Print Design TipsTips and Information About Printing

Hee are some things for you to do if you want a huge bill for your printing and design!

If you have money to burn, here is a great way of getting rid of your greenbacks almost as fast as Brewster did with his millions

Use Non-Standard Folding

A sure fire way to get the printing bill through the roof!

Many publications need folding – a simple one page flyer can be conveniently folded once or twice to create a takeaway menu or neat mini-brochure.  The printer will have machines who do this and machine folding is cheap and fast so with that there is little issue.  try asking for a quote for a four-fold document and you’ll see the cost quoted ramp up enormously!

Why?

The folding for non-standard folds is done by hand and the labor cost is exhorbitant for performing this task as is the wastage rate during production.

Changing Design and Layout After Proofing

Changing the design and layout is costly because once you have gotten to the proofing stage you are on the final leg of the race before the printing and finishing processes can swing into action and manufactre the finished article.  You change the design or layout after this stage and you will have to cover not only the cost of re-design but the printing costs for those pieces which have been produced by the printer.

Make sure all your changes are done before the proofing stage; sticking to established design principles and working closely with your print partner will save you a great deal of cost and wasted time.

Use Complicated, Multi-Step Binding

The more production phases which are required in producing the finished article then the greater the cost to you.  Binding is essential for certain types of document whether it is simple stapling to form a booklet/brochure or sturdybinding for a permanent document such as a book.  Expect binding to significantly add to the cost of finishing the project if you are using complicated binding and especially if you are using a binding method which requires human labor to produce.

Make a Splash with an Expensive Cover

A great looking cover can attract readers but there is a reason why glossy magazines cost so much – they are hellishly expensive!  If you design your business communications so they need great looking covers then you are sure to find a very big bill for the photographer and design landing in your in-tray faster than you can say, “Vogue” or “Time”.

Don’t Follow the Established Rules – Be a Maverick!

Being a maverick is fine if you have the budget and the time to experiment with what works and what doesn’t.  Providing you have a bottomless bank account you can experiment away to your heart’s content with off-the-wall and amateurish efforts.  Someone has to invent the wheel at some point in time so it may as well be you!

Obviously this is all tongue-in-cheek – the object is not to blow tight budgets to deliver effective printed projects, on-time and on- or below-budget!  There are numerous ways you can save money and time and enhance your effectiveness and the very best advice is to find a print and design partner who is experienced and will work with you to get the job done.

Your letterhead is an essential piece of your stationery package and it is likely to be seen by more people than any other item you may use – you need to get the design and feel of the letterhead right because it is your constant representative to the rest of the world.  A letterhead forms the center piece of your entire stationery package and is an essential piece of printed material when it comes to creating yor beand identity.

Remember your letterhead will end up in all kinds of places and situations and will be seen by a good number of people who it was not initially sent to – every time someone sees your letterhead, or for that matter any piece of yoru stationery, it is an important opportunity to promote yourself and yoru business as well as convey your business communication.

Basic Components

As a minimum your letterhead should contain the following:

• Logo
• Business name
• Contact information including telephone number and website address along with your mailing address and email

Footers and Headers

It is typical to break a letterhead down into the header (at the top) and the footer (at the bottom) with the main body free to present your text.  By organizing the letterhead in this way you instantly  create a space to maximize what you wish to say but at the same time have designated space to include your basic and optional components you wish to include.

Break the header up into three distinct sections – far left, center and far right – and make sure you leave space between them so that they do not merge into each other which will create a cluttered look.  Typically a header will be between half to 3 inches and a good hint is not to use fonts less than 8 pts as less than this becomes difficult to read or allow the information contained to be easily located on the letterhead.

Similar guidelines apply to the footer but with the additional caveat that this is where you are more likely to put the “small print” such as corporate and legal notices.  Again use no less than 8pts font size because it still has to be readable but a good touch is to separate the footer with a color band or “hairline” from the body of the letterhead sitting above it and this can neatly tie into the brand identity you are trying to create.

Backgrounds

Using a background is an excellent means of differentiating your letterhead from the rest of the pack but it should be understated to ensure it does not take over the appearance of the body of the letter.  A watermark using your logo or business name is an excellent means of achieving this and is especially effective when you are using full-color printing – ask your print and design partner for samples so you can see the effect.

Be careful with the colors you use in the background as you must remember that dark (black or less often, blue) text will be running across the body area of the letterhead – if you have black background and black text is printed across it then it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to read.

Postcards are great for your business and personal use!

Moving home?  Simply tell everyone with a customised postcard of your new home with your new address and add the very personal touch to letting everyone know where your new crib is.

Have an announcement to make?

Using a postcard which is personalized for your special event or anniversary is a great way of applying your own individual style as well as showing everybody just who or what is behind the occasion with photographs or yoru own artwork.

How about an addition to the family?

What better way to announce the new arrival than a photographic postcard so everyone can get to see the new baby (or puppy or kitten!) and have all the important details included such as weight, color of eyes and whose nose and ears they have inherited!

Postcards are great for businesses too!

Customers like postcards because they can quickly see what it is that is being communicated and they don’t have to mess around with opening envelopes and dealing with more trash.  Using a postcard you also get to communicate your message to everyone who sees it and not just the recipient of the card.

Make your postcards LARGE if you want to maximize the response – there is a direct correlation between positive customer response and the size of the postcard although there are obvious limits!

Postcards are also cheap to design and produce and especially if you are mounting continuing campiagns they can be reproduced very cheaply so make sure you check with your supplier what the cost will be when you re-order.  Just be careful when you see a great offer for postcard production that this is not a teaser offer – many times the initial price you are charged is simply offered to suck you in with higher priced repeat orders and you then cannot move your order elsewhere without incurring all the set up charges all over again!

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.