What if you have a big printing job in which you need the best quality, meet a specified deadline and you need the services of a reliable commercial printing company? If this is the first time to search for print services how do you choose from dozens of companies you find on the web?

Here is a short list that you can use to help you select the best commercial printing company for your project.

1. It has a 7 Stage Quality Process.

Some printing companyies only have less than seven points on quality control process. A complete quality check procedure from the acceptance of the project to the print production stage up to the packing and shipping stage will ensure that you will get the highest quality of printing services possible.

This can be made even more available if your printer is offering offshore printing services. It will dramatically lower your printing costs which you can then channel to your other priorities such as advertising and marketing. The quality of the print product remains the same and will not be affected. It is just the cost of the production that will change.

3. In-house design team.

There are times that what you only have is the idea or the copy for your printing project, but not the design or layout aspect of it. This is where an in-house design team of your printing company can come in handy.
You can rely on them to create the best possible design for you. And it is often more cost-efficient than if you would hire a separate design artist.

4. Gives you expert printing advice.

Especially if this is your first print outsourcing job, then a lot of the industry terms and standards would definitely be totally new to you. You would probably have no clue as to what paper size or paper stock you need, what color printing services are best for your project, or how you can save more by choosing a certain service or procedure. Your printer should be able to provide you with expert advice on all the aspects of the printing process, and should also be able to help you get your money's worth.

5. Provides project management services.

A reliable commercial printing company should provide you with a project management service to ensure that your printing requirements are met from the quality of the materials to be used to the actual packing and delivery to your office of the finished products. This kind of service starts when you first contract the printer and they would give you the advice and suggestions on how to go about your project. They may offer design and other related services to ensure the quality of your project, and install the product (if it is for advertising purposes) or deliver it to any destination of your choice.

Article Source: http://business.ezinemark.com/how-to-choose-the-best-commercial-printing-company-318e97dd5da.html

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I put together a survey to better understand what people really need to know about the printing industry.  So if you take a few minutes to fill this out, I will send you a custom business calendar for FREE.  So you get something for free, and I get information to better understand what to blog about to help you better understand.

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The printing industry is changing every year from the development of new technology to more customer centered employees.  In today’s fast-past word clients need a printing business that will communicate solutions to their problems.  People are too busy to spend that extra time learning the printing options that are best for them; they just want to get it printed and trust that their printer is looking out for their needs.  Printing companies must be able to provide what the clients want and suggestions on print material that will make life in a corporation or individual a little easier and faster.

Your printing company should know about the printing industry’s processes to be able to help the client understand how it is done.  Because taking out an unnecessary step, like gold foil when the client might think gold ink will look just fine, can save a lot of time and money.

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Save Money on your printing cost

My last blog was about my experience and education. Working in the print field I've found a lot of clients just wasting money because they don't really understand the concept of color.

There are a lot of people that are the do-it-yourself or who bought Photoshop and decided to do Graphic Design without any experience or education in the print field because they have a creative talent.

The most common mistake would be not understanding 2-color vs. 4-color or just color vs. black only.  Everyone wants Full (4-color) prints but they don't do any investigation on the cost difference.  If you design a form and want a line of red but send it off to the online printers and click color, your actually paying for 4-color. In reality you could change the document to separate a red (pantone) color and black... you will see the cost come down significantly.

Do some investigating, make sure the piece your printing needs to be a color.  If it doesn't matter to the customer, make it black and explain that since this is just a form, they would be better off saving some money to put in the color jobs later that will bring them more business.

Here are some other things you can do to save money material that I found while searching it goes into more detail for the Graphic Designer in us:

http://www.davidairey.com/12-money-saving-questions-on-commercial-printing/

Do you have any other ideas or comments?

Getting to know your blogger

There are things in the print field that every Graphic Designer should know but to many do not which ultimately cost their customers and themselves a lot of money! 

Getting to know your blogger :) HELLO!

I've been in the graphic and print industry for quite some time now. It started in High School for me. I attended the Sikeston Career and Technology Center's Graphic Arts program, where I learned about the world of print.

We started off on the design end by learning PageMaker and Quark Express. Most of my time there was spent learning how to print on an AB-dick 1-color press. I learned the bindery department i.e. folding, stapling and cutting. Back then in 2001 we learned the way of making negatives by camera,  stripping them and then platemaking, which is almost obsolete because of the computer-to-plate, which eliminated a whole lot of jobs.

After high school I went to Hickey College where I took a Graphic Design course. There I learned all the Adobe Suite products like Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver and InDesign. We learned a lot about design and a little about the actual printing process, but that was ok with me because of the Graphic Arts program from Sykeston. We had to dive into our drawing skills and creative side of the brain, which was fun and exciting! Learning all the Adobe Products and just designing in school I thought, "man it would be so awesome to get paid to do this, almost feels like a steal because you love it so much". That's what I do and it never gets old.

When I got my Associated in Graphic Design I decided to get my Bachelor Degree in Applied Management. So just in case in the future I wanted to operate my own business or just have the education I could put to use right away, I would have it.

Then I went to Fontbonne University and got my Masters in Business Administration. Mainly to show myself that I could do it. Sometimes the key to success is just believing in yourself. I learned a lot of useful things that I use every day of my life.

I worked at Optima Graphics as a Mac Operator, when I just started the Bachelor Degree program from Hickey College.  I cleaned-up/set-up trade-show artwork for print. This is where I was introduced to the wonderful world of color matching, yay! Who would ever think that getting the colors perfect would be such a wonderful feeling of accomplishment! That taught me patients and to never give up, if you want a color there is always a way to achieve it or come pretty close.

I currently work at Vip Printing, Service.  I've worked here for the past 4 years. I do all of the graphics, whatever needs to be done… graphic design, typesetting, set files up to print, color matching and the list goes on. Vip printing, Service has been around for 40 years and I hope it's around for 40 more.