After telling me how pleased they were when their stationery arrived, Voicespan have kindly sent me some samples of the stationery we designed and had printed for them, shown below.

I was pleased to note the excellent print quality and the luxurious feel of the paper stock, it is sure to make a lasting impression about the equal quality of their brand with customers.

When purchasing print services, there are lots of factors to consider over and above price, such as;

1. Customer Service
One of the biggest hazards of cheap printing in my experience is the inevitable fall down of customer service that comes along with it. You might feel “well who cares, as long as my printing is good and is cheap”.

Ask yourself if you want to potentially fall victim to some of the following cheap printing firm hazards;

a. Your printing arrives on time but oh oh … you open the pack and realise it’s bodged up; the colours have smeared and run into each other (has happened to me) and the quality of the print just isn’t good enough. You contact the printing firm, and they reassure you (if you’re lucky) that they’ll reprint for free; but it’s too late, you’ve missed your business deadline and it’s costing your business in lost trade due to lack of marketing materials.

Maybe your deadline relates to needing business cards for a vital networking meeting, brochures for a fixed date event/exhibition, or flyers for a magazine insert deadline.

b. Your printing simply does not arrive on time, despite constantly phoning (if you can get through that is) the printing firm to find out when it will be arriving. This again damages your business through lost trade as it’s rare that you would order printing that doesn’t in some way relate to an up and coming marketing activity or crucial business activity.

c. Error spotting; now this isn’t actually the responsibility of the printing firm to spot errors on your design files if you have provided your own designs, but a printing firm that will get in touch with you if they happen to spot something that might be wrong in the artwork is worth it’s weight in gold if you can find one. In fact I know of one actually that is this good - Quality Printing From Stationery Direct

Basically offering good customer service and customer attention costs any printing firm money, and that will be passed on via your printing costs. This isn’t a bad thing because high quality printing isn’t enough, you need to be able to rely on your printing firm to keep their promises and respond in a timely manner when you need them. If they can go above and beyond the call of duty by telling you if they spot what looks like an error in the artwork, that’s a massive bonus.

2. Paper Weight
A quote for 2,000 flyers at 100gsm is not the same as the price for 2,000 flyers at 150gsm or 300gsm weight.

100gsm as a weight for flyers or any other print product for that matter, is like getting your printing on some really rubbish A4 printer paper …you’ll realise this when your printing comes through and looks a tad cheap; just like the cost of the printing.

Pay attention to your paper weights and ensure you are comparing like for like when checking prices from printing firm to printing firm.

It’s a matter of personal taste, but I also think it’s worthwhile to stick to firms which care about the environment and offer eco friendly paper stock as well as fully recycled paper stock.

3. Print Quality
All printing presses are not equal….there can be a difference between the quality output of printing machines used from printing company to printing company and also a difference between the experience of those people operating the machines for optimal quality.

To check out the print quality of firms you obtain pricing from, get in touch with them (which will also help to give you an idea of their responsiveness and level of customer service) and ask for some free samples from their print runs. It’s a good idea to tell them what printing you are thinking of purchasing so that their samples can better match your potential order.

Any half decent printing firm will be happy to oblige with samples, and you should expect them to arrive in a timely manner inside of a week without the need to chase for them. When they arrive, scrutinise the print quality.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm and is filed under Design Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.