As a printing broker one of the most difficult challenges I face in trying to determine bid specifications is paper. Why paper? Because most people have no idea how many different kinds of paper are available. Usually I have to resort to questions like, “Does it feel about the same as the paper in your office copier?” Or, “Is it more like poster board?” These questions at least get me in the ballpark. Then maybe I can start pinning it down by asking about the surface of the sheet. “Is it smooth, or textured?” “Is it shiny, or flat?” “If you scratch it with your fingernail does it leave a shiny spot?” “If you hold it up to a light source can you see a watermark?” Anyone in the printing business will understand what I am talking about. It’s like a game of twenty questions, particularly if we’re speaking on the telephone.

Here is something funny–I was discussing a job with a customer the other day–and to help me determine the weight of the paper, he flipped the corner of the sheet over the mouthpiece. When I asked what he was doing, he half-seriously said, “You [Bill] have been in the business for so long that I thought you’d be able to tell how much it weighed by the sound.”  That was a first. I’ve had customers expect me to read their minds, but never has one asked me to identify the weight of paper by the sound.

Of course, the easiest way to figure out what kind of paper a customer wants to use is to have them provide a sample. Usually the stock will become immediately evident, but then there are those occasions when it is not a domestic sheet and importers don’t carry it either. I had that problem once with a local company who represented a skin care line of products manufactured in France. They produced a paper sample that neither I, nor three different paper merchants could identify.

Some of the problems come from the paper industry itself. Paper has been around a long, long time. Just like a foot became a length of measurement by the King’s shoe print, paper weight had rudimentary methods of comparison. How many shovel-fulls of this or that went into the mix. For example here is a list of some weights you may encounter when buying printing: Cover, Text, Book, Bond, Ledger, Tag, Duplex, Blanks, Bristol, and Index. To make it more confusing you can buy 80# Cover, or 80# Text but they aren’t the same thing–not at all. 80# Cover is heavy more akin to poster board, and 80# is similar to your office stationery but probably a little heavier. People will often say something like the paper is  eighty pound and be sure they answered the question, until I ask, “Cover or text?” That’s when they get stuck.

Most stationery is printed on bond and you can often recognize it by a watermark. A 24# bond sheet weighs about as much as a 60# offset. Confused? We haven’t even gotten started yet. No wonder customers can’t figure out what they want the printing/paper industry has made it impossibly difficult. Not on purpose, but there it is.

If your job requires interaction with printers, I have some recommendations to simplify communications:

1. Always try to provide a sample of the paper you would like to match.
2. Create a paper sample book. Put various papers in a binder and label them with their weight, finish, and color. By doing this you will have a ready reference to help you.
3. Watch for paper that crosses your desk. It might be direct mail, catalogs, or invitations. Slip them into the pocket of your binder if you like them and have your rep identify them later.
4. If you find a paper that you particularly like and want to use it often, ask your print rep to get you a swatch book to keep with your binder. The paper mills put them out to display their wares and they will show you all of the weights, textures, and colors that the paper comes in.
5. In many markets, the paper merchants will conduct seminars to teach customers about various aspects of paper like weight, thickness, surface, and brightness. Ask your printer if there are any learning opportunities like that in your area.
6. Avoid using phrases like, just regular paper, something cheap, you know what we like, or something like we did last time. Honestly we want to help, but most of us in the printing business are terrible at reading minds.

The last few blogs I’ve posted have been stressing the importance giving the printer correct specifications so that your returning bids will be accurate. If you do that, and do it perfectly, will that prevent errors? No. Ask any printer you know or any that you don’t know for that matter if Murphy was a printer and you’ll hear a resounding, “Yes” or maybe an emphatic, “Hell, Yes.” For those readers who may not know Murphy’s Law, it goes like this, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” What does that mean? I’ll tell you, it means that no matter how perfectly you plan a print job, and how thoroughly you execute that plan, in the end there’s a chance that a boogie will jump out and ruin the whole darn thing.

So many steps, no wonder someone trips.

Why does Murphy pick on printers? That’s a good question that I think can be answered very simply by the complexity, and number of steps it takes to get something printed. For example I once worked on a company’s brochure. They, the company, hired a graphic designer who hired a photographer to take shots of the workplace. The pictures were professionally done, and the graphic designer did an excellent job in preparing the art. This was before computer design programs when art was furnished to the printer on art boards, so the first step in the process was to shoot the art on our stat camera, and send the photos out to be drum scanned. State of the art stuff for the day. When the prepress people, who were called in the industry (don’t laugh) strippers, got the camera’s film and the film from the separator they had to strip it all together.  This required a different set of negatives for each color. Which were carefully taken over to a plate burner where the negatives were placed precisely over a printing plate and the images photographically etched onto the plate. Then the plate had to be developed. I could go on and on, but I’ve probably already put you to sleep so I’ll stop here.

miscommunications happen

Did you count the steps it took just to get a plate made, and the number of places where something could go wrong? The first possible communication error was between the customer and the graphic designer, the second between the photographer and the designer, and the third between me (the sales rep) and the designer. Another possible point of error is between the printer’s sales person and the estimator. Do you see where I’m going with this? If the job is miscommunicated up front, in any way, there isn’t anything you can do in the production to make it right. I often hear customers say, I don’t need a proof, just go on with the job. I understand, they are busy and don’t need any more to-do’s in their day, but proofs, and specs, and everything else we do to communicate the job are as necessary to the job performance as getting the art in the first place.

Ruined because of what?

Back to the brochure, after all those steps and I didn’t even enumerate what could go wrong on press, in the bindery, or even with delivery, after the job was delivered I got a phone call from the president of the company. He said, “This is a terrible brochure. You ruined what was supposed to be a showpiece for our company.”

I had samples on my desk and for the life of me couldn’t understand why he would be so upset. It was a beautiful piece. So I asked, “What exactly is the problem?”

He told me that his secretary’s dress came out too aqua it was really more of a royal blue color. I swear this is a true story! Her dress was the wrong shade of blue, are you kidding me? Assuming there was a real problem, where could it have taken a wrong turn? First if shot under fluorescent lights unless they are color corrected everything will be tinged with yellow. The color separator could have been adjusting for pleasing flesh tones and tweaked it a little off color. Printing is done with dots as I mentioned in an earlier blog (Sunday, February 15th, 2009), those dots are made with four pigments, CYMK. Not every color can be perfectly reproduced with those colors. Finally on press, the ink flow to the sheet is adjusted by the press operator to get the best result. Where did it go wrong-anywhere, nowhere.  The real question was did the brochure fulfill it’s purpose? Was it professionally produced in an accepted workmanlike manner? Yes and yes. Did any potential customer refuse to buy his product because of the color of the secretary’s dress? I don’t think so. His reaction was a bit over the top don’t you think? I wonder what was really going on?

He was

But again, Murphy was a printer. I swear that he was.

Yesterday’s blog was a continuation of bid specifying. We shot a photo of my specification sheet that I use, but it came out too dark, and is too small to read, so we will try to correct that problem shortly. In the meantime, I thought a specification list would be easy for you to follow and if you want to create your own spec sheet you can. You are free to use the following information:

I. Customer’s Company Name

A. Contact Name, Address, and Phone or email address

B. Date including when estimate is required, when the job is due, when customer art is expected, and if a partial delivery will do.

C. Does the Customer want proofs? How? What kind? Attend a press check? How much notice is required?

II. Job Title

A. Description, for example: 16 page booklet, self-cover, saddle-stitched.

B. Quantity

C. New or Pickup? Is it a new job (never been run before) or a rerun (pickup) from a previous order? If pickup provide last invoice or job number and date.

D. Size, Flat,  Finished, Page Count, Self or Plus Cover

E. Are There Bleeds? Where, head, foot, right side, left side, full, or none?

F Printing Method? Digital, Sheet-fed offset, Cold Web, Heat-set Web, Letterpress, Other.

G. Any Other Special Requirements?

III. Customer Furnished Art and Proofs

A. Customer supplies: disk, PC or Mac, Program Name and Version, Dummy. Will send by email, or ftp?

B. Printer supplies: Typeset, Layout, Design, Proof, What type of proof (hard or electronic?)

IV. Paper

A. Describe Paper for Each Part i.e. Cover, Text, and page count for each. For example, a 16 page booklet with cover and flyleaf, saddle-stitched would be: 4pages cover, 4 pages flyleaf, and 16 pages text, for a total of 24 pages.

1. Weight of stock or thickness (cover weight, book, text, ledger, etc.)

2. Color of the Paper?

3. Description: Mill, Paper Line, Finish (linen, wove, etc.)

4. Coated or Uncoated? If coated is it Gloss, Dull, Satin, or Matte?

5. If it is an envelope will it be custom (converted from flat sheet, windows) or stocked? Size, prints face, flap, inside?

6. If it is a form, how many plies, color rotation for carbonless (w/y/p).

V. Ink

A. How Many Color on each side? Does it print 4/2 (four color one side and two on the other? Or maybe 1/1 (one color both sides). Is it the same color on both sides, i.e. red ink on one and blue on the other.

B. How Much Ink Coverage? Heavy, Medium, or Light.

C. Specialty Inks, laser ready, quick dry, hard dry, etc.

VI. Bindery

A. How does it Bind? Saddle-stitch, Perfect Bind, Wire-o, Plastic Comb, Hard Cover, Velo, Plastic Coil, Spiral, etc.

B. Does it require–Folding, Scoring, Collation?

C. Padding? How many sheets per pad, with chipboard or without, std. padding glue? Where, top, or sides.

VII. Other

A. Die Cutting

B. Foil Stamp/Foil Emboss/Blind Emboss–die required? What size? What material: Copper, Brass? How intricate? One level, two or more?

C. Numbering–beginning number, ending number. Red or Black?

D. Tabbing–how many banks? How many positions? Each sheet unique or are faces common and tabs the only variable? Mylar reinforce tabs, color? Three hole drill or other? Reinforce holes?

E. Gluing–as in pockets for a kit cover. How many? Other?

F. Perforation–Corner, “L”, or straight? Standard perf or micro? Laser ready?

G. Drill–how many holes and where? What size hole?

H. Shrink wrap–How many to a package,number of packages.

VIII. Packaging and Delivery

A. Bulk Box–product placed in box without any other wrapping.

B. Paper Band, Rubber Band, Shrink Wrap–how many per package, how many per box?

C. Standard Boxes, or special?

D. One local delivery address or more? Specify how many to each location.

E. To Ship? How (FedEx, UPS, USPS, other)? Use customer account or printers?

F. Samples? How many to customer, or other?

Can you believe that I was able to boil down all these points on one 81/2″X11″ form, and still have room to make a sketch to communicate more thoroughly? The real trick is understanding the job, and writing it down in such a way that the vendors will have the same clear information for giving you their best bid. If done right, a spec sheet removes all guesswork. Guessing, and assuming are the bane of printers. When they are all working from common specifications you’ll see their bids will come in much tighter. Wild pricing differences will be a thing of the past, and you won’t have any more surprises after the printer receives the art. They won’t call and say, “This is different than the way we bid it. There will be additional charges.” Had you budgeted for that contingency? I doubt it.

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