Tips on commercial printing.

Now-a-days marketers think that the Internet is the best tool for boosting leads. They talk about SEO and how quickly information spreads via Social Media. In part, this is true but printed materials are the only way to truly advertise your company. No one will show their friends your internet ad. How many times have you clicked an ad? Now how many times have you bought an item over the internet? If that advertiser used Google Adsense or similar marketing campaign, they had to pay Google for that click and it didn't promise them any lead or even less a sale.

No matter what industry your business is in it needs aggressive - in your face - guerrilla tactics to survive in this economy because every field is cut-throat. The problem is that there's more to it than just bombarding your city with flyers. You need to strategically place advertisements to gain new customers.

You see people on street corners passing out flyers, brochures on counter-tops, and business cards in your wallet so obviously some people still think it's an effective way of getting out information. Strategic placements and follow-up printed material can have a great impact on the impression you have on a prospect. The result of promotional print materials all depend on where you place them and how you use them.

Now that we've gotten out the importance of why printed material is important, we'll move on to the specifics.

The industry standard for printing is as follows.
300 DPI in either JPEG or TIFF formats and bleed.
Now what does all that mean? I'll tell you.

DPI stands for Dots Per Inch. The more dots you have in an inch to more detail your image will have. The less dots you have the more blurry it will look. The typical computer monitor is 72DPI and the least DPI needed for Commercial Printing is 300. For the most part, your image shouldn't fit completely in your computer screen when you zoom in 100% at actual view.

The file formats to send to your printer should be in either JPEG or TIFF formats. JPEG (.jpg) are files that are compressed very much. TIFF files are less compressed and the quality is better. The difference isn't noticed by the average person. Also, some printers dont' open TIFF files properly and the colors can be seen purplish. It's safer to just use JPEG as your file format and the less compression / highest quality possible.

Bleed means that your image will extend to the cutting line of your print. Some times a designer might not have the image bleed and that will result in a border around the image. The border color will reflect that of the paper the image is being printed on.

If you are setting up your canvas to design a project for commercial printing you should know that some info might get cut off if your image is set to bleed. The best way to be certain you aren't getting any important information cut off is to set up margins using Guides.

Your design rulers running across the top and left of your window should be set to INCHES. Click-hold the top ruler and drag down to half and inch of the top of your canvas, then let go. A blue line should have appeared. This blue line is called a GUIDE.

The next step is to do the same but from the left ruler. Click and drag from the left to the inside of your canvas for a half inch.

Repeat both steps but this time you would need to run the GUIDES to the right and bottom side of your canvas.

You should now have 4 intersection GUIDES. These GUIDES are used as MARGINS. No important information should be outside of these lines to avoid getting it cut off.

JPEG Format
From the pop-up window titled "JPEG Options" select the following settings.

Quality: 12, Maximum, Large file
Format Options: Baseline ("Standard")

TIFF Format
From the pop-up window titled "TIFF Options" select the following settings.

Image Compression: JPEG
Quality: 12, Maximum, Large File
Byte Order: IBM PC
Save Image Pyramid: Uncheck
Layer Compression: Discard Layers and Save a Copy

Turn-Around Time is a very important thing to know about the print-shop you choose. Some have 1 hour printing for small jobs, 24-hour turn around, and it goes up to weeks and months. Ask your printer about the turn-around time if your project is time sensitive. You don't want to send in your design for an event for the weekend if you can't get the prints till next week.

Print-shops create "plates" for each print. The press use these plates to repeat the image with the ink to be placed on the printed paper. These plates cost the printer so it's included in the price. This is why it is extremely important to be 100% sure your design is correct. You might not have trouble with some but all print-shops vary on their turn-around time.

For example. If you Google "Printing Pembroke Pines", "Printing Hialeah" or search Google Maps for "Printing Hialeah" you'll find a designer / printer who passes his broker prices (explained below) to their customers. This print-shop offers 24-hour turn around on your prints. This means they work extremely quick and they create their plates instantly, so if you notice a correction is needed after your design is sent you might need to pay an additional fee for the plate. If you catch the misspelling, missing logo, or whatever in a couple minutes you might save your print without an additional fee, but its advised to check, double check, and triple check your work before sending it off to your printer to avoid paying extra.

As stated above, if you send in multiple prints into a print-shop you can asked them for what is known as a "broker-price" or "broker-rate". This means you aren't a customer who brings in a print once or once in a while, but you consistently take them orders. The more money you make the printer the more of a discount you will receive.