The 3rd Book Of Great Printing Tips

From A Printing Pro

This book is the third collection of blogs I have written since the last booklet and having done so over a period of the past months in order to help keep my clients informed and provide them with an understanding on how to get the most out of your printing jobs and at the same time reducing your costs. I hope you too find this helpful. 5-26-12

Ira Blacker

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Copyright 2012 Printing By Design

Book Printing Check List: (Did I Get The Files Right and Am I Getting The Best Pricing?)

If you are about to publish your own book or a book by one of your writers that you publish, you are faced with two scenarios that you of necessity must conquer. The first is cost in book printing. Are you getting the best deal once you put your specifications out to bid to your book printer and are you doing everything in your power to deliver the most cost effective print files? Secondly, are your book printing files set up right for the book printer? Is the layout “print friendly”? Both of these things, costs and files, are inter-related in that poor files will cost you money due to poor efficiency and potential press mistakes as you will want to make sure that you are printing in the most press efficient manner possible.

“Swim Downstream” and K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) are two commonly used phrases in business and in life and so it is with book printing. When it comes to design, the biggest mistake other than just boring design that writers and publishers make is over designing for the book printing press. Keep it simple and work with the equipment, as if not you will potentially pay dearly. You always want to stick with the right book printing press and the best format for that press’ abilities. If you are producing mass produced books at larger runs, provide a page size that fits the typical web book printing press format, which is 5 3/8 x 8 3/8”. A 6 x 9” format will call for a larger roll or less yield from the roll and thus a higher price to you. If on a digital POD press, then a 6 x 9” size is most unfriendly as it can only be run one up and not two as the slightly smaller size can. The reason for this is that all digital toner type press owners pay a click fee for every sheet of paper running through the press. Thus two up rather than one page up is a 2fer.

Tighten up your page count if possible: You pay for all of the blank pages at the back of the book, so if there is anywhere you can edit and bring your finished book into neat 16 or 32 or 8 if necessary, page signatures, you are thus utilizing all of the paper the press is running. This is because it is less costly to the book printing press to add blank pages than to subtract any at bindery. On large runs paper is half of the cost to produce your book by the book printer, so any pages saved is money in your pocket. Also as paper is a crucial cost, a lighter grade will also be a cost saving factor both on press and for the shipping of your books.

What is an “Image Area”? The image area is the area on the trimmed page where ink will be laid down. As most book printing is done on a web press, web presses, like hula dancers have “jiggle”. This simply means that due to the high speed and older age of book printing presses as compared to newer heat set publication presses, the paper roll is not running through the equipment in a clean and straight path. If you have copy too close to the edge you risk in the worst case having some cut into or in the average case, the “jiggle” being more noticeable than it needs to be in the finished book printing. Therefore the average safety margin is to allow for 3/8” all around the page. Also, while at it, it is good if you can adjust your pages so that the copy is offset by 1/16th of an inch from the inside of page for a perfect bound book.

Don’t Mix and Match Inks: Four color printing for your cover, and text if your book text is in color, are printed using CMYK. Make sure you do not use and/or remove any Pantone call outs you may have first used to set up your color as desired. This will either cause a more expensive book printing for you or the Pantones will default to colors you may not want on the RIP. Other than metallic, fluorescent and bright orange or red inks, most colors print very nicely made from CMYK.

Be Sure That The Files You Upload Are What the Book Printer Requires:

1-Run spell check BEFORE you hand off your book printing files

2-Do not provide multiple pages as individual files. Provide one file for text and one for cover.

3-Cover resolution should be 300 dpi (dots per inch). A low rez “internet” JPG may only have 5% of the dots needed to print in high resolution with ink.

4-Provide the book printer with a road map with respect what you have provided, especially if you are handing off native files, with separate folders for fonts and images. Compress with WinZip, Stuffit or WinRar any files you are uploading or emailing as otherwise fonts WILL corrupt.

5-NEVER send any book printing files that are not to be printed as you can be sure they will be and that you will pay for something you did not need.

6-As with all printing “redundancy” and “clarity” are your two best pals in book printing.

7-Provide “book printer friendly” native files, such as InDesign or Quark and not Word or some other “book printing software” downloaded on the cheap, as the book printing company will probably not be able to use them. Most book printers today will only accept PDF files in any event.

8-Do not resize your images in the document program. This creates files that are too large and may not even be printable. Use Photoshop to size your images before importing them into the document program.

9-Create book covers that can be easily adjusted on press, to allow for some safety margins and book printer latitude if your sizing was wrong. Therefore a solid color, white or if art cross over art, that if the spine needs adjustment to fit, the cover does not look visually off.

Hopefully you will find some of the book printing information here useful prior to your next attempt at production. If you have found us to be helpful in your production of your book and will seek us out the very next time you require a book printing quote.

Contact Us Now by visiting us at www.pbdink.com or go right to PBD Quote Request Form in order to find out how you can benefit from some great poster printing marketing tools! Let us be YOUR poster printer!

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Direct Mail Marketing, the USPS & You

For those of you who participate in the direct mail marketing of your business message about your products and or services, there are some changes ahead at the USPS. First of all the postal service is assuring us that while they are nearly broke, they will still be in business. Good to know. However, they are changing some of the rules in the way we are to address our magazines, catalogs or other items that are sent out via direct mail with the presort discounts. Let’s take a look at what they are doing as it may affect YOU.

The Postnet Barcode for automation price eligibility and discounts will be retired as of 1/28/13 and is being replaced by a new system entitled the Intelligent Mail barcode, or the “IMb”. You may as I have a question about the oxymoronic use of the word intelligent, mixed in with government, but that is another matter entirely. Permit reply direct mail will also fall under this same requirement.

With the new IMb system, consumers will still continue to benefit from mailing their flats, such as magazines or catalogs at the automation rates that apply to their direct mail variables. The post office is further claiming that with this new full service system, it will allow you to better track your direct mail campaign and manage your ROI with the full service IMb.

The change in postal code is an important thing to track for those of you who publish magazines, catalogs, books or any item produced via commercial printing that travels through the mail system. It is important as to how it affects your costs, ROI and the last thing you want to do with anything in government is to not be in “compliance”. You would not want to see your magazines, catalogs or book printing project that you had just completed and spent good money on, not be accepted by the post office because your direct mail procedures were not in “compliance” with their rules.

One of the benefits of working with a commercial printing AND direct mail company is that you are assured of a commercial printing and direct mail capability that will keep you on the right track and assure that you will always be in compliance with your direct mail marketing campaign.

One further benefit of our printing service and direct mail services is co-mailing. Providing the variables of your magazine printing or catalog printing run and your direct mail requirements, you may benefit from this little known system of co mailing or “piggy back” mailing. Your commercial printing and direct mail magazine or catalog would be shipped to a communal location to then be combined with other direct mail jobs. The aggregate amount of the final direct mail shipment to the postal hub facility may be two million pieces, thus granting the participants far greater discounts than the best know “simplified” mailing can offer.

These are just some of the latest updates for direct mail marketing and hopefully it can guide you as to where your next printing and direct mail project should lay. Speaking of which Contact Us Now by visiting us at www.pbdink.com or go right to PBD Quote Request Form in order to find out how you can benefit from direct mail marketing services with PBD! Let us be YOUR direct mail company!

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Which Printed Materials Are Best To Market My Company?

Nothing beats the (well) written word or some great pictures (a thousand words) in order to tell your story! Beyond that absolute, the only remaining question is what commercial printing vehicle suits your business best as well as which company to choose from the many printing companies out there. Let’s explore both issues in some detail.

I use the term commercial printing as opposed to that of its younger sibling, “quick” printing, as the latter offers inexpensive yet simplistic approaches and in small quantities to your business printing requirements. My intention is to focus exclusively on the commercial printing aspects as not only does it afford the print buyer with a more sophisticated choice of approaches but does not make your “brand” look as if you could only afford the work of a copy shop and not the professional quality printing of a color offset commercial printing company. So, with that said, let’s look at some of your options:

• Catalog Printing: If you have many products that you offer in your company, then catalog printing is ideally for you. It offers much more space, due to the usual larger page counts of a catalog, in order to present your products in. The key is to organize it in a way that is user friendly to your customers and not spending more money than your particular widget demands. If selling diamonds, than you will want a thicker paper, perfect binding and maybe some unique look either created by spot coatings, unique paper stock, etc. If you are selling three dollar widgets, than go with saddle stitching and the thinnest paper the printing press can run. Web printing presses can run easily acquire 40# coated text while sheet fed printing companies can only run 60# coated text at a minimum.

• Brochure Printing: Should your message or product line not be as numerically enlarged as to cause the need for catalog printing, than brochure printing is just the ticket for you. The essential differences between catalogs and brochures are page count, with brochures usually having well less and the single page folded types: Six page tri fold brochure, single page letter size folded brochure, 4, 8 or 16 pages as the usual brochure printing run.

• Flyer or Postcard Printing: Always great to use a flyer or postcard as a quick inexpensive message, especially if you are utilizing direct mail marketing, as it keeps the postage rates down. It is also a great tool to use as a reminder or follow up on your catalog printing, with respect to a sale or new product information or pricing.

• Magazine Printing: Magazine printing is a unique and classy way to promote your product or services, as it has a friendlier face than just another printed piece of matter in the mail. Magazine printing allows you to tell a story about your products or services as well as keeping your customer base informed with your magazine on a regular basis, inclusive of all product and service updates.

• Poster Printing: Like “thinking big”, if so, now is your chance to promote your product, service or event with poster printing as a means of doing so? The nice thing about a well done poster, with effective and unique graphic design and quality poster printing, is that it gets your message out, regarding your new book, your widget, or service and may hang on a customer’s wall for a very long time, with your message as a continual reminder to them.

• Presentation Folder Printing: Always a great way to present your printed materials, as it is classy, timeless, in that should you keep your contact information on the business card you insert to it, never goes out of date. It makes a great statement about your brand that you care enough to use presentation folder printing in order to present and protect those items that you have printed.

• Book Printing: Yes, book printing as a means of getting your message out. The hard fact is that people would always rather deal with an expert than just the guy down the street. What book printing and authoring about your product or service does for you or your company is to establish yourself or company as experts or “author-ity” on your subject niche.

• Calendar Printing: Nothing is as friendly in order to establish your brand and get your message out as calendar printing. If done well, with attractive graphic design and images, calendar printing will keep your message alive for a whole year.

Hopefully I have added some insight about the possibilities of what commercial printing companies can do for you with respect to marketing your product or services with any of the standard commercial printing materials. If you would like to contact us with respect to how each compare on costs or any other questions you may have, we would be delighted to hear from you. As commercial printing experts we shall be glad to be of printing service to you.

Contact Us Now by visiting us at www.pbdink.com or go right to PBD Quote Request Form in order to find out how you can benefit from printing your book, magazine, catalog or other commercial printing item with PBD! Let us be YOUR commercial printing company!

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Is The Cheapest Printing Bid Always The Best?

CERTAINLY NOT! Believing that the cheapest bid is always the best one, is like believing in the tooth fairy. The problem with this thinking is that it is extremely anal, and like adding blinders to your powers of reckoning. Cheap is not always best as if you wanted a new pair of shoes would you simply buy the cheapest pair you could find? What if in order to get the shoes for the lowest price you had to cram your size 12 footsies into a size 11 shoe? Did you then get the best deal and is that deal worth living with when it causes you pain? CERTAINLY NOT!

What are the factors that help make the printing company with the bid that was not the cheapest more “cost effective” in the long run?

What is your time worth? How often must you remind the printing company about the same thing or worse, the same mistakes? Was your job delivered in a timely fashion or not? Did the printing company do everything in its power in order to keep your job on track? Did you get the feeling that someone was there who understood your requirements and, assuming they were realistic of course, leave you with a feeling that all was being done that was possible in order to meet them?

Did the printing company have the correct equipment? If they did not, here is where you get that analogy about “tight shoes” again. The “wrong” printing press can create a longer completion time for your job, mess up the registration of it and can cost you more due to the fact that it was not a very economical press to be running on. An example would be that if a very long run 8 page document were run on a half web vs. a full web, many times the half web, while a bit slower on the run time, would save you money as it is a much less costly press, with start ups and all, to run than a full web printing press. Commercial printing presses come in many “shapes and sizes”. The printing company should educate you about your choices and which is the better printing press to run your job on.

Did the printing company provide “value added service”? These are the little things that when printing companies can spend time with you in trying to understand your business model that can be offered to you to help you grow your business. What sets these printing services apart from the standard “quote it, print it, get it out the door” policies of some commercial printing companies, are the little extras that come from taking the time to look at your business model and understand what you are trying to accomplish with your commercial printing materials. Because a printing company has been dealing with these types of printed materials for a long time, those insightful suggestions can be extremely helpful to the print buyer. Many times there are little extras that can be given the customer along the way and at no cost, which also can add value to the printing job.

Did the printing company explain running costs? Web printing presses can have as much as a third of the cost of a job being the “start-up” of the press. Therefore once running, the “impressions” cost less than those at the beginning of the job where the costs to crank up the web printing press are first factored in. Were these factors explained to you, whether on a web printing press or sheet fed press and how you could benefit by changing your run quantity? Many people go on and off press several times a year? It is in your best interests to not do this but to print for the longest period possible without the materials you print becoming dated.

Are the bids “apples to apples”? Did all of the bids you received cover all of the work you require? Does each quote provide a favorable timeline for you? Is the paper the same in all quotes, not just by brand, but by weight and grade? Are there things excluded which could cost you more later on? Have you seen the work of the other printing companies quoting your job? Many printing presses simply do not maintain their equipment properly and may go well beyond the recommended maintenance schedules in order to save money. This does not lend itself to quality work anymore than a less experienced pressman will.

In the final analysis, price is determined by many factors and at the end of the day or year, your overall commercial printing costs are many times with the best printing company and not necessarily with the cheapest printing companies.

These are some things for you to consider before you commit to your next commercial printing job and hopefully can guide you as to where your next printing project should be placed. Speaking of which Contact Us Now by visiting us at www.pbdink.com or go right to PBD Quote Request Form in order to find out how you can benefit from web printing your magazine, book or catalog with PBD! Let us be YOUR web printing company!

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Poster Printing Fun-Damentals

There are many great and fun ways to use posters in order to emphasize your message, or make a person or an event shine. Your business or personal message as conveyed with poster printing can be an inexpensive and larger than life way of promoting your product, service, thanks or love for another. There are many creative ways that are both fun and impactful that can make for a great idea in poster printing. You can take classical posters that you have seen over a life time and reinterpret them with your own art and message. Poster printing can be fun and beneficial to your business or personal life.

Some ideas you may want to consider when creating your poster, or even have us create one for you, as you can benefit from both our design and poster printing expertise.

1-The classic circus poster 6-The civil rights struggle

2-An old time wanted poster 7-Loose lips sink ships

3-Uncle Sam Wants You 8-King Kong poster

4-Vintage war posters 9-Rock N Roll Hero’s

5-Theater and movie posters 10-Titanic Sinks poster

These are just a few of many ideas you can find online in order to come up with a fun and unique way to create your poster printing project, having both fun and success at the same time as you promote your ideas.

The making of your poster: First and foremost, make it readable. If you use small fonts on a big piece of paper, you defeat the purpose of poster printing. You want to be able to catch the eye of the passer by. As they say with computers, K.I.S.S (keep it simple stupid). Keep your message and art as simple and to the point with your poster printing creation.

Use a clever caption for your poster as that is the first thing that someone will hopefully see. Grab their attention with a bold and clever phrase. Layout your art with lots of space between each item and keep copy at least an inch or more away from the edge. Images should preferably be Tiff or PSD files, as with any use of JPG images you risk the encoding becoming visible when blown up large.

I would highly recommend that if you are a beginner, not to use any of the “office” type software, such as Word. If you must use Publisher, make sure you have it set to CMYK and that your images are CMYK and then make a PDF file to printing press settings, as most poster printing companies will not accept a Publisher file. Your best bet, if you have the acumen, is to work in Illustrator, and create vector files as it will afford you quality at any size, rather than risk pixilation.

A good idea would be to first hand draw your design with pencil in order to establish a map of your creation and an order of images and copy and then recreate on screen (don’t forget spell check ) and to pick your smaller fonts from clean and easy to read choices.

Poster printing paper choices: If you intend to make a larger poster, I would recommend using 100# gloss book at a minimum. It is an industry standard and usually prices well before you go to the cover weight poster printing choices. If it is “card stock” you want for your poster, most presses have good availability of 14 pt, and that is plenty heavy for most requirements. If you are intending to use inkjet for short run poster printing, the standard stock is 7 pt, and you will also have the availability of vinyl and canvas for your poster.

Size matters with posters: A fairly standard size for offset poster printing on most commercial presses is 24 x 36” and is trimmed back from a 25 x 38” parent sheet as printed. If cost is a factor to you than yield on press becomes important. You can print two 18 x 24 or 19 x 25” posters for close to the same cost as one 24 x 36” one. If you print larger than 26 x 40”, you then exclude most commercial printing presses and will be forced to print on a “packaging press”, and this will drive your costs up anywhere from three to five times the cost of a conventional poster size.

Contact Us Now by visiting us at www.pbdink.com or go right to PBD Quote Request Form in order to find out how you can benefit from some great printing marketing tools!

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Ten Fallacies about Commercial Printing Requirements There are many fallacies about what can be done in commercial printing and if you believe them you are walking down a very dangerous path that will create for you poor work and higher costs. I have come up with a list of ten of the most widely spread fallacies concerning the commercial printing process and will share them with you here. All of the points made herein will be relevant to book printing, magazine printing, catalog printing and every other form of commercial printing. 1-I Can Print With Web (72dpi) Quality Images: Wrong: 72 DPI is 5% of the pixels necessary for commercial printing. If you recall having ever shopped for a scanner, you will note they give you two dimensions, one being the width and the other the height. Thus 72 x 72 =5,184 pixels, while 300 x 300=90,000 pixels. Now imagine needing 90,000 pixels when you present your magazine or book to a commercial printer and you are supplying only 5,184. Your end product will look like finger painting at best. If you want to approximate how your poster or brochure will look, blow it up on screen to 400%. If you see edgy pixilation you have a problem.

2-I Resized My Images in the Document Program: No, No, No, you never want to do that anymore than buying a size 6 shoe for a size 10 footsie. All you are doing is squeezing more dots than necessary into a smaller space. You are getting nothing more than a “squish sandwich”. You don’t want your sandwich squished anymore than your images. When your image files are too big, you risk them at best creating a slow and tedious rip, to a default to 72 dpi or worse, crashing the rip and preventing output in severe cases. Bottom line, make a smaller sandwich. Use Photoshop to properly size your images for commercial printing first, and then import them to your document program.

3-I Can Use Non Graphics Files: Commercial printing companies will not accept Word, Excel, or other downloaded junk software for the simple reason that they do not have similar software loaded to their workstations or rips. But more importantly you will have nothing but trouble with fonts, image boxes, and text boxes that will be larger than you think when you print your book, magazine or catalog, as well as potential copy reflow from software that many times is unstable moving from desktop computer to another desktop computer. If you must print your poster or calendar or any other piece with commercial printers, then at the very least you must be able to export your files to an “appropriate” PDF.

4-I Designed It Perfectly, But…… Poor job planning is one of the biggest mistakes that commercial printing companies have to deal with when getting files from designers or self design amateurs. This is due to the lack of a thorough and complete understanding of the commercial printing processes for the items they are designing for. Whether it be a book, magazine, catalog, poster, calendar of brochure, if you do not understand the complete process than you cannot design for it. The best advice I can ever give another is to plan your job from the last stop and work backwards. Even if a simple flyer, print it out and look at it. Don’t ever count on what you see on screen. Only the best designers can extrapolate from their expensive high end graphics monitor which is still not accurate, to what it will look like on the press. If it is a folded piece or a stitched magazine, print it and fold it. This way you can see what actually occurs in the final process and plan for things like “creep”, how inner panels need to be less wide than outer ones so as to meet the final size required, or how pages jut outwards as they move towards the centerfold in a stitched magazine, etc.

5-Why Is There a White Box Around My Flyer? Because you did not plan for bleed my friend. Commercial printing companies do not have the time nor accurate enough trimming equipment, to chop right where the copy ends. Nor does lay down that evenly at the edge of sheets so as to create a perfect edge all of the time. You must create a “bleed” by extending the image area beyond the trim area required. This is then trimmed back to create the “ink to the paper edge” result. Even if you remembered to create a bleed in your native application, many folks just export to a PDF as the final size of the document and wonder why the bleed is not there when the files are given to the commercial printing company. You must set up the bleed by either telling the PDF prompt to use the document bleed, preferred, or to add bleeds and thus export to a page size larger than the final trim size so the bleed and crop marks are present for the commercial printer.

6-Why Am I Paying To Re-output My Files as it was Only a Change in Spelling? Spell Check your files in Word or if using an appropriate native application such as InDesign, spell check it there. Do not wait for the proof given you by the commercial printing company in order to find out that your magazine, brochure or book as a ton of spelling errors. That is your fault and not the fault of the commercial printer.

7-I Gave You Everything I Had: Handing over print files to the printing company, with either not all of the ingredients or more than are needed are equally faulty. If you provide a native application file such as Quark or InDesign, the default settings to these types of programs, unlike Corel or Publisher, is to link images and fonts and not to embed them. Thus if you are short some fonts or images in your respective font or image folders, they will not be there at output time. It is almost as bad to give your commercial printing company bits and pieces that may be from other projects or part of the work flow of the current one. You risk them being output at a cost to yourself. Never give a commercial printing company more than is required to print the job.

8-I Can Perfect Bind A 32 Page Magazine: No it is not possible to bind. Mother Nature will not allow it. Commercial printers have equipment that requires a full 1/8” in spine width in order to perfect bind. Less than that you risk having pages falling out and at best a real hunk of garbage for your product is what you will get.

9-I Want to Saddle Stitch 30 Pages: Wrong, again Mother Nature has you there. In order to saddle stitch you must have a page count divisible by four so as the staples may grab onto paper. The only way you could have such a booklet would be to have a loose two page insert.

10-It Looked Good On My Screen: As I previously mentioned there are very few experienced designers who can create on the screen with the experience of knowing how the end result will not just look, but perform on the press and at bindery. One of the biggest issues is dot gain on the commercial printing press. If you are not familiar with dot gain then you will be continually asking yourself this question: Why are my photos so dark? This is because dots get “smashed” when the plates hit the “blanket” and then the blanket collides with the paper to lay down the ink. The resultant effect is that the dots spread, thus the ink spreads and becomes a bit denser, thus darkening the final photo during the commercial printing process. You must adjust for this by making your images lighter on screen to compensate. Modern presses may only have a dot gain of 5%, while older newspaper and book presses may have a 15% or more dot gain.

Hopefully you will find some of the book printing information here useful prior to your next attempt at production. If you have found us to be helpful in your production of your book and will seek us out the very next time you require a book printing quote.

Contact Us Now by visiting us at www.pbdink.com or go right to PBD Quote Request Form in order to find out how you can benefit from printing your book, magazine, catalog or other commercial printing item with PBD! Let us be YOUR commercial printing company!

Stay in touch with us @ and don’t forget to like us on:

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The Seven Deadly Sins of Book Printing

Being a printer we of course are getting files all of the time for the printing of books and while many are appropriate, quite a few are less than so. I will do my best here to list some of the pitfalls along with adding some help on the proper way to handle the situation so that your book printing comes out to the best of your expectations. Here are some, but not all, of the mistakes folks make with their book printing project. My intent here will be to cover printing issues and not publishing ones.

1-Amature Looking Cover: Just because you used Word to create your text by yourself, do not assume that a cover for your book printing project is OK also created in Word. First and foremost, you are a writer and more than likely not a graphic artist. Let a professional handle this part of the project. Also Word, unless you are a master with it will default the images to a non printable 72 dpi, which is just 5% of the pixels needed for high resolution printing.

2-Improper PDF File: While you may be able to get away with text created in Word and having done so quite well, the printing company will not accept your files. This is because Word is not a stable graphics program and things can shift in the flow of copy, even from computer to computer using the same version. This is why book printers will not accept Word as a printing file for books or anything else. You can easily resolve this creating a PDF file from the Word document. The two things I will tell you though when doing so are to be sure to uncheck the box that is the default setting for fonts. You want to load in your fonts in case the printer needs to make last minute changes on your behalf. The second issue is to watch out when using text or image boxes. The space they take up is large, unlike a graphics program and it may cover over text, which then will not print. Word does not export to a PDF, so you will need the Acrobat or similar program.

3-Non Efficient Book Size: Book printers set up the press utilizing signatures. A signature which can be anywhere from 16 to 64 pages, depending on page size and press and after “imposition” by the pre press department at the book printer’s, the pages are laid out in anything but a reader’s format. They are laid out so that once folded, they then fall into a reader’s order. Size does matter when printing books. It matters in that the more pages out of a single form and if an even amount of forms, the more efficient on the book printing press and thus your wallet. If you choose an oddball size, assuming the book printing company will even accept it, you will have a poor yield from the signature and a corresponding poor price for the job. The answer is size your book for the best yield and typically that is 5 3/8 x 8 3/8” for a standard soft cover or hard cover book.

4-Non Risky Layout: Make sure that you are not cramming in too much copy onto a page. It not only looks amateurish when copy runs up close to the edge, but you are taking a risk that it will get cut off during the book printing production. Allow at least 3/8” all around if on a web press, where most runs of 500 or more are done. This is because book printing presses tend to be the older printing presses and have more “jiggle” or movement of the roll and thus if any copy is too near the trim edge, you risk losing some of it when trimmed.

5-Bad Planning In Book Run Amount: While most books will not sell as much as the writer will hope for, if there is any chance of sales at all do not print less than you need. If you have a solid belief that you actually can sell 2,000 books and if your cash flow can allow for it, print 3,000 books. The reason for this is that a third of the cost of running a book printing press is start up and once running, these high speed presses make each additional thousand much more affordable than the first thousand. You never want to go back on the press in the same year for another run, if you can plan to print a bit more as the difference will astound you.

6-The Spine Is Too Thin: If the spine is too thin, or too fat for your book, then the dimensions for the entire cover are off and can wreck the overall look of the cover and possibly even render it non usable. The book printing company will have a chart that they can use in order to give your designer the spine width sizing based on your page count as well as the

paper the book is being printed on. It is also a good thing to not have drastically different art and colors moving from the front cover to spine to rear cover as if so and your spine is not sized correctly, color that belonged only on the front cover, will wind up on the spine.

7-Pay Extra, Coat the Cover: As you are making an investment in the printing of your book, you will want to do everything you can to protect your investment in your book printing venture. Therefore use a coating on the cover. Your book may wind up coming back as a returned item and it will be handled by the printer, yourself, a distributer, a retailer and a purchaser. The more it is handled the more wear and tear until it is no longer sellable. The best bang for the buck is UV coating, which in most instances it is put on via rollers. It is harder and more durable than Aqueous or varnish, yet not as expensive as film lamination, although it has the same appearance.

8-Bonus Item: Color Pages: If you require color pages among the black only ones, try and set up your book so that all the color falls between black only signatures and ideally all together in one signature of its own for the best book printing pricing possible. You can facilitate this by having an asterisk or numeral, which points to a footnote telling the reader where the color page may be found. Mixing in color with the black ink signatures is costly as a single full color page will cause you to pay for at least half that signature as a full color signature.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Catalog Printing

The problems one faces when preparing to print a catalog are compounded by the fact that the average catalog has many pages with many items and there is a massive amount of detail which may trip up the lesser able in catalog printing. Here are some of the biggest mistakes that people make when setting up a project for the printing of a company catalog.

Droll Cover: The very first thing that the catalog user sees is the front cover. Does your cover look like a cheap tool catalog or a Tiffany one? This is an area where some money should be spent as it is the first thing people see. It is the introduction to your product through the front cover of your catalog. If it is boring, you are not enticing people to look inside. Are your top products portrayed in the most prominent way on the catalog’s cover? Did you outline them rather than just use a picture box, so they pop more to the reader?

Poor Organization: If you do not organize your printed catalog in the best manor for your readers, they will miss items they may need and you may miss a sale. Organize your catalog into clear sections, and provide an index in the front so readers can go to the section of their interest. Color code the sections along both sides of the page, using a different color for an inch or so down the trim edge, depending on how many sections you have. This way when your catalog printer trims your catalogs, the colors will bleed through the edge and your reader will have an easy way to get to the section of interest. This concept costs no additional in the process from your catalog printing company.

Poor Images: Printers print in CMYK and not RGB which is used on the internet and your desk top printer in most cases. Files provided that are not CMYK will have a color shift. This does not mean that your catalog printing will have inferior images as a result, but just that you will lose control of what may be color critical during the default RIP process, when the prepress defaults to CMYK. Also did you know that 72 DPI has just 5% of the pixels (image information) necessary to print your catalog from the same 300 dpi of an appropriate image? If you can avoid using JPG images do so. Use Tiff images, as JPG’s add a “noise” factor to the image due to the encoding process which can become visible in large images. This is not a problem in small images in catalog printing.

Poorly Written Copy: You are willing to spend good money on design and photography so why cheapen your catalog with boring written text? Use a professional copy writer for catalog printing, which we can supply, to write copy especially for your cover and “mission statement” or any introduction in the front of the catalog. Lure readers in with copy that entices them to go further into your catalog. Explain the benefits of your products and with dealing with you.

Bad Files For The Printing Company: Most catalog printing companies today want their files as high resolution print ready DPI files. Therefore you must start by using a native application built for graphic design such as InDesign, Quark or Corel and not Publisher or Word which will simply give you low quality and all sorts of problems. Do not squish your images into place by resizing them in the document program, but rather first having done so in Photoshop, as you build files that are way too big and risk crashing the RIP and even potentially having your images default to 72 dpi. Do not give your printer single pages or two page spreads, as most people don’t know how to make printer spreads which are different than reader spreads. Give the catalog printing company one file with single pages within, as 1,2,3,4.. etc. and if there is a cover that prints apart and is different from the text paper or inks, a separate four page file for the cover. NEVER give the catalog printer more files or bits and pieces than is needed to successfully print your catalog. You will confuse pre press, waste time and cost yourself money and time.

Not Taking Advantage Of Quantity Breaks: Big presses run fast. Sounds like a Bruce Springsteen song, but it is important to know from an investment in print standpoint that it is not much more money to print a few thousand extra catalogs compared to the costs of reprinting them if you run short. Yes, I know that you may make changes in the future, but again it is less costly to create and print price changes, product changes as flyers or brochure addendums than to print the same catalog several times per year. Ask your catalog printing company to give you at least three quantity quotes for your catalog so you can see this clearly.

Not Taking advantage of Our Great Services: I just needed to sneak that one in, but it’s true. With PBD you get great pricing, excellent quality and expert and friendly customer service from the one of the best catalog printing companies in the business. You get the help you need to prevent costly mistakes and a guarantee from us that our work is done to quality commercial standards. Try us out. We won’t let you down.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Magazine Printing

There are many bogus opinions about what can and cannot be done in magazine printing. I would like to set the record straight by addressing some of them here. Magazine printing is highly dependent upon the nature of the printing company’s equipment and as a result you either fight the tide at midnight or you work with the equipment at the printing press. I have always felt that with commercial magazine printing it is always easier to swim downstream.

1- We will fix it on press: This is the most common idiocy in commercial magazine printing as in most cases the printing press is unforgiving. You either compose you files the right way from the start in magazine printing or you end up with garbage on the other end. I am sure you have heard the phrase, from more than just magazine printers; “garbage in, garbage out”.

2- I can import the photo as is: Nonsense, you never want to simply place an image in a document program and “adjust the program” to fit the image files. Take your image files into Photoshop and adjust the DPI, color format (RGB to CMYK) and sizing BEFORE importing into your document. If you do not, you get “default” color without any chance to color correct, you may have the incorrect DPI for press and you may crash the RIP if your files are too big due to sizing the images in the document application.

3- I can perfect bind any magazine: Nope! Perfect binding only works (well that is) if you have a minimum of 1/8” spine when magazine printing and binding. Many times I will get the comment that “another printer told me I could”, which either means he was not a pro or the customer misheard. You must have that 1/8” or you get a sloppy bind at best, with a rounded spine or worst, pages will fall out. If you must perfect bind your magazine you will need to either add more pages or use heavier paper stock.

4- Placing Copy or Non Bled Images near Trim Edge: There are two problems here as they affect the printing of magazines. The first is that on a web press printing magazines there is jiggle (fast moving rolls that can move side to side) and you risk cutting into the “live image area”. Most quality magazine printers will reject the files rather than take the risk or ask you to sign a waiver. The second problem is that it is simply bad magazine design. Copy near the trim edge or a photo that does not bleed but right up next to the trim edge of the magazine printing just looks horrible.

5- The lowest priced quote is the best quote: I don’t think so. Back in the day when printing companies were not as stressed by a declining industry or economy many astute print buyers would simply go with the second to lowest as being always skeptical of a magazine printing cost that just “looked too low”. If you are truly about price, than take off the blinders and do the math. Factor in the money saved by less magazine printing mistakes, quality advice from a pro magazine printer and being shown by the printer how there may be a “better mousetrap” that can also lower your magazine printing costs.

6- Bad planning for magazine printing: This can ruin your whole day. You finally get all of your ads in and can go to print with your magazine and then find yourself scuffling around searching for a magazine printing company to print your next issue. Eh, eh, don’t count on that ever happening, especially on a web press and definitely not near the end of the month when all the magazines that are in the magazine printer’s schedule are set to run. If you cannot coordinate securing enough advertising with your file due date and scheduled street date with your magazine printing company, you will be in for a rude awakening as you are forced to wait at the back of the line, and having to deal with screaming advertisers. Plan, and plan more!!!

7- The deadliest sin: Not utilizing PBD as your magazine printer. Take advantage of our great care in handling your job, our expertise to guide you through both the pitfalls and benefits you could accrue when printing magazines with PBD. Think of us as your partner and safety net to help insure that your next magazine printing project will be the success you desire.

Contact Us Now by visiting us at www.pbdink.com or go right to PBD Quote Request Form in order to find out how you can benefit from printing your magazine with PBD! Let us be YOUR magazine printing company!

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The Seven Deadly Sins (of Graphic Design for Commercial Printing)

As a result of getting many files that “are not right” from designers that are for output in commercial printing, many times, more than I care to even think of, the files are poorly constructed. The designer looks at the files on screen thinks “nice job, I think I deserve a pat on the back”: Wrong, how about a slap upside the head? Well, I thought long and hard and with the help of some very cool and knowledgeable folks in the Communication Arts group I have composed my list of the Seven Deadly Sins of Commercial Printing.

1-Image Resizing In a Document Application

Many designers, whether by laziness or lack of knowledge take an image that may be 6 x 9” and place it into a design box that is 3 x 2”. Now it is true that InDesign and other applications will allow you to resize the box or the image. But what occurs is that the dots get squeezed and there is not a real reduction in size. The image is then larger what is necessary and when you do this too many times in a document you wind up with a bloated file. The net result can be a document that is way too large for a given RIP to handle and then the RIP either crashes, which does not help one's timeline, especially in magazine printing with its deadlines, and will not make you any friends in the pre press department. It also can also cause the RIP to process the files using a rather unfriendly default, which can then change the image to 72 dpi, the default of some rips. The moral to the story is never size images, unless a very marginal amount for good fit, in the design application. Size them a few percent larger for good fit and no more using Photoshop.

2-Plan the Printing Job from the Bindery Back

One of the best points I make to designers and clients is that you should plan your print job from the "last stop on the train". In other words, if you are printing a catalog or book, print it out and look at it. It may work on screen, but nothing beats the reality of holding the job in your hand and adjusting it from there. You would be surprised how many designers never proof their work this way. It does not matter if it will work on press, should it not work at bindery. In the final analysis it is still a mechanical thing. Some standard examples are the 6 page brochure, the “double gate folded” catalog cover. If you do not plan your panels to meet with a 1/8” gap, then they will fold with creases or balloon out. Another example is the “map fold”, where you must first “Z fold” and then “accordion fold” as well as being careful to use lighter weight paper, or you will be creating a balloon again. 3-Don’t Expect Exact Match on Colors for Reprints or From Proofs I tell my clients that from press to printing press NEVER expect to see the exact same thing from the same files. Even the most "exacting" ink system out there, the Pantone Matching System, tells you right on their color chart book not to expect that, due to the press mechanicals, the paper, etc. and to allow for a variance of a few percent so you will be happy.

4-Deliver Files with Appropriate Bleed Settings

I hate to tell you how many "so called" high end designers do not deliver files with bleed and if they remember to set them in InDesign, they forget to make the PDF the right size to show them. Set your bleeds in the design application. If on a sheet fed press they should be 1/8” on all sides. If your file has a bleed on only one edge, but goes from the top to the bottom, that is NOT one bleed, but three. If on a web press, many prefer a ¼” bleed due to “press jiggle”, meaning the high speed of a web or its age or both will have such a variance that even with 1/8” for bleeds that may not suffice. The most common mistake is setting the bleed in the application but when exporting to the PDF, forgetting to enlarge the page to show the document bleeds.

5-Understand “Image Area”

Not only does it look bad from a design standpoint, to have copy or non bled images bump up right near the page edge, but if you do so, you risk some of it getting cut off during the trimming of your magazine or book. Book printing presses especially tend to be older cold set webs and have more “jiggle” to them.

6-What Creep, Me?

Have you considered what will happen to your brochure if it is a multi folded piece, such as a roll fold or double parallel fold, where the stock gets thicker and thicker at the fold line after each consecutive folding of the paper? This is called

“creep” and figuring out "creep" takes some math. On standard text stock, the average is to reduce each panel by 1/32” of an inch from the last folded panel going inwards and deducting that from each successive panel, but from the size of the prior panel not the first. This way if you plan for a 4” wide brochure, you don’t wind up with a 4.5” or so one after all of the folds. Back in my music business days, the concept was "we will fix it in the mix", and that was wrong then and wrong in printing as you must plan for what happens in the bindery and not just on your screen or press.

7-Image Issues

The two biggest issues which are the cause of bad images are that they are presented as RGB or that they are low resolution. RGB is NOT a system that is used in the world of printing. It is used in photography and on your computer screen, which in most cases as, your screen is not accurate in the least. In the early days of pre press, prior to the RIP defaults becoming much better, just changing a file from RGB to CMYK would not only look awful on screen, with a chalk white caste to it, but similar on press. Nowadays, the default at the RIP, gives you something quite reasonable. HOWEVER, if you want total control of your color, don’t become a musician and assume it “can be fixed in the mix”, but fix it in the foundation by changing your images to CMYK and if color correction is needed do it in Photoshop. Otherwise “ya gets what ya gets” by default and “de fault” will be yours!

The other issue is resolution. Hey let’s get some resolution here buddy! Just because something looks good on the screen in no way, in this life reflects how it will look on a commercial printing press. If your files are “low rez”, then your magazine or catalog will have images that look fuzzy and the best you can do in some cases is to ghost them back or make them much smaller. Here is the deal Neil! Your screen resolution is 72 dpi and print resolution for commercial “eye pleasing” printing is 300 dpi (art printing can go double that easily). So let’s do the math, please? The actual dpi is not just 72 for what you would be seeing as a “so called clear image” on your computer screen, but 72 x 72. Now if you use the x as a times factor, 72 x 72=5184 and thus a 72 dpi image contains 5184 dots per inch. Let’s try the same for images that are 300 dpi and the required amount of dots for commercial printing and thus 300 x 300=90,000 dpi. Wow you say what a difference? The fact is that the 72 dpi image has only 5% of the dots (information) of the 300 dpi image. This is the reason why low resolutions look so awful in commercial printing.

Here is a trick to check your images, should you not have a quality postscript printer to output them to. As a rule of thumb, if you blow up your image on screen to 400% you will get an approximation (note the word here, as I did not state a totally accurate result) of how it will look once your commercial printer prints it. If you see pixels, hard edges and fuzziness, just know that it was not that drink you had at lunch. Your image is junk.

8-“Bonus Sin”-Spell Check Your Files and Last Minute Details

This should be obvious, but you would be surprised. If you spell check your file using the application or even Word or your email program if you must, you will not be looking at your mistakes in a commercial printing company’s proofing mechanism. If you catch your errors then, you have just flushed money needlessly down the drain as you will be charged to re RIP and re proof your files.

When you hand over your files for your poster, catalog, brochure, magazine or whatever, never add more there than necessary, as you may not only confuse your printing company, but may have just bought some pre press time outputting files that were not even part of your job. The same goes for records given to a direct mail company. You may need to keep records for email addresses, telephone numbers and the like, but this is not part of what goes into the addressing of your magazine or catalog before it is mailed. Needless to say, ALWAYS provide a “style sheet”, which is the road map to your files, telling the printer what is there, should be there and any last minute instructions.

Unique Catalog Printing Ideas: Break Away From The Usual

If you have a business with lots of individual products, one thing is for sure in most cases: You will be printing a catalog of your wares that you have for sale. You may be a manufacturer, distributer, or retailer, but more than likely you will require catalog printing.

Let’s look at some of the many unique ideas for catalog printing that could win you new business and maybe an award for creativity?

Layout Ideas For Catalog Printing:

Don’t do the usual and drone looking. Take risks, such as cross over art with a massive display, possibly in your centerfold and thus designating the same time and effort to the layout as you would to your cover. Leave white space which can highlight your products as crowding is boring. Give each product its due and if you have a few more pages for your catalog printing, you will win in the endas your customers will be able to better appreciate your catalog AND your products.

Don’t stick to the usual and predictable size format. Who said a catalog must be 8.5 x 11”? You can go digest size if you want to economize (5.5 x 8.5”) or a “slim jim” type of format, which is approximately 6 x 10”. These catalog sizes are press efficient, as is a landscape version of the standard size with it turned on end for 11 x 8.5” and giving you a catalog printer’s spread of 22 x 8.5”. You could also do an elongated sheet that would accordion fold, but if you have many pages it would not work, as the length of the press would determine the lengh of the catalog. However, if you did each section as a single accordion folded product and inserted into a custom binding case for your catalog that would be an eye popper. Expensive yes, but for reprints you would just need to print sections as prices and products change. This sure beats the look of a three ring binder.

Use a copywriter to write your page copy and speak about your images, extolling the benefits to your users of how they will gain by utilizing your products and or services. Highlight your new additions, your best sellers, items you want to push and the most unique items in your catalog printing.

Create a Layout for Catalog Printing That Is User Friendly

Organize your catalog printing into sections and add an index to all of the sections in the front of the book. You could add pricing to select items, all items or none and thus utilize a price chart in the back of the catalog you are printing. You could even have a price sheet as a separate booklet with just black ink on offset stock. Why this idea makes sense, is that you could update your catalog, without having to reprint it, on a regular basis should your prices change. If you are servicing multi level users, such as a distributor, wholesaler, end user etc. you could have different inserts priced for each.

Make Your Catalog Sections Easy To Locate

If you do not want to add die cut tabs to the printing of your catalog, which can drive the cost up, especially if your sections do not break at even signatures of 16 pages, then color code the sections. Have a solid color an inch or so down from the top, changing for each section, and appearing under the last. Be sure to print on both sides of the page with the bars, as when the cutting blade slams down on the catalog it drives the ink into the edge of the paper and creates a color on the edge itself.

Paper and Coatings To Create Eye Candy

If you have a product to sell, try using a dull coated paper and then utilize spot UV for the ultimate effect, or for far less cost spot varnish on just the images. The contrast will be astounding. If you are selling a service, where I think this would be more appropriate, use a dull cream or natural coated stock with the same spot coating treatment for your catalog printing project. Another nice touch for your catalog printing would be to use a UV Vellum translucent sheet right after the cover and before the text pages, with a personal message to the user. You could or not, add a matching sheet to the back of the catalog you are printing.

Try a Different Bindery Solution For Your Catalog

There is more out there than just saddle stitching or perfect binding should you have a page count that offers the minimum 1/8” in order to perfect bind.

1- Wire-O Binding: This is a similar bind to spiral, where you seem to see two separate wires together but binds as spiral. It looks more up market than spiral bound catalogs but it actually costs the same and catalog printers prefer it to spiral as it is less labor intensive due to being a speedier process.

2- Hidden Wire-O: Same as above, but calls for the printing of a wider cover to accommodate the “hiding”. The cover is placed on the text with the front cover opening wide and bent back. The holes are punched and the wire placed through the text and only the back cover. When the front cover of the catalog wraps back over it, the spine and front cover look as if perfect bound. This way if it sits on the shelf somewhere as a reference catalog, you can have your message printed on the spine as well.

3- Die Cutting Treatments: You can die cut a simple square or round hole, or if you want to spend money on a more intricate die, something more artful and lavish. This can not only offer your catalog printing an artful look, but you can also layout your first page of text to be creatively read via the openings. You could further create a piece that opens as a high class invitation, from four sides, with square, round or pointed flaps and your text in the center as individual sheets or stitched or glued in place pad like.

4- Presentation Folder Style: This style would allow you to benefit from printing a catalog cover that you could use for years and only having to print the text, and pull the covers from storage each time you need them. You could stitch a booklet into the center of the presentation folder, add loose pages, even staggered ones into the pockets and also build a “capacity folder” which allows for greater depth in the pockets and spine.

Personalization of Your Catalog

If your catalog is being created for an existing customer base, it is not too expensive to “personalize” a page and place it in the front of the catalog. You could just have a standard paragraph, with addressing info added, such as Dear Jim, plus message and this could be done by ink jet printing. Should you want to personalize an entire page you would need to move over to the laser printing process where an entire page could be different for each customer with commentary that would only relate to that one person. Do you think that person would “feel the love”? I think so!

Use your catalog to create a buzz, to be remembered and to make your products or services stand out. Create a catalog that people want to keep on their desk as it is a work of beauty and unique in its design. In the long run, the longer the customer holds on to your catalog, the more likely to buy your products listed in your catalog.

These are just some of ideas for creative catalog printing and hopefully it can guide you as to where your next printing project should lay. Speaking of which Contact Us Now by visiting us at www.pbdink.com or go right to PBD Quote Request Form in order to find out how you can benefit from catalog printing with PBD! Let us be YOUR catalog printing company!

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Web Printing: Not All Things to All Potential Users

Web printing is an amazing technology. It is fast, given the right parameters it is cheap and with today’s modern high speed web presses, you cannot tell the difference in quality between web printing and sheet fed printing, except maybe for the glossier sheet to the paper coming off the web printer’s rolls, which tend to pick up a bit more “polish” from the run. So, when does one rely on web printing to run a commercial printing job and no longer consider the one sheet through the press at a time of sheet fed printing? Answer: When you have sufficient quantity and/or page count and can work within the stricter variables of web printing.

Let’s take a look at some of the variables that should enter into your decision in order to choose between a web printing company and a sheet fed printing one.

1- Quantity: Generally speaking this can vary between half webs, full web printers, cold set web and heat set web, so my answers will in fact be general at this time. Suffice it to say, that the less expensive to run cold set web printing press, would be able to run large page counts, with smaller overall quantities than heat set web printing presses. This is why you see many book printing web printing companies quoting jobs starting at one thousand books. That said a typical starting point for a heat set web printing press would be a 64 page periodical at about 5,000 copies at full page size or 10,000 at digest size.

2- Price: Per the above, it may be a tossup sometimes whether web printing or sheet fed may come in best price wise at the bottom quantities, but once running, web printing will rule. The problem with costs on a web printing press is that the startup cost to run these behemoths are massive as compared to sheet fed. But once running, it is the cost per impression that brings the price way down with web printing, once you are past the initial start up costs. As an example 100,000 of the same 64 page booklet may be a quarter to half the cost on a web printing press than on a sheet fed one.

3- Quality: Moot, so long as you are on a modern digital web printing press, with direct to plate technology quality is no longer an issue. It may have been prior to the economy going south, when ad agencies wanted to print with spot colors in addition to process ones for an effect, but then it was a waste of money and now it is simply not affordable. There are many more six color, as it is the state of the craft, sheet fed presses, than web printing presses.

4- Press Checking: Here is a sticky point, in that simply due to the start up and running costs of a web printing press, if you insist on a press check, you better have two things going for you: 1-your files were perfect and 2-your knowledge of printing is perfect, otherwise if the press check takes forever on a web printing press, you will not be overly welcome back. If there ever was a phrase that is well put, as in web printing, it is “time is money”!

5- Usual Suspects: The items one associate most with web printing due to quantity and page count, are books, magazines, catalogs, manuals and even brochures if the quantity is large enough. Runs with post cards, business cards, flyers in most cases are generally relegated to the sheet fed press.

6- “No Sheet, I Did Not Know That: Many periodical web printers do not have sheeters at the end of the press and that printing press produces folded signatures at the end of the web. This way it is best suited for magazines, books or catalogs, as the bindery just has to “marry” each signature, usually anywhere from 16-32 pages with double web press, and bind. This makes it difficult to produce things like poster printing on a web press, unless that rare web press has a “sheeter”, which is capable of cutting the roll into sheets without folding them first into signatures.

7- Paper Stocks: A great advantage over a sheet fed press is had by a web printer due to the fact that the paper comes in roll stock and does not have to be fed, sheet by sheet through the printing press, the web printer can run very light paper stocks. Typical would be news print at 27.7 pounds or 32# gloss for mass run magazine printing. Sheet fed must start with 60# gloss book, or 50# uncoated offset as the minimal weight that can be run through a sheet fed printing press. Even then many printers do not like to run the 60# as it jams the printing

press and will charge the customer the same price to run 70# due to the waste from the lighter paper stock. The converse is also true in that web presses cannot run heavy stock to the same extent as a sheet fed printing press. Most web printing companies will only go to 9 pt (approx. 100# cover) and then only run C2S, as the uncoated side of C1S leaves too much dust in its wake on the web printing press. Many sheet fed printers will run 24 pt cover.

8- Automation: Here is a great advantage, which also adds to the speed of the web printing press. The modern web printing presses, as an example can do plate changes, with adjustments to color and registration within ten minutes versus the same on a sheet fed press which could be an hour or longer to do the same. As this saves time it saves money for time is money and thus you save some as a result of press efficiency.

These are just some of the differences between web printing and sheet fed and hopefully it can guide you as to where your next printing project should lay. Speaking of which Contact Us Now by visiting us at www.pbdink.com or go right to PBD Quote Request Form in order to find out how you can benefit from web printing your magazine, book or catalog with PBD! Let us be YOUR web printing company!

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Web Printing: Always Swimming Downstream

Web offset printing differs from commercial sheet fed printing primarily in three ways: 1- It prints on continuous feeding roll paper and 2- It prints at extremely high speeds, much faster than a sheet fed press. 3- Web printing presses in most cases fold the signatures as they come off the end of the press, although some web presses are capable of sheeting to flat sheets. Due to the speed efficiency of the web printing press it therefore is more suited to printing higher runs of multiple page documents than a sheet fed press, such as magazines, books, newspapers or catalogs. It like sheet fed printing is a form of offset printing in that both first transfer the inks to a “blanket”, which then transfers the inks to the paper. In the case of both, digital printing is synonymous with “direct to plate” filmless printing.

Web printing is generally further broken down into two categories: Those that can print on coated stocks and have heaters to dry the ink, and know as “heat set” webs and those that cannot and only can print on uncoated stock and thus known as “cold set” webs. While it is a rare sheet fed press that can “perfect”, meaning printing on both sides of the signature at the same time, almost all web printing presses are “perfectors” and they print on both sides of the sheet at the same time. Some web printing presses also make use of double rolls, printing two 16 page signatures at the same time, thus running 32 pages at once.

Web printing presses run at speeds of anywhere from 300-3,000 feet per minute. These presses also come in various combinations from “full” web printing presses, to “half” webs which are less costly to operate and perfect for small page counts of from 2-8. There are also “quarter” webs, such as the Didde, and label printing web presses, which is how most commercial labels are printed. These web printing presses may only have a roll width of a few inches or more.

Some of the considerations you will need to keep in mind when printing on a web printing press are as follows:

1-Acceptable file formats - Web printing companies are much more prone to only accept PDF files and how the PDF is constructed varies from press to press. They will accept the well known professional native applications, like InDesign or Illustrator, but will charge extra to convert to a PDF.

2-Bleeds – Many web printing presses require a larger bleed area, usually a quarter inch, than a sheet fed press.

3-Jiggle – This is a very important word for you to know, in that you should plan for this in your design. Jiggle is the movement of the roll of paper through the web printing press. It is worse on older and cold set presses than the newest heatset ones. Therefore you want to K.I.S.S. keep it simple stupid, as with computers. It is best not to have repetitive border art or crossover art (same image covering two opposite pages) as you may be unhappy with the results, seeing one page having a higher frame than another, or crossover art that does not come together quite perfectly.

4-Page counts – Web Printing is less forgiving on page counts. This is where, if you can, you will want to swim downstream with your magazine or catalog pages. Since the set ups are far more costly than on a sheet fed press, printing an odd lot 4 pages will also be more costly. Some web printers can have better pricing for up to a 16 page signature than for a 4 page one. This is why you see blank pages at the back of all books.

5-Papers – Paper on a web printing press differ from sheet fed in two respects: 1- as the coated ones move more rapidly through the machinery, they pick up some extra gloss, which is why web printers can brag about a glossier look to their finished product. 2- sheet-fed printers can only run stocks as thin as 60# in weight and will whine

about even that, web printers can run roll stocks such as 28# news, 32# gloss, 14# NCR which are common light weight stocks.

The important thing about creating files for web printing is that you must create them in a way that keeps you “swimming downstream”, as these web presses are very anal, very efficient and very unforgiving if you do not. Therefore you want to produce files that “work with the press” and can take advantage of web printing press efficiency. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel or you will reinvent your costs well upward.

Contact Us Now by visiting us at www.pbdink.com or go right to PBD Quote Request Form in order to find out how you can benefit from printing your book, magazine, catalog or other commercial web printing item with PBD! Let us be YOUR web printing company!

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What Makes A Printing Company Unique?

There are two distinct types of buyers who seek the services of printing companies: The first is basing that choice solely on price and the latter, the traditional print buyer, basis the choice as to which printing company chosen, based on other values. Of course there are some that consider many different values before making a decision as to which printing company to choose. Let’s take a look at what these choices may be and why we feel we are unique.

When I first entered the business printing arena, I worked for a very short time for someone else. I lasted three weeks at that printing company due to the fact that the person I worked with could not think outside of the box. I could and did and she found it infuriating. The standard approach for most printing company sales folks is to take down your specs, not ask too many questions other than making sure the have the specifications correct for your book, catalog, magazine or other printing press item.

My approach has always been to think outside of the standard printing company box, first wanting to know more about the objectives of the person seeking the printing company quote and then using my understanding of marketing and sales as well as potential money saving ideas or a “better mousetrap” would and do make suggestions along those lines. First and foremost, I believe I should be serving the customers best interests and to not offer these ideas and options would be to provide inferior printing services.

Let’s look at what are the traits that would make our printing company unique among the many printing presses in America, including price and other printing services.

1- Credibility: Right on our home page we ask and answer what we are all about and the answer there is credibility. What this means to you is that as a printing company, you can always trust what you are told by us and that you never have to look over your shoulder to see if our printing company is acting in what are your best interests.

2- Value Added Service: This means that if we can do more for the customer, our printing company is more than willing to be as helpful as is reasonably possible with respect to the printing service that we render. If you have questions about your files we will be happy to check free of charge prior to them going to pre press and avoid excessive costs for you or mistakes. If we have additional ideas on the nature of what you are printing and can offer better solutions we do. We are also not shy about offering the occasional marketing advice to those enquiring.

3- Red Flags, Your Product & Catches: If we see the red flags in your files, such as lack of bleeds, inferior images, glaringly bad copy on covers, etc. We will take the time and point these things out to our printing company customer.

4- Widest Range of Capabilities: In most cases, you will receive the widest range of printing press capabilities. This insures that your product is “on the right press, at the right price and right now”, to borrow a phrase from the company selling gold on TV. With our ability to price and print your magazine, book, catalog, poster, folder or any type of commercial printing job on the best printing press for you, the customer’s needs, we can be there for you. Whether your requirements are price driven, time driven, or quality driven our printing company will be there for you. You can benefit from short and fast runs on our digital printing presses, medium runs on the sheet fed printing press or for longer runs for books, magazines or multi page catalogs on the web printing press.

5- Free Consultation: If you are not quite sure on how to approach your printing project, we will gladly spend some time with you free of charge and try to suggest some of the many avenues that you can take. Our printing company wants to be your full partner in your printing venture’s success.

6- Promotion of Your Business: We are always going the extra mile at our printing company for our clients. At the moment we are providing our clients free of charge, on their multi page booklets, manuals, brochures, magazines, books or catalogs, with minimal print version, an online version that reads just like a periodical, with

bookmarking abilities, pages that flip like the printed piece, an index and can also have links to your URL or Email address.

The bottom line: Our printing company values your business and if we can step out of the box are we willing to do so? You Betcha! Your success is part of our success. Our printing company wants to see you succeed, as if you do, we are right there with you.

Speaking of printing companies Contact Us Now by visiting us at www.pbdink.com or go right to PBD Quote Request Form in order to find out how you can benefit from commercial printing expertise with PBD! Let us be YOUR personal printing company!

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