When most people need something printed, they look to their local neighborhood shops to do the job.  But a little known industry secret are online printers, sometimes called “gang-run print shops.”  No…they aren’t run by gangs.  Rather, they handle a super high volume of jobs every day, printing hundreds of orders at once.  They also order paper stock in much larger quantities, thereby passing the savings on to the customers.  Everything is handled in-house – prepress, press, shipping, etc.  And the prices will make your head spin – cheaper than almost any local shop, sometimes by up to 50% or more.

The limitations of some of these printers is the fact that you often don’t have a local rep if you’re used to working with one.  However, most houses have great customer service and have detailed instructions on submitting files.  In some cases, they’re even easier to work with than local vendors.

Most of these printers offer different types of paper stock in varying thickness.  The standard business card is around 12 pt, but some offer up to 14 or 15 pt.  There are additional paper stock options, such as silk lamination, linen, ivory, etc.  You can also add services with some companies, such as rounded corners, foil stamping, scoring, embossing, perforation, numbering and more.

One technique currently used on a lot of printed pieces is ultraviolet (UV) coating.  This is a protective sealant applied to the printed piece to safeguard against scratches and fingerprints, and gives the paper a slick, glossy finish.  It often deepens the color of the printed area.  You can also request a spot UV treatment, which only applies the UV coating to a selected part of the print.  This produces a unique contrasting effect between shiny and matte on the same piece.

Some aspects of printing to keep in mind:

• The standard resolution for print pieces is 300 dpi (dots per inch).  If you’re working in a program such as Adobe Photoshop or similar, be sure that you have it set as such.  Otherwise, the image will come out “pixilated” and fuzzy.
  
• A “bleed” is when the ink or image runs to the edge of the printed piece.  Typically printers require the file to be set up so that the image or color runs 1/16” or more beyond the actual finished size of the piece.
  
• CMYK: printed pieces are typically created using a combination of four inks; “C” (cyan), “M” (magenta), “Y” (yellow), and “K” (black).   The printer will ask you to set up your file in CMYK, which is fairly easy to do in most design programs.

List of Online Printing Companies

• www.vistaprint.com
• www.bestprintingonline.com