Celebrate Your Way!

It's 107 degrees in the Midwest - must be summer! The Fourth of July to begin the month, and the Olympics as a much-looked-forward-to event at the end of July.

However you celebrate the holiday,
whether it's flag

or food

or fireworks

Happy Happy Holiday from all of us at Athens Printing!!

Summer Plans and Small Talk

So... June. It's an interesting month, evocative of cookouts, vacations, and Father's Day. It's summer with the promise still fresh that we'll get to do everything we hope to do.  I think it's the kid in me, remembering that feeling of waking up on a Tuesday with nothing to jump and run for except the pool.

But life and the workweek do intrude, so why not make it fun? Plan something you always mean to do, but put it aside in favor of more pressing projects.  Maybe you've wanted personalized notecards for a long time, but the designs online just aren't what you're thinking of.  Our designers can come up with options that would be yours alone, and suddenly you're writing notes with flair!

You could have notepads with a different spin from the standard grocery list - we all buy some of the same items every time we go, so why not leave them on the list for every trip, and never forget again!

We're just full of ideas, try out a few for your summer project!

Happy Summer!

Your friendly staff at Athens Printing

Friday Inspiration - Poster Calendar

One of our staff has been counting months, then days, and we're now counting hours for the newest little addition to the Athens Printing family.

In honor of all those days, here's a beautifully-designed calendar (in Finnish).
Enjoy!

FPO: Poster Calendar 2012

Offset vs Digital Printing - Which Choice Depends on the Job

The color printers we use now are so very far beyond the color copiers from several years ago. In terms of color reproduction, paper size & finishing capabilities and speed, they make short full color jobs a breeze, with an emphasis is on the 'short' runs description. Once you get past a certain quantity, the cost for digital prints is no longer quite as attractive, and offset color printing makes much more sense.

For even more detail, please check out the link below from one of our friend printers up in North Carolina.

Comparing Offset and Digital Printing

As always, if you have any questions, please call or comment, and one of our experienced staff will be happy to help you with any offset or digital printing questions!

How Do You Plan A Project - Part Two

A project is only as good as the work put into the details – and many of those details happen in the design stage. When we receive copy from customers in a text document (like Word), it will show spelling and grammatical errors, but not when the wrong word is hiding in plain sight. Unless you’re discussing a protective geometry term, not many have Guardian Angles.  A lengthy piece of writing should be read by two or three different people in the organization in order to catch errors and save you design time costs. It's helpful to ask someone unfamiliar with the information to read through your copy, as they might see problems that others who are too close to the project might have missed.

Design time is often overlooked. A good business card design can take an hour or so, but a magazine or brochure can be 50+ hours of work. Make sure you allow for typesetting, proofing, image research and photography sessions. If you have advertisements, we need to build a few extra days into the timeline for late submissions or ads that need work.

Paper choice. Will you pick a house sheet or a special order? A house sheet is paper that we keep in stock. We’ve found the quality is good, it runs smoothly on different presses, drying time isn’t a problem, and other factors we like. Essentially, we’ve worked out the kinks, so you don’t have to worry about problems during printing.

Die cuts. Do you require business card slits, or possibly a unique shape to your design? Ask us about the custom dies we have on hand. The costs are much lower than having a new one created, and we might inspire a different direction in your project.

Feeling a little overwhelmed? We’re here to help. We can walk you through planning a project, even if you're not sure of what questions you need to ask.

Call us or email if you have questions for your next project.

Friday Inspiration Site

Our email is often glommed up with "New Product!" spam, but there are a few monthly editions we look forward to receiving. MyFonts.com has a newsletter that is not only a fun peek at new fonts that they stock, but also for interviews with type designers from around the world.

Enjoy!

http://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/rs/201204.html

How Do You Plan A Project? From The End to the Start!

Talking to your printer while in the planning stage of a project can often save you time, money and perhaps show you options you might not have considered. Allow Athens Printing to help you from the very start and it will improve your entire experience.

We always ask specific questions up front, and they’re usually the ones that many put at the bottom of their lists. However, any successful project is actually planned backwards.

First Question: When do you need it in your hands?

Answer: It all depends on the purpose of the piece. Are you giving it out at an event, or to invite people to an event?  Will it need to be shipped anywhere? How much do you have budgeted for shipping (in case of Saturday delivery)?  If it will be mailed, the shape, design and weight of the piece will all factor into the mailing cost, and should be approved by a mail house during the design process. The paper stock you choose has an impact on weight and print time, so creating a printed dummy with the actual paper is a very helpful step.

Once you’ve addressed final destination and deadline, we move to quantity.

Are they handouts for a conference? Organizers can provide you with attendance numbers from the previous years, but you must determine how the information will be distributed. Do you want everyone to take one, or is it a more focused effort, and only those truly interested will receive collateral?
Will this be a pocket folder to use for a few years, and you don’t see the information changing?

Higher quantities will save you in the long run.

Business cards for a new small business? 500 will be plenty, and you can change information in the next run.

Color cards can be turned in a few days, even with edits.

This leads us to color: Black only, CMYK, Pantone inks, metallic? It’s a fun sea of choices, but can be an overwhelming process.  If there will be a main logo, you can take cues from the colors used for the rest of the piece. Many well-recognized brands use colors that are complementary to their logo to create a visually exciting piece, rather than sticking to only the colors in their logo.

Your paper choice will also affect how the colors look. They will be brighter on a white sheet, and more subdued on a natural or cream stock.

In our next entry, we’ll talk more about paper choices, how to build time into your project for design, and bindery and finishing processes.

We’d love to hear your comments or questions!

Happy Planning!