Print Costs

Budgets and costing will unfortunately always be a huge part of graphic design wether working on personal projects or with clients. There are however a few simple tips that can keep costs down and client / designer relationships up.

Use colour carefully - Adding needless spot colours can add significant costs to ink and printing costs, find out if the colours can be created in CMYK and match using pantone books. Also if you want a specific colour, let you printers know, if you don't let them know before then you have no argument once the print job is completed.

Choose the appropriate print method - An essential decision for keeping your costs down, the wrong print method could end up costing you a huge excess of costs.  Lithography may be suitable for a run of 5000 or 10,000 but anything less will increase costs because of the high set up costs used in this process. Think of alternative methods such as screen printing for a low volume job of 100 or so prints. 

Contact your printer - It is always good practice to contact your printer in relation to your job, let them know the volume of the prints. 

Proofs - Always check your prints and get proofs printed before committing to a print job. This includes spell checks, colours and many other areas. One small error in a high volume print job could really damage your client / designer relations not to mention that with the printers.

Special Techniques - Although you may love the foiled, embossed and spot varnished cover you designed your clients wallet may not be so keen. Make sure you keep your design appropriate to the brief at hand.