Printing continues to help local West Midlands businesses connect to their customers

Printing has been the way to connect to existing and potential new customers for donkey’s years. It used to be that people either went to the expense of having printing done or not.

As times have moved on with personal computers and software programmes all of a sudden everyone is an expert in creating their own printed literature and if not an expert, they’ll dam well give it a go-to save on costs.

In the old days (and when I say old we’re looking at the last 10 or so years) printing used to be relatively expensive on what you’d call small print run jobs, this was because of printing press set-up and the creation of printing plates which involved the use of Film and UV light to burn the image on to each of the 4 printing plates - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black all the colours which would make up a full-colour job.

Then came the start of the digital era for local litho printers, out went the traditional burning an 'image to plate' and in came CTP which stood for ‘Computer to Plate’ a cleaner and faster way of producing printing plates for traditional litho printing presses.

Also developed around about this time was ‘digital printing presses’ which when the first lot came out you could be forgiven for thinking that they were no more or no better than an ordinary old photocopier – digital printing presses being developed to move with the times as well as seeking a more cost-effective way to produce a small print run print jobs at a more reasonable cost.

As the quality of the digital print was extremely poor in the early days, but still with the onset of online technology another alternative to achieve good low volume quality printing done the traditional was thought of.

The way to achieve this was via a term called ‘batch printing’ which basically means that each customer is allocated a small section on a printed sheet so that the costs are shared or to put it another way the costs reduced.

Without overcomplicating things the example being if taking an A2 sheet, it used to be that one customer would pay the whole set and plate costs of £250. If that space is shared by 4 customers having an A4 space - this brings the setup cost down to £62.50, if 8 customers have an A5 space then the setup costs are down to £31.25 each, and so on.

It is through batch printing that some traditional litho printing companies, as well as high printing retailers with a strong online presence, are able to provide affordable good quality litho printing to local businesses in the West Midlands region.

That said digital printing press technology has now come a long way in a relatively short space of time and now very small cost-effective good quality runs can be achieved via digital printing - an ideal way to be able to get small runs of brochures, business cards, mailers flyers.

Of course, you need to remember that printing is one element, but the design of the printed item is something totally quite different. Whilst perhaps a poorly printed item might make you wince a little a poorly designed printed item will make you cringe and look away in despair – and a point to remember is of course if it makes you do that, what would your customers be doing?

Not wishing to miss out on an opportunity as you may or may not beware our background is in print, design and marketing and we can help to provide to with suitable advice as well as products to facilitate supplying you with printed literature, and printed stationery.

If you need to connect to good quality print or connect to good quality design then let us know…..!