Offset Printing for Personal Projects

I know you are not that big company or firm and it may seem that offset printing is a bit out of your reach. In truth however, offset printing or any kind of long run printing is easily accessible today. In fact, if you require the accuracy, quality and speed of offset printing for your personal printing projects you can do it easily as long as you have a computer and an Internet connection.

Now, in this article I will teach you how even you as a newcomer to printing can avail of offset printing services for your special projects. By doing this, you can bring on professional level prints to bear for your project objectives.

1. Finding a good offset printer online – Believe me, your best and most convenient way to get a good offset printer is over the Internet. Most of the best offset printers should already have websites. The trick is finding the right one that will be perfect for your specific printing goals. Here are some of the key characteristics that you should take note of as you choose your offset printer.

a. Sample quality – The samples they give out should be of good quality

b. Cost – The cost should be balanced depending on their packages. Compare with others to get a baseline.

c. Expertise – If you can get a printer that is an expert in a certain kind of print that you need (such as flyers for example) it might be good to go for them.

d. Delivery time – They should have a flexible delivery time, perfect for your schedule.

e. Local Area – If they are near you or in your city, all the more better.

2. Using the right templates – Now, when dealing with an offset printing company, you should be careful with the templates you will be using. If you want a faster and smoother ride through the printing process, you will want to download some of the templates that the printer has approved. In this way, your design drafts for printing will be precisely optimized for their printing process. There will be less errors and everything will move a bit faster.

3. Designing with the proper settings in color – Remember that in offset printing you can go for full color prints. The key setting that you will want to place in your layout though is the color mode. Many offset printing companies use the CMYK printing process as a way to get more color variations in their prints.

Now, most design applications that you may have will set its color mode to RGB blending. To make sure that your prints have the right kind of color mode for printing, you will want of course to review and set them to CMYK.

Once you have set this in your template, you should be ready to go. You need to just insert in all the different customized design elements to make your prints look good and unique. Of course, make sure that you put in your full color images and graphics there.

4. Proper checking of drafts – Remember that when the offset printing process starts, it will be hard to “stop the presses”. So you better check your drafts first and make sure that no major error is there. You should have proofread those designs several times, and if possible have others do it as well. Make sure that it is as close to perfect as possible before you start those offset printing orders.

5. Sending your design for offset printing  - Finally, after all those checks you can then send your design for offset printing. Make sure of course that you send both your document file for your print design in its template file format, as well as a separate copy in an Image format such as JPG or PNG.

This should give the printer some flexibility and a backup file to make sure nothing goes wrong in offset printing. Just wait for them to finish printing and of course deliver those prints to you. It should take just a day or two.

Great! As you can see, it is easier than expected really. You do not have to be a big company to avail of offset printing. You yourself can use it for personal projects.

For more easy tips and wise ideas about cost effective and impressive print materials visit: offset printing.