Any printing job is actually a series of steps, and each of them take time. Even in the best situation, where the job comes to the printer truly “ready to go,” the order seldom is ready as quickly as the customer had hoped. Few customers understand all that must be done between the time the order comes in and when it goes out the printer’s door.
Steps that take time at the printer
- Getting the project to “camera ready,” unless it arrives that way
- Getting all the custom input from the designer (or anyone else involved)
- Performing prepress activities-stripping, camera work, making plates, etc.
- Ordering special paper stocks or inks required
- Getting ink colors matched or mixed
- Preparing the dies for embossing, hot stamping, die cuts
- Scheduling the project with other jobs (with the sequence often dictated by the limits of the equipment or the complexity of a particular job)
- Adjusting for poor planning, whether it’s the customer’s or printer’s fault
- Preparing proofs and getting approvals, permissions, or releases
- Incorporating any last-minute changes
- Correcting any errors caught at the proof or color match stages
- Printing the job-the actual press time
- Changing plates if a split run (cards printed with more than one person’s name)
- Allowing inks to dry between press runs
- Waiting for work to come back from subcontractors for stages not done in-house (like lamination or foil stamping)
- Additional press runs for special effects, like two-sided or multiple colors
- Folding or scoring
- Wash up, ink changes
- Quality checks, packaging
Your projects deserve to have every necessary step done right. Don’t rush your printer-it often backfires.
This article first appeared in The Business Card Book-What your business card reveals about you and how to fix it
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