Learn About Commercial Printing

I have had many people ask me to educate them on my experience with commercial printers. It’s a scary business to break into if you have no experience. I have worked with printers for the better part of a decade now. I’ve learned the hard way and messed up a few jobs. Hopefully, I can help you so you don’t make the same mistakes I did.

For print design, you need to understand the types of printing available. There are dozens of different types of printing. It can be hairy. I’m here to help! Just finish reading the rest of this article to help ease your tensions.

There are two types of printing you need to understand.

1. Digital Printing – this is the easiest, most widely used consumer level printing. If you own a color laser printer, you can do digital printing. This is the easiest way to print, but not the most cost effective for quantities over 250. You can use this for bulletins, flyers, etc… This is what is called short-run printing. It’s quick and easy.
2. Offset Lithography – the name itself is scary! This is what most term as commercial printing. You will want to use this when printing brochures, business cards, postcards, etc… There are a couple ways you can learn about offset printing. First, read about it on the internet or at a bookstore. (Start with this basic article) Second, go to a local printer and ask them to show you the process. Most will be more than happy to tout their latest press to a perspective customer. Here are a few questions you can ask your printer when dealing with a specific job:

1. Ask if they can provide you print templates for your specific job. Every printer does things a little bit different. This creates less guess work for you, and less pre-press time for them.
2. How many inks? – 4/4 means full color on both sides – 1/0 typically means your piece will be black on one side and blank on the other – 4/1 means full color (also known as process color) on the front, black on the back. I am not including premixed inks known as Pantone colors, spot or PMS (Pantone Matching System) colors. There are also raised inks (thermography), metallic and magnetic inks. I can write an entire article on ink selections and how it works, but I won’t. I’ve given you enough trade jargon to pick your printer’s brain. Ask your printer to show you his Pantone swatch book. You can also pick one up on the internet as well. They are expensive!
3. Do you want your product coated? This usually is seen as a shiny coating on the paper. Here are some terms you can ask your printer about. Varnish, spot varnish, laminate, UV coating, aqueous coating. UV1 means coated on one side, UV2 means both sides. UV coating is one of the most popular coatings as it dries very quick under ultraviolet lights.
4. What type of paper? Here are several things to consider. Coated or uncoated? Text weight (book page or magazine page) or cover weight (card stock or paperback book cover)? Learn more about paper weight here There are thousands of paper types available. Your imagination is your limit. Ask your printer to see their paper samples.
5. How many pieces do you want printed? Believe it or not, it is actually cheaper to print more. It costs just as much for a printer to print 5,000 business cards as 1,000 cards. Paper and ink are cheap. Your quantity costs start with labor. Once the labor is taken care of, you can add another 1,000 or 5,000 for pennies on a dollar. Find out what your printer’s quantity breaks are. What is the least quantity they will print? Big trade printers will do no less than 5,000 usually. Small mom and pop printers may pick up a 500 piece job if they have a smaller press.
6. Is this job going to be printed separately or on a gang run? Gang runs have made printing accessible to anyone. Basically in short, printers used to run one job through the press and then go to the next job. They figured out you can run several jobs on one plate at the same time and make it cheaper for everyone. The only problem is you may not get the exact color quality you are looking for. They equalize the color of all the jobs to get a satisfactory look for everyone. If someone else’s work is extremely saturated and your job isn’t. You will end up with your colors slightly muted. I have never had any problems with gang runs because I use good printers. I have heard horror stories though. Learn more about gang runs here.
7. Does this job need foil stamping, embossing? These are alternatives to using ink. Foil stamping is when you see a shiny metallic foil on a printed piece. Embossing is when a printer indents the paper with a design. You can actually feel the raised design on the paper itself. The paper becomes the design with no ink or foil. These processes can also be combined to create very nice visual effects.
8. Does your job need to go to the bindery? The bindery is either another facility or a department within a large print house. This is usually where they do the foil stamping or embossing. They also do special cuts known as die cuts. Have you ever got an odd shape post card in the mail or someone has given you a business card with rounded corners? These were cut with a die cut. You can create any shape you want and they will make a special blade mounted on a piece of wood that will cut or score (create fold marks) your piece. They also have machines to fold brochures a number of different ways. They saddle stitch (staple) booklets together. They bind books like you see the book store (not all of them). The can perforate your piece so you have a tear-off card. They can print addresses on your mailings from a database and bulk mail without you ever touching your pieces. The list goes on and on. You don’t have to be a genius to access these services, just ask your printer. They will guide you through the process. Just ask.
9. Finally, does your job have any bleed? Let me explain. Pick up the nearest postcard or magazine. Look at the cover. Does the color go all the way to the edge? If so, it is a bleeding image. That means there is no white space between the edge of the image and the page. To get this effect, designers create a “bleed” in their designs. Here’s why we need “bleeds”. When a printer prints a stack of paper, the printed image is not going to be exactly positioned with the pages above and underneath. This is called “image shift”. If a printer cuts to the edge of an image, chances are the the images underneath will have a sliver of white left because they are not exactly aligned with the top image. The way to remedy this is to create the image 1/8″ larger on all sides so when the printer cuts the bleed off, there will not be any white left on any images underneath. Bleed allows printers to cut INTO the image to get the effect of the image going all the way to edge of the page.

That does it for now. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me!