Print design and getting it printed
Still the thing people carry home from a meeting and leave on the desk for a month. Brochures, rack cards, signage, tradeshow panels, packaging, all built off the same brand as everything else you own.
Still the thing somebody carries out of a conference and leaves on the desk for a month. Program books, briefs, posters, banners and report covers, all built off the same brand as the rest of your work.
The Hawaiian Islands. Pop-up hula brought to the New York winter, called Random Acts of Aloha. The script runs off both edges because aloha means hello and goodbye.
The plan
How we get you there
Every plan uses the same three stages; you choose which ones you need.
Who this is forAnyone who still meets people in rooms. Trade shows, showrooms, waiting areas, mailers, and the leave-behind that has to do the talking after you've gone.Centers with a conference season and a mailing list that predates the website. Program books, posters, briefs and the printed report somebody still wants in hand.
Clarify
How to tell your story so your audience listens.
Beautifyyou're here
Every place you say it: your website, logo, print collateral, email marketing.
Amplify
Search, email, and outreach: Systems that carry your marketing to the people who need to hear it.
Why people call me
Three things that go wrong with print
Two of them you only find out about once the box arrives.
It doesn't look like the rest of us
Made by whoever was free, in whatever they had, so the brochure and the website look like two organizations that happen to share a name.
The file wasn't right and nobody knew
Wrong color space, no bleed, images at screen resolution. The printer runs it anyway, because the printer prints what you send.
Too much went on it
Everybody got a paragraph in, so the piece says everything and nobody reads any of it. The fix is upstream of design, and it's usually deleting.
Scope
What you actually get
Priced per piece, so one brochure doesn't come with a contract attached.
Most of this ends up on a conference table or in a mailing, so it's built to read at arm's length and to be reprinted next year without being redesigned.
Most of this ends up in somebody's hand at the moment they're deciding, so it's built to survive a glance and still say the one thing you need it to.
Brochures and rack cards
Folded properly for the fold you're actually using, with the panels planned so the piece makes sense in the order a hand opens it.
Signage and banners
Built at the real size with the real viewing distance in mind, so it reads from across the aisle.
Tradeshow and packaging
Booth panels, backdrops, boxes and labels. Dielines checked against the fabricator's template before anything gets designed into the wrong shape.
Magazine design and editorial design
A masthead, a grid and a set of fonts that hold across an issue and across years, so the fifth one still looks like the first. Carolina Public Health runs twice a year on this, and every issue gets a digital edition built from the same material.
Annual report design, program books and conference programs
Long documents, where the figures inside are part of the job and not something pasted in at the end.
Stationery and mailers
Letterhead, cards, envelopes, postcards. Set up to the postal specs when it's going in the mail, because that one catches people out.
Color that matches the brand
CMYK builds and Pantone equivalents chosen deliberately, so your orange is the same orange on a screen, a sign and an uncoated stock.
Print-ready files
Bleed, trim marks, embedded fonts, the right color space, images at the right resolution. Checked against what your specific printer asked for.
A proof you actually look at
A digital proof as standard, a physical one when the run is big enough to justify it. Signing off a proof is cheaper than reprinting.
The working files
Yours afterwards, with the fonts listed, so next year's version is a quick edit.
What it looks like
A year of print for one office
Colorado State's Office for Inclusive Excellence put brochures, flyers, posters, handouts and a sponsorship pack through the same system in a single year. Same grid, same type, same color. A stack of them on a table reads as one office rather than six vendors.
The rest of it
Most print work never gets a case study
It gets printed, handed out and thrown away, which is the job. These are five pieces from the last few years that nobody will ever write up, and between them they are a fair picture of what the work actually looks like week to week.
myFutureNCA billboard that put one person's name on the campaign
NC Foundation for Public School ChildrenA poster series hung in schools across the state
UNC GillingsThe call for faculty award nominations, posted every spring
ArrevusA pocket brochure for conversations with busy people
myFutureNCNametags, because the small things are also the brand
The one with the numbers in it
Annual report design, and the figures inside it
An annual report is the one printed piece a board, a funder and a reporter all read, and the one most likely to be laid out by whoever had the file open last. It's a long document, so it lives or dies on its design structure. It has to hold the numbers and the story, and hold attention all the way through.
The figures get redrawn as part of the job, never pasted in from a spreadsheet, because a finding buried in a default chart is a finding nobody acts on. If the report carries a year of work, the figures are the argument.
All the way to the press
Designing it is half the job. The other half? Printing.
Plenty of design ends at a PDF and a wish of good luck. I talk to your printer directly, in their language: stock weight, coating, bleed, dielines, color build, how the piece folds and which panel ends up on the outside. The file goes out set up for their press.
You keep the printing relationship and the printing invoice, so the printer bills you at their price and the only thing you pay me is my time. If you'd rather I managed the whole thing, I will, and that time goes in the quote. Either way the file is right before it goes.
- Bleed and trim set up the way your printer's template asks for them.
- CMYK color built for paper, so your brand orange arrives as your orange.
- Fonts embedded, with the font list handed to you for next year.
Three small things that decide whether 5,000 copies come back right. I work them out with your printer before anything goes near a press.
Process
How a printed piece gets made
Content, then structure, then design, then press. In that order it goes smoothly, and you see the piece at every stage.
Content, in a shared document
You send the final text and images, and we edit them together. There's only ever one current version.
Roughing it out
At the real size and fold, in gray boxes. What goes on which panel, and what comes out, decided before anything is designed.
Design
On your brand, with the type and color built for paper. You review a PDF at actual size.
Specs from the printer
Before the file is built out, I get their template and requirements. Every printer wants something slightly different, so I ask yours first and build to their sheet.
Proof and press
Proof reviewed and signed off, then the file goes. I stay reachable while it's on press, because that's when questions arrive.
Investment
How pricing works
Per piece, quoted once I know the size, the page count and the fold. Printing itself is billed to you by the printer.
The printer bills you at their price, with nothing of mine added on top. I'll get quotes from the printers I trust and you pick one, so the only number you pay me is my time on the design.
A brochure, a banner, a book
Design, print-ready files and the printer conversation. One round of revisions included, because almost every piece needs one.
A family of pieces
A conference kit, a product line, a suite of rack cards. Designed together so they look related and cost less than they would one at a time.
Season by season
Conference runs, annual reports, a print cycle. Some clients call twice a year and some call most months. Both are fine by me.
Grant-funded higher education marketing. Printing and dissemination lines usually cover this cleanly, and I bill each piece of work separately, so it maps onto your budget without creative accounting.
Questions
What people ask before they hire me
Do you handle the printing, or do we?
Can you work with our existing brand?
What if we don't have a printer?
How long does it take?
Can we edit it next year ourselves?
Our content isn't finished. Can we start anyway?
Our university has brand rules for print. Can you work inside them?
The rest of the system
Print is one surface of several
It works harder when the other surfaces say the same thing.
So grateful for Adrial’s creativity, excellent design, and outstanding customer service. He is masterful and an essential part of our team.
Barbara K. Rimer, DrPHDean Emerita, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health
Tell me the piece and the deadline
Let's have a quick meeting. What it is, how many, and when it has to be in hand. I'll tell you what it takes and where the schedule is genuinely tight, which is usually the press and not the design. This is my favorite part of the job.