwise busy day.  Bear in mind when you are designing your booklet to use a size of paper that complies with your prospective reader’s requirements – small but not too small so it can be read easily enough and there are no barriers to simply pocketing the booklet.

Booklets can be used as a simple selling tool, but they carry with them the credibility of a book, so you can use the booklet to enhance your own credibility.  Look to mix your sales message with educational and practical advice so the booklet becomes more rounded and informative to readers. This makes the possibility of the booklet being referred back to by the reader, or being passed on to other readers more likely and even better, motivating the reader to contact you for more information and help.

When putting a booklet together, you are not creating a work similar to “War and Peace” or “North and South” – you are summarizing information and encapsulating it into the booklet.  This necessitates a thorough understanding of the use and importance of headlines and sub-headers.  A headline is there to get the reader to read the first line, the first line to read the first paragraph, etc, etc, but making sure that the booklet is broken up into bite-sized portions of information within its body is vital and for this you need to make good use of headers.

This article will continue in Part 2