Commercial printing is so much different from printing files at home. When you use your personal printer or go to a place like Staples or UPS, you usually only print a few pages and call it a day. But for jobs that involve a large volume (over a hundred copies or so), specialty paper, binding or trimming, and other extra specifications, you would have to delegate it to a commercial printing company that’s experienced with dealing with high quantity printed material.
When it comes to commercial printing, you need to take several things into consideration. It’s not as easy as handing a USB drive to the print press and trusting them to hand you your expected output. If you want your high volume printing job to go without a hitch, here are tips you should follow:
Discuss the project with the commercial printing company.
Not all printing companies have the capacity to adhere to your requirements. They all have different equipment, each with different limitations. Before you hire them, make sure to describe your goals and specifications clearly. Tell them about your needs, like quantity, quality, paper type, color model, binding, budget, and deadlines. If they can accommodate everything and even recommend ways to save money, then they’re the right company to execute the job.
Decide on a color model.
Do you need to print your publication in color? If yes, you should decide on a color model, especially if you’re relying on an offset printing press. The printer needs to set up the specific ink before running the print job, and the number of inks hinges on the color model that you choose. You can take your pick from RGB, single color, spot colors, process colors, or process plus spot colors. Alternatively, if you’re printing your publication to a high-quality digital color printer, then you need not worry about colors as those printers can accurately reproduce millions of hues.
Make sure that you are printing the correct size.
It’s critical that you communicate with the company the exact size you need for your publication. More often than not, the paper size needs to be bigger than the page size to allow for a bleed and printer’s marks to print more than one page per sheet of paper. Make sure to leave allowance for bleeds so everything prints the way you want them to.
Avoid synthetic fonts
Typefaces have different styles. Take Times New Roman, for example. The typeface has four variations, namely Times New Roman, Times New Roman Bold, Times New Roman Italic, and Times New Roman Bold Italic. There are typefaces that don’t have alternative styles. While they can be bolded or italicized on screen, they cannot be printed accordingly. They are called “synthetic fonts” because they don’t have these variations. Printing them is tricky because the equipment may not support these fonts. You may not get the output you want if you opt to use them.
Wrapping up
Take note of these tips if you’re going to a commercial printing company to handle your high-quantity print job. If you want to that’s experienced in printing marketing collaterals, get in touch with us today! We’re happy to help.
