Business printing was once the cornerstone of the printing industry. Back in the day when everything was paper-based, every company had to have letterheads, invoices, compliment slips, business cards, brochures, pads, posters….. The list goes on, and that’s not even including things like cheap flyer printing – having flyers printed is a relatively modern affair.
How has this changed? Well, the internet has altered the way a lot of businesses work. A lot of brochures and information that would have once been printed is now stored online and anyone with a computer (everyone, surely??) can view it easily. No printing needed there then. Invoices and statements are now often sent out via email and printed out onto plain paper at the recipient’s end if required. This further reduces the amount of business print out there, and because of this decline in the popularity of print, it seems that compslips are often ignored as well. Ironically, the newer flyer print has never been more popular!
One area that seemingly remains is card printing. There’s simply no quicker and easier way to pass your important contact details onto someone you meet – they’re a really functional item and therefore deserve their continued popularity. After all, it’s all very well having a website/Facebook/Twitter etc, but if you’ve just met a prospective client they won’t know how to find any of this. The humble business card is the important first step. These can link handily to a website, the likes of which you might find at website design huddersfield.
So how best to make your card stand out among the throng? Well, there are many different variations that can be taken into account. Some of these include:
- Lamination (gloss or matt)
- Folding (to make a mini/booklet)
- Die cutting (oddly shaped cards with cutouts)
- Spot UV print
Sadly there is a problem with a lot of these interesting possibilities – they are only really suitable for large runs. What tends to happen is that a customer finds a card that they really like – it might be die cut to shape for instance. Then they take that to a printers such as Auraprint and ask for some doing in a similar fashion. The problem being they only need 250 doing…..
The die costs £40 to make. The die cutting will cost £40. That’s £80 to add to the cost of the cards, which might be £30. So in this case, the die cutting causes the cost per card to go from 12p to 44p. They NEVER go for it. If this was a run of 5000, the die cutting cost would be an almost negligible extra, and might be feasible.
There is a lot of this kind of thing in the print industry – customers wanting large run effects on short run jobs. Disappointment abound!