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Brochure printing can be a worthwhile venture for your business. As a marketing tool, a brochure is a multi-faceted information-driven pamphlet that can establish your business as an expert in the field.
Customer attention and intrigue should be your main focuses when designing your company brochure printing. Conceptualizing for brochure printing services involves many different elements that must be taken into consideration in order to create an effectual piece. Important custom brochure printing design components include:
Composition
The composition of your piece refers to the relationship between all of the elements and characters within the specified area. In order for your brochure printing to be visually appealing, these elements should be harmonious with one another.
Relationship between Positive and Negative Space
In design, areas of white space are just as crucial as words and images. The negative areas within and around the images and words, give the viewer’s eyes a place to rest. When creating a design for a brochure printing company, it is important to make negative space active so that it adds to, rather than takes away from, the overall composition. In order to create this cohesive relationship, you should pay close attention to size and placement of positive objects in relation to negative space. Extreme contrast makes for a more active and interesting custom brochure printing design.
Balance
The visual weight of design elements in brochure printing should be evenly distributed throughout. If there is no balance, the viewer often becomes confused and overwhelmed with the composition. The simplest way to achieve balance is through symmetry. While symmetry is an effective design, it is much more intriguing to achieve balance in your custom brochure printing services through asymmetry. Varying the distance and density of your design elements will shake things up but maintain visual weight.
Attention and Hierarchy
As the viewers’ eyes fall on your brochure pages they will follow a particular direction. By focusing on the arrangement, size, and line placement of your piece, you can manipulate the eye to follow a specific road map. Contrasting the weight and shape will allow you to create a hierarchy of design elements. Those components in your brochure, which are more important, should stand out from those that are less important. Heavier type faces, or larger fonts can be used for this purpose. Additionally, lines can be used to connect or isolate areas of your brochure printing.
Color
Color can be very symbolic. Several cultures have specific colors which are used to represent different emotions, actions, objects, etc. You should never randomly choose full color brochure printing colors. The colors of your custom brochure printing should be visually appealing, complimentary, and meaningful. Also, colors can be used to connect or isolate certain points.
Layout Design
Brochure printing uses strong layout to allow for storytelling. Typically, the front panel is a teaser meant to grab the readers’ attention and provoke the page turn. The second panel’s purpose is to hold and maintain the readers’ interest. At this point a clear theme is developed. The inside panels are the source of information. Finally, the back panel is the call-to-action. Many brochure printing companies offer a mailing label, an order form, or a message to readers about how they can get more information.
Typography
The style of your font can change the entire look and feel of your brochure. Not only is type important for theme consistency, but it also helps to convey a message. Never use a true type font because they do not convert well from one machine to the next.
Readability and Legibility
Readability refers to the ease with which a group of text is read. Letter shape is one factor that can be altered to allow for higher readability. For example, large amounts of text, in newspapers or books for example, are typically printed in serif fonts. Serif fonts have a drastic contrast between thick and thin. They also have strokes projecting off the letters at the bottom or top.
Legibility refers to how clear and recognizable individual letters are. Individual letters in short phrases, such as headlines or pull quotes, are often more legible in sans serif type.
Font Size
When choosing a type size, consider your audience. For reading ease, general brochure printing should be about 12 points. Large fonts are usually easier to read. However, the larger the font the more mid-sentence hyphenation will be required. As a rule, hyphenation should be kept to about two per paragraph.
Line-spacing and Word-spacing
Every inch of space in your brochure is crucial. The space between paragraphs, lines, and characters can all be varied to set-off and call attention to different clusters of information.
Images
Pictures are meant to enhance custom brochure printing copy. This means that the images you choose should be properly aligned with your business, subject matter, and design style. Photographs, original illustrations, and clip art are all suitable sources for graphics. No matter the type of image, if it doesn’t fit in with the rest of your brochure printing it will be painfully obvious. Additionally, quality and size of the photo should be considered. If you have a perfect image with a major flaw, edit the picture before you incorporate it into your brochure. With today’s technology, your graphics can be intensely altered. If the graphic is important, don’t be afraid to go too big. Also, remember the rules of balance for multiple images.
If your custom brochure printing design is haphazardly created with no deliberation, you might as well take the budget allotted, and throw it in the garbage. Sitting down to read a six page brochure is a commitment of time and effort. If you don’t put in your time, the consumers won’t put in theirs.
Filed under: Uncategorized, Templates, Design on December 31st, 2007
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When it comes to giclee printing paper, size just matters. Believe it or not, the thickness of your printed page can affect the impact of your promotional printing piece. Although there is very little noticeable difference in quality of print from thin paper to thick, a weighty page will speak for itself.
How can any text be taken seriously on a flimsy piece of computer paper? If you’re expecting to get your brochure printing or letterhead printing done on the same type of paper that little Johnny used for his 3rd grade book report – well, it’s time to reconsider.
Heavy paper has an air of importance that is crucial in professional promotional printing. The feel is more sturdy and substantial. Custom RGB printing on thick paper will also translate visual weight to the eye. The appearance is much more serious and business-like than a thin piece of paper.
This paper is especially detrimental in business card printing. This is the case because business cards are typically small squares of paper, usually no larger than 3 inches by 5 inches. If you go flimsy on custom business card printing, it will just resonate cheap. You don’t generally hand a business card to someone whom you are acquainted with already and in handing it to someone you have not before, the first impression rule comes into play. People don’t want to pay for legit products and services from a business that can’t even spend the time, effort, or funds for anything more than amateur business card printing, created with a home desktop.
Thick papers hold up well, especially against heavy ink coverage, which is also a better design choice. Even when it comes to photo printing, thicker paper just looks better. Full color photo printing should be done on thicker inkjet photo printing papers.
Taking your project to a promotional printing company is your best bet for thick paper giclee printing. If you’d rather chance it on your own home destop, understand that you’re taking the risk of a major paper jam. Many commercial printers do not handle thick paper well, especially if they don’t provide a straight paper path of printing.
Filed under: Uncategorized, Design, Education, Digital C Print on December 19th, 2007
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RGB (Red, Green, Blue) is the color scheme used in computer graphics. CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black or “Key”), on the other hand, is the standard for printing color images. The computer screen displays light. As colors are added in RGB, light is added as well. Alternately, the CMYK color scheme is used in combining inks. Therefore, as more colors are combined, the resulting color becomes darker.
If you are working in RGB, you must convert your promotional printing files from RGB to CMYK so that they can be printed on a printing press. Unfortunately, not all colors can be replicated in the transfer process. While some colors may be out of the CMYK gamut, it is usually difficult to tell the difference in full color fine art printing.
So what the differences?
RGB uses the colors red, green, blue which are the primary colors of light. The secondary colors to these are cyan, magenta, and blue, which can be found in CMYK. Therefore, CMYK is opposite RGB.
Both RGB and CMYK modes use 8-bit channels for each of their colors. Since RGB includes 3 colors, RGB is a 24-bit model. CMYK, on the other hand, uses 4 colors, and therefore it is a 32-bit model.
The RGB process of color is additive. The colors throughout the color spectrum are created in RGB by adding different intensities of red, green, and blue light to black. Black is equivalent to no light on the computer screen. The intensities of RGB light can be as weak as 0, or as strong as 255.
The CMYK process of color is exactly the opposite. As RGB light is striking an object, CMYK colors are absorbing the light and reflecting back appropriately. The amount of light absorbed depends on the amount of CMYK color present. Therefore, CMYK is considered a subtractive process. The colors displayed by CMYK are the result of subtracting varying amounts of red, green, and blue light.
When your promotional printing project uses custom RGB printing, the eye sees the varying light of red, green, and blue (and all the colors they produce) before they are absorbed. When you produce Giclee printing in CMYK, however, we are seeing the color lights that have been reflected back to us after absorption.
This is just more proof that full color photo printing is an amazing and intensely detailed process.
Filed under: Uncategorized, Design, Education, File Preparation, Technology, Digital C Print on December 19th, 2007
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Over the course of the past year, we have been lucky enough to print many custom large format posters and displays for museums and traveling exhibits.
This past spring and summer we had been doing ongoing Digital C Prints and Duratrans signage for a traveling display for Reptiland, which is a traveling display of Reptiles that goes from museum to musem and this summer was at The Museum of Natural History, here in New York City.
Over a few month span last winter we had printed similar images but with insects for the Staten Island Children’s Musem.
All in all doing this type of printing is rewarding, but knowing that children and their parents really get to enjoy them and learn from these types of applications is it’s own reward.
If you have a project like this, please contact Dan Morse.
Filed under: Proofs, Products, Design, Education, File Preparation, Technology, Digital C Print on September 15th, 2006
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There has been an interesting surge of interest (is that redundant?) amongst our customers regarding the process of face-mounting (also known as “second surface mounting”) digital prints to plexiglass or acrylic equivalents.
FYI, digital c print is the generic name for Lamba, Chromeira and Light-jet prints (among other trade names for digitally recording images onto photographic media)
it’s apparently become an extremely popular means of preserving and displaying photographic or any digitally printed artwork—one might go as far as to call it a fad! That is where the REALLY interesting part comes in….(okay, I need a life-but bare with me).
Face-mounting film or prints to plexiglass as a finishing process, in the world of commercial large format imaging, has existed for years. It has been used most commonly for sandwiching duratrans or duraclear prints for installation in backlit display situations, such as lightboxes (you’ve seen them everywhere forever—bus shelters, airports, museums, stores, etc.). Why has it suddenly taken off as a popular finish for artists and photographers? Because it looks VERY cool when used with opaque prints as well, and it’s a good means of protecting and displaying artwork as well.
If applied properly (no bubbles,no dust, no hairs, no sandwich bits), face-mounting to plexiglass provides a very rich, clean and visually striking means of showcasing your imagery (be certain your lab uses a high-grade “archival” adhesive like Optimount Ultra to prevent acid decay). Typically, a backing is also used to protect the rear of the print and to facilitate display mounting (you can attach them to a wall without damaging the back of the print).
Backing substrates can be as simple and inexpensive as illustration board on the low end, plexiglass or sintra on the medium side and aluminum or other metallic composites on the high-end. Don’t get too carried away here though, as the backing adds weight which will increase shipping costs and even rip out large sections of your dry wall, yuk-yuk.
After snooping around and checking out some of the relevant blog sites which are great sources of real world information and feedback (www.largeformatphotography.info and www.photos.net), it seems that the only explanation I could find to describe the face mounting process is that it is basically the same process as traditional face-mounting to plexi: Print, clear glue plus plexiglass, except they guarantee that it will be very clean and dust free (as any good lab should be able to do, if you ask me-I didn’t know you could patent cleanliness, otherwise my Mom would’ve been rich!)
If anyone out there wants to knows more about this mysterious process, feel free to e-mail me at dmorse@printpromotion.com.
I’d also be curious to know who started adapting this process as an artistic vehicle, as it is indeed a very cool twist on the old.
Thanks for baring with me…
Cheers!
Dan
Filed under: Proofs, Questions about active job or job status, Products, Design, Education, Technology, Digital C Print on September 14th, 2006
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This is a special production method is used to glue the Photo, the production process. In this way the image is protected against scratching, dirt and premature aging. A unique way to preserve photographs and for the presentation of photographs in a museum or gallery environment.
People mainly want it because it looks great by adding a dimension to your photography based or digitally mastered graphic artwork and preserves the image at the same time. The mounting process to a thick material gives the appearance of a museum or shadow box.
While standard framing provides great flexibility, by choice of materials and colours of frame and overmat, to optimally match a picture to your home decor, face-mounting behind plexiglass (acrylic glass) is by far the most impressive way of presenting a photograph.
This technique has only recently gained wide acceptance among museums and art galleries. Mainly because it seems to add a third dimension to the two-dimensional image and provides a brilliance and intensity unobtainable by any standard framing.
Process Production technique:
The end product contains mainly three parts:
*A digitally printed photograph,
*A 100% clear adhesive
*1/4” piece of plexiglass or other acrylic glass.
This production technique involves a digital C print or a permanently elastic, smooth fusion of paper print and acrylic glass. By using a special adhesive, an airtight bond is created with no air bubbles, fixing the print with its front side to the back of UV-resistant acrylic glass or plexi-glass.
By directly gluing the front side of the photograph to the back of a sheet of plexiglass, any light reflections between the photograph and the glazing of an ordinary frame is eliminated, thus increasing image sharpness, contrast, and colour saturation.
When light penetrates the layer of acrylic glass, the light reflection on the print’s surface is completely different from the effect when a print is framed with a passe-partout and ordinary glass. With this unique production method the diffusion of light diminishes because of the homogenous quality of acrylic glass. As a result the colours seem sharper, more brilliant, more intense and more immediate.
The assembly of plexiglass, photograph and protective back layer is attached to a recessed aluminium frame which serves as a spacer between picture and wall, providing the impression of the photograph to be hanging in the air.
Although face-mounting provides a spectacular way of presenting photographs, it’s virtually not more expensive than “classic” framing using window mount and a good wooden or metal frame.
Filed under: Uncategorized, Products, Design, Education, Technology, Digital C Print on September 14th, 2006
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The goal of this contest is to create an effective message that gets you to take action, in this case the action is to receive votes to win this competition.
We hope you have enjoyed the contetst so far.
We thank all of the entrants for their time and dedication in submitting their designs for Clean Design 2006. We were honestly surprised to see what a great response we had received. The submissions came in from all over the world and in as many styles, languages, and artistic interpretations as could possibly be imagined. We also thank Adobe for their sponsorship and support. Good luck to all the top ten picks.
Cast your vote for the top three entries. We ask that you send your friends and colleagues and maybe your clients to vote on your behalf. Our system allows each visitor to vote once. The voting will close on March 6th, 2006 at midnight.
Thank you for your participation,
The Marketing Team at Print Promotion/Printing Responsibly
Filed under: Uncategorized, Design, Events/Sponsorship on March 2nd, 2006
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Well, it has been quite an experience taking our business from phones, email and all the other typical business communications methods to a more streamlined and more customer oriented web application to sell our products and service our customers.
We started out getting a lot of traffic from our fellow “techies” out there, and quickly were found out by the freelance designers in the world. Next we were fortunate to work with many of the hardworking and very talented freelance and graphic designer firms all across the US, then we started getting inquiries and live jobs from corporate america, top clothing brands and non-profit groups, who of course were buying recycled paper based print jobs.
Who?
Ralph Lauren, Verdura Jewelers, US Helicopters, Silas Partners, a group of 17 doctors in Virginia, a Bio-Deisel company in California, Pentagon Software, a movie producer, Phoenix Marketing, UsedBicycleBuyer.com, Viacube, and not to mention AIGA.org/The United Nations, the non-profit group that is helping to build alliances and programs internationally for graphic designers.
What? Pocket folders, business stationery, many, many orders on recycled paper, brochures, envelopes, business cards, sell sheets, postcards, photo printing, giclee prints and many others.
We are very happy to have worked with such great organizations, brands and non-profit groups.
Thank you for all your support,
The Marketing Team at Print Promotion.com
Filed under: Uncategorized, Products, Design, Technology on February 15th, 2006
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Welcome to the page that will help you get the best quality stationery.
Basically, stationery is the simplest form of business communication there is. Business cards, letterhead, envelopes, announcement cards, etc. are all simple forms of printed communications, but when crafted poorly, these staples of a good business practice can really hurt you.
So, the pitfalls are;
Really cheap stationery printers - Because they will not put the craftmanship into the printing, trimming, packing, and paper choices that you will need.
Full Color Stationery only printers – Because they cannot offer you match color or spot color (Pantone®) PMS color inks to ensure a good color match througout your stationery set and beyond into other printing you may do like a sales kit. We offer PMS matching inks throughout our stationery lines and pocket folders as well.
We offer the traditional craftmanship that you need, quality paper choices from all the top brands like, Strathmore, Wausau, Neenah, Capital Bond and more. We offer you color choices of White, Bright White, Ultimate White, Ivory Baronial, Natural as well as a variety of recycled papers, like Neenah Environments.
We offer flat and raised letter printing in order to help you achieve the right look and feel that your business deserves.
Filed under: Products, Design, Education on December 29th, 2005
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If you’re not a graphic designer, your time is best spent focusing on your core business. A professional design communicates legitimacy and attention to detail. We can connect you with professional designers who can help you present your business in a way that reflects the care and effort you’ve invested in your business. Please send an email to help@printpromotion.com with the subject “Need design help” and we’ll help you find the right designer for your situation.
Filed under: Design on June 13th, 2005