People who have been in the printing industry a long time can easily remember when press checks were a common occurrence. As recently as 10 years ago, clients would head to their printer’s facility and review test sheets hot off the press to make sure colors were correct, no text was missing, registration was good,…

Years ago, when offset printing was the primary way to produce print materials commercially, if you were a small business or small organization looking to get materials professionally printed, it was practically impossible if you weren’t printing hundreds or thousands of pieces. The setup costs associated with offset printing made it just too darn expensive.…

According to recent data from the Direct Marketing Association, direct mail generates significant response. When using a house list, marketers can achieve a 9% response rate. The rate for prospect lists comes in at 5%. The conditions driving these rates are consumers’ high trust in print and their preference for receiving direct mail promotions over…

Special effects such as embossing, foiling or die cutting are terrific ways to add style and interest to your printed piece. While each one brings a different appeal, setting up your artwork so your piece prints successfully is the same for all three. The primary goal when setting up your artwork is to make sure…

Everyone knows that tailoring the customer experience to an individual’s preferences delivers a more satisfying interaction for the customer and builds brand loyalty. This holds true for print communications too. Personalization in print used to be including a customer’s name in the piece. We’ve moved well beyond that today. Print personalization is much more advanced…

There are a lot of reasons why marketers should include print as a valuable part of their integrated marketing campaigns these days. One of the more influential ones is the consumer belief that print is more trustworthy than digital communications. In this age of widespread digital deception, people do not think of print as “fake…

For years, commercial printers have told graphic designers to convert RGB colors to CMYK before packaging your files to send to print. This is to make sure you can accurately see what the colors you are using will look like in print, since your computer monitor displays color in bright RGB while print uses CMYK.…

Pocket folder design can be one of the more bothersome tasks for a graphic designer if they have not created one before. Since the pocket folder will be produced with a series of cuts and folds, setting up the design file correctly can be challenging, but it is vitally important. There are quite a few…

If you’re a marketer looking for an easy, free way to add digital elements to your direct mail campaign, then yes, you should be using the Informed Delivery program. The U.S. Postal Service launched this e-mail-based service to provide people with a daily e-mail digest of the mail that gets delivered to their home each…