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A combination of digital and traditional marketing materials can build brand loyalty and spur sales. But if your printed collateral falls short of expectations, it can bruise your reputation
Get ahead of the rush to prepare for trade show season and be ready to wow conference attendees and increase your sales leads with professionally designed printed marketing materials.
Taking the helter-skelter approach to your professional printing requirements prior to a major trade show or customer presentation is stressful. More importantly, scrambling at the last moment to have new trade booth banners, brochures, and business cards printed, cut, and delivered on time and on spec can be risky. Why? Because you’re leaving yourself no margin for error and no time to fix any imperfections that crop up. Mistakes made at the print shop in the rush to be ready for your next trade show are expensive, irreversible, and completely avoidable. And what if your last-minute delivery doesn’t arrive on time?
The quality and appearance of your company’s printed matter are mission-critical. Anything less than exemplary is unacceptable and potentially harmful to your firm’s reputation. Design and print go hand-in-hand, but they are not one and the same. There is a great deal of strategy and skill required to ensure the translation between your digital design properties and the printing press are accurate and as you envision them.
“The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.”
– JOHN RUSKIN
A Worthwhile Investment
An experienced, professional designer has the knowledge required to set up any size or type of design for a print shop flawlessly. It is a critical point to bear in mind since mistakes can be costly when they’re made by a printer whose expertise does not include the finer points of graphic design.
Through their work, a knowledgeable and seasoned designer who is familiar with the printing lexicon will ensure your printed materials are neither delayed nor rife with rookie errors. Five important things designers focus on for print-related requirements include:
- The difference between RGB and CMYK. RGB (red, green, blue) are primary colours of light. CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and key or black) are the primary colours of ink used in printing. Your computer monitor uses RGB colours. Print shops use CMYK colours. To print digital designs on a four-colour press, the RGB colours must be converted to CMYK, but in doing so, their appearance can change significantly. Hence, colour conversion is a delicate affair best not left to chance.
- What the Tristimulus colourimeter reads. In the fascinating world of colourimetry (the science of describing our perception of colour), a Tristimulus colourimeter is a device that measures the quality, intensity, and hue of colours omitted by a computer monitor. It helps designers to calibrate the colour levels on their monitors to accurately match the levels of the printer.
- Being mindful of Pantone colour coverage. With more than 1,000 Pantone spot colours available to commercial printers, it is the industry standard spot colour printing system they rely on when mixing inks to produce colours on printed materials. Pantone colours are listed by number, and how they translate into print also depends on whether or not the paper stock is coated or uncoated.
- Understanding how to use bleed effectively. In commercial printing, bleed refers to the elements of a design that touch the edge of a page without leaving a white margin. The bleed area is what is trimmed off of printed materials. For designers, knowing what the bleed is helps them determine how digital artwork files need to be set up before they’re sent to the printer.
- Triple checking the spelling and kerning. If words are misspelled or the spacing between letters and words is out of whack, changing them digitally is no big deal. Errors of this nature on printed materials, however, is another matter entirely (and a costly one).
Generating Sales with Slick Printed Materials
Professionally designed and produced printed materials – whether for the trade show circuit, a direct mail campaign, or as handouts in your office’s lobby – can reinforce brand loyalty among your existing customers, and help your sales force generate new leads. In fact, producing printed business materials is an important part of complete content campaign strategy.
Moreover, and according to a study conducted by MarketingProfs, three out of four small businesses prefer using both print and online channels as part of their marketing strategies because it tends to produce the best return-on-investment.