Commercial Printing Process

The commercial printing process is essentially the same for every commercial printing company. So before they tell you the technical process, you may want to be ready and do the initial process:

1) Ready your Budget
While you may think this is not really important to do at the initial part of the stage, in reality it is important. It is important to have a general price ready (your estimate cost) so that you don’t go too overboard on costs. Consider just how long people will be using it so you do not have to use high grade materials if you will just be using it for a few days. You will save a few bucks and you will also save help save nature.

2) Find a great printer
The best way to find a printer is like how beauty contests do it, have a general list of potential commercial printers in line and ask them what they can give you. Trim down your list to three and choose one from the best.

3) Be clear with your print needs
The clearer you are with your print needs, the better for you and your printer. One of the best things about having a list of everything you need beforehand helps you explain everything to your printer and they could give the exact price for your package.

4) Start drafting your Text
It is always best to create the text earlier than the design, this will help you understand how many pages you really need or the size of your single paged print. It is not a good idea to cramp text by making the font size smaller however it is not also a good idea to make the font size very huge that it cuts a word because the sentence does not fit in one line.

5) Several things you may want to triple check –

• File type
How files are saved is up to what your printer wants to see. Most printers will give you a list of file types they prefer and two of the most common are eps and tiff. Make sure you follow the file type or else you will be seeing the file returned to you for conversion.

• Crop marks
The sizing of the art should be as exact as possible. Cutters may have a miniscule over cut to the right or to the left so if you followed your caution line and did not put any text or image after it, then you have nothing to worry about.

• Fonts
With the numerous fonts available in the numerous programs in the market, it is likely that your printer will not have the exact font that you are using for your design. So to be sure, imbed the font file to your main art file.

• Colors
One of things that attract people are colors however with the colors available in the computers and the printers may have some variations so if you are a bit particular on the colors you picked out for your design make sure that it is in CMYK which printers use. Otherwise tell your printer you may need to add color matching in the package.

It is important to follow a process in commercial printing, that way you do not forget certain things. Your chosen printing company will love you for being organized too.