Publishing Pointers — Questions:
In this article are design tips and techniques gathered through sometimes harsh experience over forty years of designing thousands of projects and teaching nearly as many students. There is a lot of information you need to get from your printing company. One of the main reasons you need to pick your printer before you start designing is that you cannot do many things without knowing the capabilities of your printing company.
Questions to ask your printer
Here is a short list of some general questions to ask printers (in no particular order). Just remember that all printers have different equipment and you are trying to determine what their true capabilities are. If you design within their capabilities, you will avoid a huge amount of hassle, mistakes, and reprints.
- Do you have duplicators, presses, and/or digital presses? Many shops have two or all three of these basic press types. The types available determine capabilities like stroke width, solid size, linescreen, signature size, and so on.
- Letterpress &/or Bindery? Then they can do foil stamping, diecutting and scoring without the sub-contracting surcharges. Same as letterpress for charges, but this can also greatly reduces your production time.
- Do you have an equipment list? It is always a good thing to get an equipment list if they have one. They may have a thermography tunnel, for example. They might have a round-cornering machine. The possibilities are endless.
- Do you have a list of the max sheet size and max image size for each and minimum gripper? You need these to determine document sizes and possible signatures.
- What linescreen do you prefer and your dot gain and suggested dot range? This determines what tints you can use as well as your Photoshop adjustments.
- What file formats do you accept? Many shops do not take files from the newest software. This seems especially true with newspapers.
- Do you require a specific resolution and mode for your bitmaps? See question 4.
- What total ink limit can I use? Very important to set this up before you convert from RGB to CMYK.
- Do you use color management? What settings? If they don’t offer help, read the Proofing PDF.
- Are you using a platesetter? If so, their dot gain will be a lot less and they can handle finer detail in most cases.
- What’s the largest solid you can handle? Often shops specify a certain area they will accept without extra charges.
Workflow
As you get to know them a little better, through your questioning, you are going to want to know several things about their workflow so you do not cause problems in ignorance.
- What is your normal turnaround? If you are doing a booklet, this is especially important. Make sure you add time for all the subcontractors like bindery.
- What are your rush charges? It is very important to know how they handle this. If they have no policy, it's a danger signal because they just fit things into the workflow in a panic — this causes many mistakes.
- What are your proofing procedures? You need to know what proofs they supply, and how long you have to turn them around with client signatures.
- Do you have a T-head? This enables 2-color spot hairline registration at close to quickprint prices
- What do you charge for mixing spot color? Most PMS inks have to mixed for the specific job. If you are cutting costs as much as possible, ask what spot colors they have on hand. If you use one of them, there are no mixing charges.
Online capabilities
Some additional questions revolve around their online capabilities. If you can send the final documents electronically you can save a lot of time and money. FTPping a large PDF is certainly preferable to the need to FedEx a DVD or even a small external drive.
- Do you have an FTP address and how large an attachment can you handle? If you have large files (and you normally will) an FTP address or a good email server can save you from the need to FedEx your documents.
Financial questions
All of the normal $$$$bs...? Many shops do not charge things at all except for a credit card. Many want a down payment and the rest on delivery. You really need to get this taken care of before you place your order. Most shops will insist on that.
Samples and tours
- Can you send me samples? Often you have to bug them for your samples. If you can hand pick them you’ll get better samples. You should specify the number of samples in the contract — but you may still have to double-check to make sure. Many printers forget to pull samples because they barely have enough copies to fulfill the contract.
- Can I tour the facility? You can learn a lot just by seeing how clean their shop is and how well their equipment is maintained. Well-maintained equipment will produce at the top end of the possible options for that equipment type — but it will often cost more. Cheaper prices often mean poorly maintained equipment which translates to larger dot gain, more restricted dot ranges, maybe even lower linescreen and smaller solids.
In general, you need to try and make sure you understand what they can do and what they cannot do. What do you need to sub-out?
You cannot design well if you do not know what you can & cannot do.
BYLINE:
Publishing pointers: PDF Booklets:
By David Bergsland
I am writing and publishing a whole new series of PDF booklets that will be available for sale on bergsland.org — This is the twelfth booklet in that series.
- Booklets
- InDesign CS2 features
- Styles
- Printing Technologies
- Preflight
- Letterpress usage
- Brochures
- Paper & Ink
- Deadlines & Ethics
- Marketing yourself
- Questions to ask your printer
There are a dozen so far — all at $7.00 each (but this one is free).
If you have any questions or comments, please write me at
mailto:david@bergsland.org
