Wasted Funds

Take a moment to visualize when you collect mail, either for personal or business. 

~~ Your hand is full of paper, you semi jog the pile so it is easier to flip through. Next to a table top you sort mail, the advertisements are briefly looked at, if they are done right they catch your eye and you pay attention; if they are boring or seem cheap they become part of the junk pile. The envelopes are piled together as you recognize who sent them, the few you don’t are piled separately. Once you are organized you recycle the junk then retrieve a letter opener to rip open the envelopes that you have recognized. Removing the contents of each envelope you again organize the junk from what you need to keep then recycle the junk along with the ripped open envelopes. ~~

After you have dealt with your mail look at what you have kept and what you have recycled:

Kept: relevant envelope contents, maybe it is a bank statement, or a card from a friend or advertising that caught your eye and kept your attention

Recycled: advertising that were mundane or irrelevant to you and the envelopes your friend used to mail that card to you in, the envelope the bank statement arrived in.

Please save your printing budget for items that your clients or potential client may keep, not the envelope! Print a simple one color envelope that will help your clients recognize your mail, but it won't waste your hard earned funds.

Any questions please ask us!

End Result

One of the first decisions to ponder when you are starting any design project:

Am I EVER going to want to print this?

The answer is Always YES!!!

Yes because designers can create for print quality, have you approve the design and then down save the files for web. However a designer cannot Add Quality into a file to get it up to par for print. 

Designing for websites, email, facebook, instagram, twitter and other social media can be created at 72dpi (dots per inch) where as to get a clear, crisp image for print, the file requires 300dpi.

Often a project has a few different layers of text, pictures, gradients, images in order to come together to create the final image. Purchasing photos off the internet at the highest quality available at the first time will allow for future potential; whereas if you click on the small file it may not be good enough quality for print.

Recommendations that you keep all the support files in a place that you can find them in their original state will make your life and mine a whole lot easier.  Things change down the road and sometimes tracking down a photo you ordered on the internet or found someplace is more costly and more time consuming than if you had started with high quality right from the beginning.

Any questions please ask us!

Sensor-ship

Relying on equipment can sometimes cause a headache, sometimes it can be the greatest aid in the world, sometimes it can hiccup into a cough and sometimes it can ruin a day. ..

Today I am very frustrated with our equipment.

I recently had a Xerox 550, Carmen, drop onto my floor (which is a whole other blog post for sure!) and we find that it runs well for about 2 weeks and then the silliest issue will causes us to be down.

Carmen must be scared of Friday the 13th because she jammed paper and I cleared it, played for a minute with my foster puppy and then she jammed again. I cleared her jam for a third time when Carmen  decided to left me this message: Close the Door/Cover.

I swear the door was closed, I opened the door and close it.. wait... message goes away... wait.. nope error back up: Close the Door/Cover.

I opened it and close it a little harder.. wait... message goes away... wait.. nope error back up: Close the Door/Cover.

I opened it and close it as evenly as possibly.. wait...error: Close the Door/Cover.

I opened the door and close softly.. wait...error: Close the Door/Cover.  ARGH!

How can the door NOT be closed??!!

About 10 minutes later I call Xerox for a service call because it clicked in my head that no matter how I close the door, the sensor is off somehow . I do feel sheepish as this is considered an 'easy fix', so I explained that the sensor must be off because I have worked for a while to try and fix this myself, reset, open/close soft, open/close hard, unplug cords, plug cords back in.. nope that darn error message stayed.  The guy on the other end of the phone looked up the error code and said,

"This is easy, you just have to close the door."

Oh THAT's what the message: Close the Door/Cover means... Um, please send over a technician, this issue is bigger than either of us.

Now I wait in my office watching time click by hoping that my tech makes it to my office on time as I do have a few projects that REALLY need to be completed.

oh sensorship!

Who needs You!

Just Click PRINT

Design. Approval. Separations. Paper. Ink. Negatives. Plates. Die lines. Equipment. Dry time. Heat. Cool. Foil. Thermo ink. Die cut. Emboss. Number. Perforation. Score. Lamination. Coating. Cutting. Punching. Gluing. Koiling. Stapling.

No less than 6 of these tasks  are needed for most jobs that are generally put through a print company. Most of us do not sit at our home computer waiting for your approval to hit PRINT on our desktop printer and then have the job magically completed within 10 minutes.

There are processes that are followed in order to have a finished product that you are happy to hand out.

Yes some digital projects are easy and yes click to print - however we still need paper, check to make sure it is straight, check colors and adjust if need be and check through the run to check registration or consistency, and we may even need to cut the project down.

However if you give approval for a printed job that consists of: Two sided printing, lamination, foil and a round corner, please do not hope to have the job within two working days. This project will take a lot more than two working days to complete because there are a lot of processes to fully complete:

1.Ordering  the paper, often times we like to order the paper beforehand while we are proofing still so that when we get approval it is on our shop floor, cut down to the run size.

2. We like to make sure the first side that is printed is fully dry before we attempt to print the back side. Ghosting and marking can sometimes occur which could ruin the job and we'd have to start over.

3. We want to make sure the second side is fully printed and dry before lamination because the lamination heat can sometimes cause issues with wet ink.

4. We wait to make sure the laminate is cured fully before we attempt to add heat for foil transfer. At this point in the project we don't want to rush and have an issue that would require us to start at the beginning.

5. Round corners are actually die cut so that we can make sure the curve is the same on every card rather than it being different throughout the box because of the way it was done.

5. Finally we cut the cards down and box them up for you.

RAD Printing knows that you may not fully understand the print industry, because if you did you probably wouldn't be ordering a project through us as you'd be working alongside us. However please do not assume that we are just waiting at our desktop computers waiting to hit the button: PRINT.

Any questions please ask us!

To Sacrifice One's Blood

The traditional definition of the word bleed is to sacrifice one's blood in battle or to feel anguish, pain, or sympathy. It is no wonder that people are always taken aback when I ask

"Does your file bleed?"

 In printing we deal with bleed on a daily basis when designing or dealing with paper - Paper Cuts can be nasty! But what we really mean when we ask you if your file bleeds is:

Does your image touch the edge of the paper?

If your image does, then Yes your file bleeds. BLEED requires us to have the IMAGE AREA bigger than the FINAL PAPER Size so that we can print on a larger sheet, cut down and not have white paper occasionally, printing is not an exact science and this allows a nice finished product.

 As you can see below BLEED tends to take away from the Photograph for the allowance - HOWEVER we could also use a Color Frame instead for bleed. NO BLEED allows us to print on the exact size of paper that you need without needing to cut down. There would be a paper color frame. Be aware that the photo will not be exact to the page size unless we crop or stretch it to be even.

Bleed happens in many forms, whether is it a line, shape or picture, there is an added cost to have bleed since there is a bigger sheet of paper most likely being used, make sure it is effective!
I would love to know: Does your business card Bleed?

Why Print?

Why Print?

I fell in love with print when I was a child reading books throughout the summer, I did not know I would remain that close to the printed word as a career. Partway through my grade 12 year at Lord Beaverbrook I was ahead of my fellow classmates on projects and was provided an opportunity to use a machine called: 360ABDick. As I printed the one color forms for the office my brain started asking: what else can be printed?

Answer: forms, business cards, signage, banners, letterhead, cards, books, handouts, binders, posters, calendars, post cards, newsletters, catalogues, phone books, flyers, menus, labels, stickers, coloring books, music sheets, newspapers, magazines, maps, charts, brochures, programs, cheques, greeting cards, diaries, yearbooks, organizers, journals, tickets, coupons, annual reports, DVD/CD Books and cases, bookmarks, comic books, manuals, directories, directions, stamps, certificates, napkins, ribbon, and More…

How can one NOT be excited about the possibilities of all those items? I caught a glimpse into How full color prints are produced and I KNEW I was in the right industry. Different sized dots or four colors, sometimes different if it is special, made any full color work; we refer to those colors as CMYK.

So with a list of over 40 items that pertain to the print industry.. How could I not be happy about being a part of this creative industry!!

Do you have any PRINT Related Questions, ask me and I’ll do my best to answer them for you.
Have a RAINBOW Day!

Introductions

Hello! This is a new format for RAD Printing’s blogs and we wanted to say hello,welcome and HUZZAH!!
We are a Calgary based print company who enjoys educating our clients about the different print products and procedures that we can provide through our shop.

Encompassing offset, digital, letterpress and bindery – we’d like to think you can come to us with just about any project that we can produce for you. However if we cannot get it done for you, chances are one of our trusted partners will be able to!

RAD Printing supports the community as much as we can with discounts on printing, computer time, design or even donating the owners time to you and your events. Many of our clients are non-profits that we support through fundraisers, acknowledgement and education.

We have been a member of eWomen Networking since our beginning eight years ago and we have learnt important business tips from amazing speakers as well as met many of our valued clients through this group. RAD Printing offers a percentage off the print order to eWomen members.

Robin has recently decided she has wanted to become a foster home for puppies through Alberta Animal Rescue Crew Society (AARCS). They have a membership available that allows you to be kept current on their amazing efforts to help the surrounding areas calm the number of dogs and cats down. This membership includes a few perks from companies who are passionate about the AARCS message and recently RAD Printing became a part of the Member Deals. Become their member, show us your card and receive a discount – it’s that easy!

Look through our RAD RAVES to find out what our clients have been saying about us and we’d love to hear from you.

Do you have any PRINT Related Questions?
Have a RAINBOW Day!