Don't be so quick to place the marker.

The Internet has been buzzing with reports of the demise of printing. The book industry in particular has been all aflutter about The Kindle, The Nook, and iPad. Are they right? Have electronics finally won? Is printing dead?

I am old enough to remember all of the predictions of a paperless office. Computers were supposed to eliminate the need for paper. Instead, printing flourished at a time when the era of paper was sure to be over.

It is different this time. Although I think it is too early to write off printing, I do believe that the boom we saw with the advent of computers won’t repeat. The business climate has changed, not only for now, but also for the future. There are several reasons for this:

• Direct Mail Advertising has been wounded–not fatally, not yet.

1. The first arrow to strike was postal charges. Unfortunately, the post office has a blind spot when it comes to pricing. They don’t understand that there is a direct correlation between rising prices and declining customers. The higher stamps cost, the more people turned away.  The US post office has been the greatest friend email could ever have.
2. The second arrow was the Internet. Websites provide options that ink on paper can never duplicate and at incredible prices. Electronic advertising has eliminated much of the need for media. No paper. No ink. No presses.
3. The third arrow was the recession. Companies of all sizes hunkered down behind walls of cash refusing to spend until the customers were ready to buy. The customers, of course, having lost jobs, having had salaries decreased, and in a tightening credit market find themselves unable to buy. It’s what is known as (with apologies to our neighbors south of the US) a Mexican standoff. Where were the easiest places to cut their budgets? Printing, particularly direct mail.
4. The fourth arrow is book readers. Book readers are coming on strong. I myself, love books. I have a well-stocked home library, but there are books I can get free and others that I would like to be more portable. I, the defender of printing, will get a reader for myself. Actually I already have one in my iPhone, but every book bought electronically is a book that isn’t printed.

• Form Printing and Envelopes have taken one to the chest.

1. Nearly everyone uses on-line forms to pay bills, buy something, or get credit. It’s quick, user friendly, and no one has to buy a stamp or wait several days for delivery.
2. The changes is bill paying greatly reduce the need for envelopes. From the millions upon millions of envelopes purchased by the financial industry alone to a bare trickle.

• Catalogs, Newspapers, and Magazines are dropping dead in their tracks.
  

1. Pundits warned us of the paperless office, but they didn’t tell us about the paperless home. Who could have predicted a family breakfast scene without the father figure sitting behind the daily news? Oh sure, we still have many of the same magazines, but their page counts are down to half or more. And their sell price has gone up. They raise prices and just as surely decrease buyers.
2. Catalogs are experiencing the same problems as magazines. It costs too much to mail, so they reduce their page count. The point where catalogs split from magazines is the Internet. Newspapers and magazines have served for hundreds of years as paid information sources. Information on the Internet has been free. People expect the Internet to be free and therefore they are unwilling to pay. Catalogs never had, and never will have a paid subscriber base.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Printing has changed and many of the changes are permanent. All that being said, I’m optimistic about the future. There are innovations introduced all the time to make printing, better, cheaper, and faster. The Internet for all its puffery and bluster has been proven to be less effective than direct mail as an advertising medium. Yes, you can get a great CPM (cost per thousand) but there is such a massive overwhelm that customers have learned to tune the advertising out. If you want a buyer to pay attention to your message, put something in their hands.

Nothing is easy in printing.

There are ALWAYS challenges in printing. The very premise of offset printing is based on the adage that oil (ink) and water don’t mix. So what do we do? We find a way to make that particular law of physics work for us. They don’t mix huh? Good, let’s find a way to lay water down on the areas of the plate that we don’t want to pickup ink,  and ink on the places we want to print. It sounds simple–right?

Ka-Boom!

It’s about as simple as finding a way to smoothly power an automobile based on tiny explosions in the motor. That sounds like an odd way to say internal combustion engine, but that is what it is, propulsion created by explosion. When put this way it sounds dangerous, doesn’t it?

It’s easier said than done.

Recently I was asked to find a source to print board books for children. Until I looked into it, I had no idea what a challenge I was undertaking. If you have been following my blogs it will come as no surprise to you that I am steadfast in my opposition to  overseas printing. The US printing industry is hurting and sending money out of the country during this recession (that we’ve been told is over–ha,ha) makes it more difficult for us to climb out of the hole. I’m not a China basher, but I feel strongly about supporting the American economy first.

Really, is China the only choice?

Herein was my problem. I was told that US printers don’t print board books. Board book printing is almost exclusively done in China.

Humidity is good for skin, but bad for books.

Given my predisposition toward printing in the US and the dearth of printers here I was about to resign myself to going overseas, BUT there was another rub. My customer had been printing in China and was experiencing problems with warped pages.

A Book With Warped Pages is Like a Birthday Cake Someone Sat On.

They were told that the warping was occurring because of humidity. Nothing is more humid than a ship at sea. The only thing more humid is actually being in the ocean. What do you do when the only place printing the product you need is overseas and the shipping back to our shores is creating warped pages? The answer seemed easy enough to them–find a mainland printer.

Where’s a miracle worker when you need one?

And, since I, Bill Ruesch Print Broker, have always been able to solve even their toughest production problems, they confidently turned to me.

It is flattering to think that my customers have so much faith in me–that’s the good news–the bad news is that it’s a compliment that carries a certain weight of responsibility. If I let them down, even once, will they choose to go elsewhere for future business? Yikes!

So, there I was stuck between what appeared to be an impossible production dilemma, and customers who expect me to solve it, impossible or not. Was I up to the task?

Ta-Da!

Do I dare alter the old cliche` and say, “where there’s a Bill there’s a way?” Okay the previous was a shameless, self-serving, pat on my own back, but by golly I found a printer that meets the criteria. There is only one, can you believe it, the only one in the country, but I located them.  I would tell you, dear reader, who the printer is, but I would rather keep that information confidential. I can say that should you need to get a board book printed, call me at (801) 474-1270 and I will gladly assist you. It’s my job.

Seeking Glimpses of the Future

I have my crystal ball out. It is sitting right in front of me on my desk. I’ve been searching its depths for some clue about the future of printing, publishing, and related industries. You know what I get? Nothing.

The only thing I know for sure is that things will change. This little prophesy doesn’t mean much, except to say that time is a river and we can either find a way to float with the current, or test our strength against it. (Pretty poetic wouldn’t you say?)

I’ve spent a lifetime, so far, learning all about offset printing. I now know quite a lot, but what is that worth? What is it worth really? When I think back, I can remember people who were expert typesetters and others who were great with scanning drums for four color separations. Their hard won knowledge became irrelevant almost instantly with the changes in technology.

I used to laughingly pontificate that someday Bill Ruesch Print Broker, would consist only of an equipment filled Winnebago. Customers would provide me with art files. I would drive over to the paper merchant’s warehouse, load-in the stock, and by the time I arrived at the customer’s dock the job would be completely printed, folded, and bound.

Book in a Box

That used to be my weird vision of the future. It made me and my customers chuckle at the absurdity. It isn’t so funny anymore now that the Espresso Book Machine exists. In one machine a whole book is created; from file to finished product in less than seven minutes.  Seven minutes–printed, bound, and ready to read. That is if you have hot pads. I understand that the books come out pretty warm and need to cool down a bit.

My vision of the future has come true. What do I see in the future now? I haven’t a clue. I think my predictor must be on the blink. I’d be willing to go out on a limb by stating, “It doesn’t matter what crazy, ridiculous, impossible notion we conceive, someone is probably already a step or two ahead of us, and are right this moment building something to make it happen.”

I’m prepared to be amazed. How about you?

Printers who let their hostility get the best of them are fools,

because printers who are likely to survive this recession and move successfully forward must find ways to reinvent their relationships with Print Brokers. Brokers hold the key to doubling or tripling your business without creating additional expense. The problem is that most printers don’t know what to do with print brokers. They aren’t part of the sales team and they aren’t customers either. What are they? Any attempt to pigeon hole them into either role will end in failure and frustration.

The first thing to do is embrace brokers and stop kicking them in the teeth.  I know this may not make sense to you. Some of you are going to accuse me of overreacting, after all your company doesn’t mistreat brokers — right? Some will say I’m whining, and some won’t consider the issue of print brokers at all. There are a lot of misguided printers who staunchly refuse to work with brokers. That might have been okay in the past, but it won’t serve you well in the future. You can’t afford to turn your back on sources of instant new business.

Haven’t you noticed how tough times are? Printing, particularly offset printing, has been besieged on all sides. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how the pigheaded, self-serving banking industry has hurt all of us. Have you tried to get a loan lately? Nor do I have to explain about the impact of digital printing, foreign competition, and the Internet. You already know about these things. You are experiencing unprecedented cash flow problems and shrinking markets. Even your best customers have cut back with no real promise that they will ever be at former levels again.

I hear moaning from the Industry that good sales representatives are hard to find and that your sales people keep pressing for ever lower prices to make them competitive. You get upset and believe that they aren’t really trying. A really good sales rep can sell even under the most adverse circumstances — right? If you truly believe that why don’t you put on your salesman’s hat and find out for yourself? Maybe you did. Maybe you took a day, or a week, and went into the field. Maybe you proved to yourself that it isn’t so bad, but let me tell you, selling in this economy is like fighting an uphill battle day-after-day-after-day. It can wear down even the heartiest rep. Your sales team, is running on fumes, and another sales meeting, another motivational talk, and another seminar isn’t going to dramatically change anything.

What can you do? I would like you to take a moment, if you will, and consider re-vitalizing your sales efforts with the help of Print Brokers. Why Print Brokers, because they are FREE! Printers don’t have to house them, pay salaries, benefits, or reimbursements. That should be incentive enough. FREE, FREE, FREE — what’s better than that?

The problem is that most printers I’ve talked to either barely tolerate brokers, or despise them. Why? I think there are five main reasons for this:

1. Print Brokers own their own customer list. The printer doesn’t. Suppose a house sales rep brings in an account, since they were working on the company dime the customer technically belongs to the company. This isn’t true with brokers. In fact if you go after the broker’s customer it can lead to a nasty fight.
2. Print Brokers are legally a middle man. Printers fume if the broker can’t pay them because the customer didn’t pay the bill. On the other hand, how can you hold the broker responsible when they don’t receive the product? You don’t punish your in-house sales team like this. You must find a compromise. How difficult can it be to secure your interests in transactions without leaning on the party who is least likely to have the means to pay you? Think about it.
3. Print Brokers can take the print jobs to someone else if they want. Usually they move things around to save money, time, or be more convenient, but they don’t even have to have a reason, they can just do it.
4. Print Brokers are employed by their customers — not the printer. In the event of a disagreement the printer has little leverage over the broker. The broker knows which side his bread is buttered on  and is most likely to defend the customer’s point of view over the printer’s.
5. Print Brokers are not constrained by territories. Printers often feel threatened by brokers because they see their own customers as potentially vulnerable to the broker. Sales reps especially are very protective and guard, as they should, from any possible threat.

In my next post I will give printers some ideas that will allow them to work around the conflicts and make better broker relationships which will benefit both printer and print broker.

In a previous blog post, I referred to catching the printing bug as having printer’s ink in your blood. There is something about printing that gets one hooked. You can stray away from printing, but eventually you’ll circle back around and find yourself umbilically attached.

In my case, my printing career began right out of high school. I heard from a friend that a newspaper printer was hiring. I was the second to lowest employee on the totem pole, just ahead of janitor. I was a jogger. I think the hourly wage in 1968 was around $.75, maybe a buck and a quarter, I don’t really remember for sure. A jogger’s job was to stand at the delivery end of the press and scoop his hand between the conveyor belts, gather a stack of papers, and place them on the string bundler. There was a kicker that would knock a paper a little askew every 50th signature. This way we knew how many papers we were stacking. When the right quantity was reached the flyboy, (another name for jogger) pressed the foot pedal on the bundler. Heaved the bundle by hand over to a pallet, and scrambled back to the press to do it all over again.

Soon, because I looked bright enough, I suppose, they began teaching me how to make plates, hang the plates on the press, shaft the paper rolls, and fill ink trays.

OMG -- that really smells bad, and not in a good way.

It was dirty work, and because I was still the low man, I usually pulled the dirtiest jobs. When I think about it, I can still remember the smell of the developer, the ink, and even the paper.   The developer fluid was the most pungent. It made the entire press area smell bad. With today’s presses, they’ve either done away with plates, or plates are processed in a totally contained plate processor that doesn’t smell. Not at all. Whew — I thank you, my nose thanks you, and my clothes really thank whoever invented that dandy machine.

Part of the reason I chose a career in printing was because I thought it was a stable industry. After all, people will always need to get things printed — right? What I didn’t count on were all the technological changes in the business. Now they happen so quickly that it puts a kink  my neck as I whirl around  just trying to figure out where they are coming from next.

Negotiate This

It feels like Han Solo negotiating the asteroid field in the movie Star Wars. When he found what he thought was a nice safe cave to land in, it turned out he was very, very wrong, and barely escaped with his ship, friends, and life. I’m not saying that printing is life threatening it’s just difficult to know which way to go.

I was doing a press check at a web offset printer the other day. The presses are ever-so-more sophisticated than in my cub days. Many of the adjustments can now be done off of a computer console which keeps the press operators from running back and forth turning ink keys or adjusting registration.

Other things have also improved, for example, web breaks were common in my day. A web break occurs when the paper coming off the roll snaps apart. Snap is the right word but it doesn’t do justice to the event. It’s like a starting gun was fired. Pressmen scrambled like the Keystone Cops to get to and whack the big red STOP button. The goal was to limit how much re-webbing they’d have to do. No one breathed until they found out how much tail was left to splice before the whole (*@#&) press had to be re-webbed.

#%*&@

If the broken web wasn’t caught fast enough, it would take precious time, and many four-letter, red-faced printer words to fix it. Mule skinners had nothing on printers, I can tell you.

Today’s web presses have sophisticated roll changing systems that not only automatically splice, but keep a constant tension, so that the web won’t suddenly jerk when a roll bump suddenly happens. Have web breaks been completely eliminated? Ha, it just means that they happen less frequently. Are there fewer emissions of printer talk? Double ha! Web breaks aren’t the only things that go wrong. I like to say that printing has so many things that can go wrong it’s a miracle anything goes right.

One thing that hasn’t changed though is the job of jogger. The joggers are still there at the end of the press scooping up the printed press signatures and taking them to the pallet. My hat’s off to joggers. At least something, so far, has remained the same.

Unsold books are just landfill. If you or anyone you know has published their own book, marketing is critical. Learn the ins and out of social networking, Amazon, and other resources to sell the book. There is even  weekly computer coaching to keep you on track. Visit TAP (The Author Platform) and check it out for yourself.  You’ll be glad you did.

I envy the printers for one thing in particular, they are updated regularly by paper merchant reps who call on them with the latest developments, updates, and changes. I get my information either second hand or by attending seminars and showings hosted by the merchants. In the last two weeks I attended a seminar on preparing art files for printing, direct mail, and the danger of the opt-out initiative, and digital printing advancements. I never know what a customer is going to ask of me and I have to be prepared.

Yesterday, Sappi paper sent Daniel Dejan, their North American ETC Print/Creative Manager to town to speak about graphic design and file prep. I thanked Daniel for his presentation, but didn’t thank him enough. You see the printers depend on the artists and graphic designers to keep the presses rolling. The graphic designers need the printers to produce their products. But to hear them talk about each other, you’d think there is a war going on. The printers say that graphic designers don’t even try to prepare their files correctly, that they think because something looks right on the screen it will print right. Designers on the other hand, think that the printers are screwing up their files, and if they just knew what they were doing the jobs would all run smoothly.

Stop the bickering. Mr. Dejan framed the problem as having its roots primarily in the graphic programs and in the designers failure to take the finishing steps necessary to make sure their files are correct.

I can tell you from my personal experience that computer design has completely overhauled the printing industry. When the first design programs were introduced, they created more problems than they solved. Over the years we have seen definite improvements. The programs are much better but still far from perfect. Could they get even better? Yes. Are they striving to implement technology that would fix the disconnect between printer and graphic artist? Not really. Daniel says that he has recommended changes that are possible, but are shrugged off as being too expensive, or time consuming, and aren’t worth doing. Millions of dollars every year are wasted in printer and designer time because the needed tweaks aren’t happening. Printers and designers need to get together and insist that the software is improved. Maybe working on changes that would throw up red flags when art is incomplete or wrong isn’t sexy, but it would go along way to reducing wasted hours and angry phone calls.

“The single most important thing a designer can do to communicate the job to the printer,” according to Daniel, “is to provide a hard-copy dummy. Herein lies the rub, most files are now emailed to the printer or go by way of ftp. It used to be that the print rep picked up the art and delivered it to the printer. Hard-copy dummies were more common then. We have gotten away from them today, but they are still critical to successful communication. I hate to say it, but it seems to me that we need to take a step backward and have the print reps pick up the disk and hard-copy dummy to take back to the shop. We’ve lost an important communication opportunity along the way.

The second most important task for the designer is to pre-flight their own files. A good pre-flight program provides information about problem spots like low-res photos, but also tosses all the false starts and junk that accumulate as the design is developing. It’s like delivering a finished statue without cleaning it up or sweeping the debris around it. It’s not just ugly; it confuses the rip and leads to wrong fonts being selected, and other problems.

Every printer in the world would love for Daniel Dejan of Sappi to personally instruct the graphic designers, but that isn’t possible. What is possible is that the word gets out about dummies, and pre-flights and most of the problems would be resolved early.

As for Adobe and the others, come on, give us a break. Listen to Daniel, take his advice, and endow your programs with the tweaks needed to help stop the war.

Sappi’s website is www.sappi.com. If you would like to discuss other design-print problems with Daniel, his company email is daniel.dejan@sappi.com.

——————————————————————————————-

If you would like to be informed of new posts on this blog please register your email address below.

Printing is never boring

A typical offset printing plant is like a 3 ring circus. I say that not because Barnum and Bailey was just in town, but because there are three basic workstations a job goes through before it becomes a finished product, and if you’ve ever visited a print shop you’ve seen people hurrying here and there, heard lots of odd sounds, and smelled unusual smells. Printing is not really a circus, but anyone in the graphic arts can see the similarities.

Ring No.1: Prepress

No job enters onto the press room floor without going through prepress first. Your electronic files may be perfect and prepared exactly in the manner that the printer has requested, but will still need prepress. For example, does your job have multiple pages like a booklet, or a book? Then the prepress department will have to paginate your pages. Is that confusing? After all your file was in order, probably in reader spreads, why then should it need to be paginated?

If I was sitting across your desk from you I would demonstrate what I mean by taking an 8 1/2″X11″ standard size sheet of paper and folding it in half to 8 1/2″X5 1/2″ inches. Then I would fold it in half again so it becomes 4 1/4″X5 1/2″ inches. This folded sheet of paper would represent an 8 page press signature. You can verify this by writing consecutive numbers 1 though 8 on the bottom right corners including the back. Don’t unfold it to do this, just lift each corner. It is easiest if you have the last fold on the right and the other folds at the top, this leaves the bottoms open for numbering. Now open your mock press sheet. On one side you should find the numbers 1, 4, 5, and 8. On the other side will be the numbers 2, 3, 6, and 7. You will probably also see that the numbers you wrote on the bottom right hand corners are no longer in the same place. The direction the number is in is the direction of the page. For example, page 1 and page 4 face one another, and so do 5 and 8. This seemingly unorganized alignment of pages and numbers is precisely what is needed to print the job so that it will bind as a booklet.

At this point you may think that it would be helpful to pre-paginate the files yourself. Don’t even go there. There are other complexities that come into play like the size of the press sheet, the size of your page, and the size of the press it is printing on. Trust me it is best to leave pagination to the printer.

Center Ring: The Press Room

Ah, the press room. The printing press is what it is all about. This is the place where ink hits paper.

Other than the name and the fact that they have machinery, no two press rooms are alike. Printing presses come in all sizes from small enough to almost fit in the trunk of your car to towering three story tall monstrosities, and everything in between. It is not true that if you’ve seen one press, you’ve seen them all. But, and here’s the good news–it doesn’t matter much. A cursory knowledge is all you need to be a reasonably competent buyer of printing. You don’t have to specify that the project be run on a 40″ eight unit press with a perfector and in-line aqueous coater. What you have to know is basically the dimensions of the job, the numbers of inks, the paper, what coatings if any, and bindery processes, i.e. does it fold, staple, or bind some other fashion? Then you need to shop around until you discover the printers who are best at that niche. Or even easier, contact a print broker like myself to get you to the right place.

You need to understand that I have no objection to a sales rep from a printing company serving as your source of information as long as you keep in mind that they are obligated to their employer to direct the work there. A broker on the other hand is independent and free to place your job where it fits the best. That’s why I became a broker. I hated working square pegs into round holes just because my paycheck depended on it.

Ring No.3: The Bindery

Again, binderies are as varied as much as there are printers. Commonly they will all have cutters and delivery stations. Other than that they could have folders, saddle-stitchers, perfect binders, collators, etc.

The bindery is where the paginated printed sheet turns into a booklet. The first stop is the cutter. A press sheet will often have color bars, targets, and tic marks for bleeds. You don’t want any of these things to appear on your product, so they are trimmed in the cutter.

The trimmed press sheet goes to the folder where it folds exactly the way you did in Ring No.1 except not usually by hand. The folded product looks very similar to the one you made, but one side will be a little longer.

The next step if you want a stapled booklet is to take it to the saddle-stitcher. The press signatures are stacked precisely to allow the machine to grab the longer edge. The sheet opens as it is pulled and drops onto the chain (it isn’t really a chain, but that is what it is called). If there are additional pages in your booklet there will be multiple stations filled with signatures. Each one stacking on top of the other. Once gathered they go through the stitcher. The stitcher doesn’t look like any stapler you’ve ever seen because first of all there aren’t any staples. You’ll see spools of wire like fishing line that feed into the equipment. You’ll hear a chunk sound as the wire becomes what you know as staples. The final stage is the trimmer, usually called the three knife trimmer. Until this stage your booklet still has the folds at the top, and the bindery overhang or lip on the face. Those things have got to go, so into the trimmer they roll, the blades come down and cut off the top, face, and bottom just to make it even.

Finale

The finished product is boxed, shrink wrapped, or skid packed and sent out for delivery. Is printing a career for just anyone? No. No more than just anyone joins the circus. Printing is a demanding, insane, deadline driven business. The three rings: prepress, press room, and bindery are the stages where the action takes place, but the real action, just like in a circus, happens with the people. It requires the attention of a juggler, the precision of a tight rope walker, and the humor of a clown to make it through the working day. Tomorrow it all starts over, but the show must go on!

When I first began selling sheet-fed printing in the early 1980′s, my company Progressive Printing, printed an announcement flier for me. Before then I didn’t have much experience with paper other than commodity sheets used on web-offset presses. Think of magazines, catalogs, and newspapers. In the sheet-fed business a whole new world of paper opened up. I was so ignorant of paper that I didn’t understand that the paper my announcement was printed on was an expensive sheet. I didn’t know it until the office manager looked at it and said, “Wow, they must really like you because this is Cranes Crest.”

“Huh,” I said, “What is Cranes Crest?”

It turns out that Cranes Crest is made from 100% cotton fibers and is most often used on upper end letterheads and such.

Nothing more was said about my flier paper, but I realized that I had a whole lot to learn. Luckily for me a paper specifier from Zellerbach Paper Company conducted a mini-seminar in our offices. He covered paper fundamentals. His name was Mark Lander and even though he is no longer in the business I can still recall almost word-for-word some of what he taught us that day. Some of the lessons I’ve adapted and use as 60 second sermons when a customer needs to understand one aspect of paper or another.

I learned about paper because I felt I had to learn to do my job. Most people, including graphic designers find paper stocks they like and pretty much stick with them. There is nothing wrong with that approach. After all we can only hold so much information in our heads at one time. Because I took mastering of paper seriously, I found that my customers trusted my opinions and sought my advice.

If you are one who would like to know more about paper and don’t know where to go to get educated, let me give you some ideas.

• Check the yellow pages, or call a printer to find out who your local  local paper merchant’s are.
• Ask the paper merchant if they hold educational classes and attend if you can.
• Be sure to get swatch books and begin building a library of paper options. If you are a frequent user of printing papers they may be willing to furnish you with a whole paper cabinet, at no charge. Ask.
• Find out how they treat new paper introductions. Do they hold paper parties or bring mill reps around to the various buyers. Ask if you can get on the invitation list.
• Research paper on the Internet, some specialty papers may not be carried by your local sources.
• Many of the paper mills have websites that allow you to sign on to their news-feeds. Sign up, this will keep you ahead of the pack.

One service provided by most paper merchants that I’ve found to be particularly helpful is their willingness to create paper dummies. If you have a project with multiple pages there may be weight issues to consider. Your choice of paper could cost or save you a ton of money in postage expense. I’ve often had dummies made and taken them to the business services department of the post office to have it weighed so we would know for sure if we would pay a higher or lesser price. Often postage on a direct mail campaign will cost more than the printing and design of the pieces.

In a future blog I’ll get into paper weights and finishes, so hold on more is coming.

First, I want to thank all of you who read my blog about the challenges of offset printing on black paper. I especially want to than those who have responded with additional  suggestions and recommendations.  Whenever there is a challenge you can expect the cleaver production people in the printing universe to find a way over, through, or around the problem. Kudos to you.

Mr. Carlo Toscano of Global Printing in California pointed out that the digital printing industry has solved the problem by laying down a base of white and then printing on top of it. I have not personally seen this done digitally, so I’ll have to take his word for it. My concern is founded on what I have experienced, and that is that opaque white inks aren’t opaque enough. The black paper is tamed some, but still allows the paper color to influence the image and makes it gray. Digital is so new on the scene and uses different technologies than offset printing, that they probably have found a way to make it work better. I’d like to see samples if anyone has them.

The downside? Digital printing is most cost effective in very small runs. They generally top out at 500 – 1,000 imprints. If you need a larger quantity digital may not be for you.

Mr. Harvey Halperin (no company name) wrote, “Lay down a double hit of opaque white then dry trap process colors onto it. This will require two print runs, to allow the opaque white time to dry. We often do this with foils, or foil stamp and print on the foils there are a few new press that do this in line.”

Mr. Halperin is quite correct. A dry trap is a technique used by printers wherein they lay down a color and allow it to dry thoroughly before printing on top of it. A single pass of opaque white, as I said before, hasn’t proven to my satisfaction to be sufficient. A double bump, or a double hit, would certainly form a better base. If the white ink is allowed to dry, you avoid the problems associated with co-mingling wet inks. Contaminated inks will turn your normal process colors to pastels, but maybe pastel is what you are trying to achieve.

The downside? Every pass through the press requires additional make-readies, and plates. This technique will give you a good result, but you’ll pay for it. His other suggestion of printing on top of a white foil stamp will also work, but again you have additional costs that come into play. The double-bump, dry-trap technique probably work out to be the most cost effective way to achieve it.

There was also a suggestion to screen print the sheet. Silk screen inks are more like paint than they are offset inks. Because by nature they are more opaque, you may not have to lay down a base of white at all. It is a suggestion worth considering depending on the quantity you want to print and how the printed piece is to be used.

My point? With very few exceptions, the mid-night brainstorms graphic designers have, are by-and-large achieveable. If the budget is sufficient,  we can find a way to make their artistic dreams come true.

It isn’t just black that creates a problem, any dark colored printing paper presents challenges. The biggest hurdle is that printing inks are transparent. CYMK (Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black) dots are meant to be seen through. Overlapping dots create the color variations, you know, blue + yellow = green or yellow + red = orange. So what happens when you print transparent ink on dark paper? Right, the stock overwhelms the ink and you either don’t see it or the image is so faint as to be useless.

“Why do the mills create printing papers that won’t work well on press?” you might ask. Ah, that is a good question. Those wily paper mills know what Graphic Designers want and bold colored paper is often the best choice for their project. Strong color adds drama that you just can’t get with pastel shades. Again, “Why use it if it won’t yield a good result?” Printers have more than one trick up their sleeves. There are other processes that can be employed to print on dark paper.

Reverse Image:

Reverse image and type

The simplest way to achieve a dark background with a light image is to print it. Print the background with solid black, plum, or forest green on a white stock. Leave a window for the images, and you can achieve almost any look you want. The difficulty here is that offset printing is done with dots, as we discussed in an earlier blog. Print the dots on a textured or soft paper surface and you’ll probably end up with streaky, or splotchy solids. The paper surface makes a big difference. Make sure you discuss these issues with your printing professional before you go to press. Streaky, splotchy surprises are not fun.

The  poster to the right for the Rhythm City Dance School is a good example of reversed images. The type is white, but the dancer is gray. White is the color of the stock and the gray was achieved by using a screen of black (separating the black dots).  The point is, that while this piece appears to be printed on black paper it is really printed on white paper with a lot of black ink.

Foil Stamp:

Most foils are made opaque on purpose. They will cover any background color. The problem is that foil stamping is more costly than offset printing because it requires a die, the foil, and equipment that runs slower. The good news is that foil is available in a wide spectrum of colors, and finishes. For example you can get gold foil in satin, flat, shiny, and really shiny. It also comes in many shades. Gold foils are available in yellowish tints, greenish tints, and nearly bronze. Other foils that work well are white, silver, or clear.

Blind Emboss:

An excellent treatment to employ using dark paper is the blind emboss. Blind embossing raises the surface of the paper creating an image that is perceived by its height. It’s like a white-on-white blouse. The color is the same, but the pattern is revealed anyway. Blind embossing will cost more also than offset printing. Dies can get very pricey depending on the number of levels in your image. Most blind embosses are one level, but I’ve seen sculptured dies with a face or animal that are very complex. Sculptured dies, as you might imagine, can get into the thousands of dollars.

Foil Emboss:

As you might expect foil embossing uses both techniques. The image is foil stamped and then raised via blind emboss. A combo die can be created for this effect. Combo dies, as you probably guessed, cost less than buying two separate dies.

Opaque Inks:

Most opaque inks are not as opaque as you would like them to be. Imagine painting a light color over a previously dark wall. If you’ve had this experience you know that one coat won’t be enough. You might have to do two, three, or four coats before the wall is right. It’s the same with opaque inks. To blot out a dark surface the printer may have to double-bump (hit the image twice with the same color) and that probably won’t be enough. Additional bumps should work, theoretically,  but with each pass through the press you risk slurring your image or ruining paper. Paper is not indestructible, you know.

Metallic inks usually work better for this purpose. Metallic inks are made with up to 70% heavy metals, but even with metallic ink you will probably have to double-bump the image. And, this technique is not recommended for large areas.Type works better than swaths  of color which may show up blotchy.

Black-on-Black:

I’ve seen some excellent results with combinations of  black. For example, black paper on the market is almost always uncoated, which means that the color is a little flatter. If you use a black foil stamp or clear foil you can create a striking look by contrasting the paper surface with the shiny image.

Spot UV Coating:

It used to be that UV coating on uncoated paper was a no,no. There are new formulas that will allow spot UV, but aren’t guaranteed. Much depends on the paper you select. If you want to try spot UV coating, be sure to get samples from your local paper merchant, and have the printer test it.