The value of the 5th color

When you see a color brochure, pocket folder or newsletter, you may not realize all that is involved with printing these pieces in such vivid and accurate detail. Perhaps your company has a very specific blue or green that you use in your logo, online and throughout your print. In the printing industry, we use a color matching system called Pantone Matching System, or PMS. This allows us to specify spot colors by a number or name, ensuring that they are matched pretty precisely with our ink.

When this gets tricky is when we’re printing a four-color piece, which uses “process colors” or colors that utilize a ratio of each element in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) to produce all the colors used in the design. In cases where matching a certain PMS color is critical and we are printing out of four-color process, we would suggest adding a fifth color from PMS. Then your piece prints in C, M, Y, K and that specified PMS color.

To give you an example, we print a five-color newsletter for one of our clients whose company’s blue is PMS 300. It’s important within their branding standards that PMS 300 blue be properly represented in all printed pieces, so we not only print this newsletter in four color process, but we also add in PMS 300 as a fifth color to ensure that the areas printing their blue match precisely.

Have more questions about when to add a fifth color? Contact your sales rep or CSR today to ask for more information. As always, we’re here to guide you through the process!

How I can save money on print? - Size matters!

Quality with cost savings

When you’re looking for ways to save without compromising quality, we always have ideas. It’s such a frequent line of conversation with our clients, in fact, that we decided to write a multi-part blog series about it. You can always rely on us to help you make cost-savings decisions with each project you bring our way, but we also hope you find these tips and tricks helpful in the meantime.

This week: size matters

If you’ve ever printed two half-sheet sized flyers on your printer at work or at home in order to save paper, you are familiar with how size can impact your print volume. It works in a similar manner in commercial printing. Today we will explore this further, in terms of how the size of your piece can affect its cost.

Things we have to consider:

• How many pieces can fit on a press sheet, as determined by the next two factors.
• If the piece bleeds, or has color that extends outside the piece’s dimensions so that when we trim it, the color runs to the edge rather than having a white border.
• How much “gutter”, or space, we need in between each item on the sheet in order to trim it appropriately.

What does this mean to you? Essentially, if you’re working on a 6x9 postcard, you could save considerably just by shrinking it just a half inch to 5.5x8.5 because this doubles the amount of postcards we can fit on a press sheet, using less paper. It’s simple tweaks like this that can make a big difference. Ask us today how you can save money with a few minor adjustments to your next project.

How I can save money on print? - Gang Runs

The printing industry is a wacky and wonderful world filled with paper, ink, films, plates, cutting, folding, varnishes, and hundreds of other components. Just like any industry, we have our own unique knowledge-base, lingo and tools. Whether we are printing a simple one-sided flyer for your, or a complicated multi-fold, stapled (we’d say “stitched”) varnished piece, there are quite a few variables involved.

Quality with cost savings

When you’re looking for ways to save without compromising quality, we always have ideas. It’s such a frequent line of conversation with our clients, in fact, that we decided to write a multi-part blog series about it. You can always rely on us to help you make cost-savings decisions with each project you bring our way, but we also hope you find these tips and tricks helpful in the meantime.

This week: the gang run

Gang run, you say? Aside from sounding like a 5K for gang members, it is a cost-effective way to print multiple versions of a piece at one time. A little background information will help, so consider this scenario: You have four versions of 8.5x11 flyers and need 5,000 of each, but the cost to print them individually is more than you budgeted. A gang run is in order.

There are three requirements:

1. Each piece or version needs to be the same size.
2. The same quantity of each piece or version is needed.
3. Art for each piece or version needs to be delivered at the same time.

The benefit of the gang run is that you can achieve the per-piece discount that comes with printing a large quantity at once, while still getting the various versions you need. Additionally, we only need one plate because all the versions will go on one plate (rather than making a different plate for each version).

Don’t worry, you don’t have to specifically request a gang run on your next print job or try to figure out how many of your brochures will fit on a press-size sheet -- we will already be looking for the most efficient and cost-effective way to print for you as we do everyday!

Email Etiquette

The word “etiquette” is defined by Wikipedia as “a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group.” While on Downton Abbey it may apply to appropriate dinner attire or which fork to use during which part of dinner, today we will be discussing how it relates to email. Whether you’re an expert at the art of email or rarely use it, here are some refreshers on how to effectively communicate your intended message.

Use the subject line of your email to succinctly introduce your email.

• This will give the recipient a clue as to what’s coming, if it’s urgent, etc. For those of us on Gmail, it’s also a really helpful way to search for an email later. Something more descriptive than “Hi” and less wordy than “There is an issue with the file for that print job you are working on for me that’s due May 18” is optimal.  

Be conscientious about who you copy on an email.

• CC literally stands for courtesy copy, so if you’re working with a few folks on a project and primarily need one person to know the information, but want to keep the others in the loop, CC’ing them is a good route to go. Don’t overuse CC -- this just clutters up inboxes and turns messages into the electronic version of white noise.
• Limit blinding copying (BCC) to when you’re sending an email to a large group of people and want to save them from having to weed through a long list of email addresses to get to your message. Sneakily blind copying someone’s boss to tell on them can get you trouble if the boss doesn’t realize it was a blind copy and mistakenly hits reply all.

In the body of your email, adhere to general grammatical and punctuation rules.

• Be yourself, even be a little casual, but don’t be careless. Misspellings or LOL’s can reflect on your professionalism.
• Use capital letters only when appropriate (acronyms, etc.), because otherwise it’s the on-screen equivalent of yelling. If you want to highlight something, make it bold or underline it instead.
• Be clear in your message, but try to be concise. If you have a long list to communicate, consider using bullet points. This just helps your recipient get the point that much quicker.

Create an email signature.

• And always, always, always include your contact information in it (phone number, address, fax number, website, etc.)! It can be frustrating when you can’t find the info. they need to contact you, especially if it’s urgent.

Finally, remember that email is not private!

• Your recipients can forward your words to anyone at any time, and in the workplace, emails are company property. A good rule of thumb is if it’s something you wouldn’t put on a postcard, don’t put it in an email.
  
  

Don’t be laid out by your files | File Preparation

Are you stuck in your page layout program? Does it feel like a foreign adventure for you to layout your book or your business card? Do you fear that you have made a mess you can’t recover from? Call us - we can help! We are familiar with almost all design-related software and can assist in most circumstances to get your file ready for print, or take what you’ve started and turn it into the masterpiece you were striving for.

We recently had a client working in PageMaker who had never used that program before. She was worried that she messed up her page layout to the point of no return. Upon meeting with her, we were able to put her at ease and offer some coaching. Sometimes an experienced eye is all it takes when a computer program is making you feel like you are on another planet. Use us as a resource to help you in preparing/building your next file for print!

Beyond assisting with troublesome files, we also offer a full array of design services to take your project from a simple idea to a creatively designed piece. Ask your sales rep or CSR for more information today!