Printing costs - Above and below the line promotions

The following are a list of a few elements that can affect printing costs.
This is a sample case relating to a 4 colour A4 brochure printed two sides, then folded roll fold to DL.

Paper stock: This can make or break a job in terms of quality of the finished product, drying times, feel, appeal folding ability as well as how the ink sits on the stock.
You can always get a cheaper printing price but at some point you will get what you pay for. You can always get a cheaper car. So lets look at printing in the same ay we would research looking to buy a big ticket item.

Do you want your job to have high impact or is it a throw away piece of information you want to communicate? In other words - Is it a ‘run-about to get you from A to B’ or a ‘beautiful image enhancing luxury item’? These are often referred to in the advertising industry as “Above-the-line or below-the-line promotions.

Obviously paper is not the sole deciding factor. Graphics play a massive role, but don’t discount paper as it can play a key role in the perception of quality. As most people select commodity stocks, it’s not expensive to add the perception of sophistication by choosing a high quality paper stock.

Do we print digital or offset?
There is often a golden price point where digital printing is no longer an option. When you need about one hundred to two hundred units, I’d go with digital printing. But it can depend on unique circumstances.

Quantities: The more that are printed, the lower the per unit cost. Much of the costs are in the set up of a printing job. Choose a quantity of units that will cover you for the time until you want to update the layout or text of the brochure. Ask yourself, how many brochures will we likely use per year and when will we likely want to make changes to the content? Things that can affect this are, trends and styles. As you know, fashion colours come in and out of fashion. Trendy words that we use now might not be trendy in a few years time. Remember how everyone was doing ‘Turn Key’ business solutions a few years back. And the word ‘Infrastructure” was also being mentioned in every meeting. I think people just wanted to know if they could actually say it without spitting.

Size of printing machinery: Some printers have different ranges of printing presses from 2 colour through to 10 colour and more. Also, some printers can only physically print one side of a brochure at a time vs others who can print both brochures at the same time on the same piece of paper. This can reduce the amount of times the brochure goes through the printing press by half which cuts the cost down. I select from my printers knowing what machinery they have.

Colours: Here is another factor that can either detract or enhance the job as a quality job versus a commodity job. I think printing even one and two colours can look wonderful and exciting. And those amounts of colours are much cheaper to print than full colour or more.

Finish: A standard sealer varnish can aid in drying times as well as protect the ink on the paper. This is often done in-house while the ink is wet. The cost is marginal but it protects the ink can add a perception of quality. Also most printing companies have the ability to fold and crease (score) in-house. This avoids third party costs.

Specialty finishes
These are usually done to enhance or protect the paper or the ink. They play a big role in the over all look and feel of a printed job. For instance, a spot UV (varnish) is different to a sealer varnish. A spot UV is done when the ink on the paper is dry. Gloss looks wonderful over matt lamination and often we can create patterns and shapes and over print over photographs or text. As it is completely transparent, the affect can shine when the page catches the light.
There are several other types of finishes that can be achieved that don’t always involve ink. We will discuss these in another post.

What are you good at?

You may have already discovered this but t is often a good idea to revisit this question from time to time.
What are you good at?