Category Archives: Information

Moving on up

We've Moved!

When you’ve decided to move to a new place, there will be a long checklist of things that need to get done both before and after the event. Changing the utilities, forwarding your mail, and updating your voter registration address are just a few of those important tasks. One thing you may forget to do when moving, though, is to let everyone else know where you’ve moved to. Specifically, your friends and family will need to know your new address so they can send you holiday cards and birthday presents!

Don’t just call up grandma and second-cousin Billy one by one to give them the new address; the easiest way to let everyone in on the major life change is to send out “We’ve Moved!” postcards. You can include your new address and a photo of your new place to help people find you for Thanksgiving.

Another great thing about moving, is you can throw a house-warming party to help break-in your new abode. It is also a great way to force you to unpack all of those new boxes that materialized in the spare rooms of your new place. Otherwise, they might stay packed until your next move!

Whatever you do after a big relocation, you’ll no doubt feel a sense of rejuvenation that comes from purging the excess belongings and clothing and from the new view you’ll be greeted with outside your windows. It is a stressful event, but one that has its rewards. In the end, the hard work will be worth it and you can celebrate with those closest to you…once you send out those invitations!

Let us help you with your moving checklist! We can design and print your postcards and party invitations, or even make those yard sale signs you’ll undoubtedly need before you leave your old place.

Baby Shower Tips

gifts and games for baby shower

Do you have a friend who has a baby on the way? Here are some ideas to make her baby shower fresh and fun!

This first tip comes from Play Party Plan
Before the shower, ask your guest of honor 24 different baby related questions. Write the answers to the questions in random order on custom printed bingo cards and pick up a couple of prizes for the winners.

babybingo

Here’s a sweet game that doubles as a gift…
Create a pretty fill in the blank sheet where guests can share wishes and advice for the mom-to-be.
babywishes
You can then have them all bound into a cute keepsake.

This is a funny one from Sarcasm 101
Take head shots of the mom and dad to be a week before the party and have the images blown up to fit on an 8.5×11 sheet of card stock with straight cut lines to create slices for each of their foreheads, eyes, noses, mouths, and chins. Print multiples and slice them up so guests can “construct” a possible baby face. Everyone can take pics of their babies and have a contest for the best (funny) one.

babymashup

Cute printable games from Etsy that we can print on card stock or customize for you.

Don’t forget the decorate the onesie table, everyone loves that game!

We hope these tips will help you plan the perfect baby shower.

Round Rock Area Serving Center

The Round Rock Area Serving Center is a local non-profit organization that helps to serve the various needs of our community. Every year they hold a gala called “Karamu”, and this year we were privileged to redesign the invite packaging for their 10th anniversary event. See the results below:

Round Rock Area Serving Center 10th Anniversary

We are proud of these new pieces, and they really demonstrate the different ways of thinking you can incorporate in what could easily be a standard paper invitation. The passport design of the invite itself invokes a sense of adventure, and even the envelopes replicate the look of the romanticized air mail packaging of the past. Don’t be bound by convention when putting together your next invite, let us help you think outside the box and put some sparkle in your mailbox.

Round Rock Area Serving CenterCheck out the Round Rock Area Serving Center and learn about ways you can help the community, too!

Beginner’s Guide to Mailing

A quick Guide to Mailing

Mailing something seems easy enough. You put a letter in an envelope or buy a postcard, stick a stamp on it and drop it in a mailbox, right? Well, a stamp is good for most things, but what if you need to send out promotional cards or invitations to a wedding of 500 people? There can be a cheaper way to get the word out, if you know some of your other options. Here is our quick beginner’s guide to mailing…

When First-Class Isn’t Good Enough

When you buy a stamp at the post office or grocery store, you are pre-paying for the ability to mail a letter via “First-class postage”. It’s the basic way that most personal mail travels through the USPS. The rate increases almost yearly and it assumes you’re not mailing something over a certain size or weight (typically nothing larger than a standard envelope, and nothing heavier than a few ounces). First-class mail is usually the best (if not the easiest) option, but when you need to send out large numbers of letters or postcards, something called “Bulk Mail” can save your wallet. Bulk mailing has more restrictions than First-class, one of which is you need to have an account with the post office. Once you’ve registered your account, you are given an account number. This number is required to be printed on all of your mailing pieces, typically in the area that a stamp would normally go. This box in the upper right corner of your mailer is called the “indicia”. It indicates to the post office that your piece has been approved to be mailed at the cheaper rate, and it gives the USPS your account number so they can deduct the cost of postage from your account.

Like a regular stamp, bulk-mail is PRE-PAID. Instead of having to stick on all those pesky stamps, however, you can just pre-print your indicia on every postcard or envelope as they are produced. This saves you time and the postage cost is usually significantly cheaper than that Forever stamp.

guide to mailing
Different types of indicia (via USPS)

In general, your printer or mail house of choice will need to process and clean up your mailing list (the list of people you want to send your mailer to). This guarantees to the USPS that all of the address are correct and that the people you expect to be living there are actually still there. Normally the post office has to do all this sorting and list cleaning themselves, which is why the First-class stamp is more expensive than most other forms of postage. They want to get paid for all the extra work they have to do because their automated machines can’t read the pink glitter ink you used on the letter to grandma.

If you “pre-sort” your mailer for them, they are much happier and are willing to give you a discount on the postage price per piece, as long as you are guaranteeing a certain number of pieces to make it worth their while (typically over 200 pieces). Whew! And, there can be even larger discounts if your company is a non-profit, or the pieces are smaller.

There are a ton of ways to save money on mailing if you are willing to do a little extra work. Here is an article by the US Postal Service that fills in the blanks a little more.  If you aren’t sure where to start, come and see us! We’d love to help you understand your options for sending out your own postcards and flyers!

Custom Water Bottles and Dudley & Bob Shout Out

We recently produced some custom labeled bottled water to give to a local radio station, and we just wanted to show them off! They turned out great and it shows how you can customize nearly ANYTHING if you have the notion.

Dudley & Bob Water

We are proud at how these turned out, and the folks at the Dudley & Bob show on KLBJ liked them too. They gave us a couple of shout-outs during the show! Take a listen below, and call us if you want to create your own unique bottles for your next party or event.

 

Summer Vacation Activities

Summer Vacation Activities

Memorial Day is coming up and that means that school will be out soon for the summer. What now? Your kids will need something to keep them busy for the next several weeks, in between outdoor activities and summer roadtrips. Here’s an idea: create custom activity books, coloring books, or trading cards just for them!

It’s easy to make unique games and activities for your family. You can send us photos to use on custom trading/playing cards, or even buy printable coloring sheets on sites like Etsy to have us print. There are a myriad of options and ideas out there and there is almost no limit to we can make. Coloring books are an affordable way to keep your kids entertained on rainy days or long drives. Let them draw the designs of the coloring and activity pages, then send them to us to turn into bound books that they helped create! They’ll show off their books to their friends back at school and be the envy of their friends.

Coloring pages and activity books is just the beginning of what you can accomplish. Do your kids love to play card games? Why not make a set of playing cards with family photos on the backs, or a collection of young art pieces? You can really make a deck of cards that is only for them. It is an easy way to make them feel special and unique. The best part is we can do all the work! You send us files and images, we do the rest. Another idea is to make a family themed board game to play around the table on game night. The possibilities are endless!

Choosing the right paper, material, and size for your project is what we specialize in. All you’ll need to worry about is having fun with your family this summer.

Coloring BookColoring Book Page by Robo Roku

Customer Loyalty Cards

When is the last time you showed your customers some love? Aside from the excellent products and service you give them, that is. There are a ton of ways you can show your appreciation for the people that keep the lights on, so to speak. You could just throw them a party and call it a night, but you want them to have a reason to come back and keep shopping with you long after the free buffalo wings and ginger ale are gone. One way to do that is to create Customer Loyalty Cards.

A loyalty card not only serves as a business card to remind your customers where they were, but it also promotes loyalty…it’s right there in the name! Set up a promotion that requires them to come back and shop with you on multiple occasions in order to receive a discount or free gift. You’ll be surprised by how many return shoppers you’ll get. Everybody loves a discount; create a punch card that helps customers keep track of how far away the free smoothie is and you’ve created a game that people won’t mind playing.

Loyalty cards can be anything you want them to be, but as an example, let’s imagine a physical card that nets the holder a free pizza bagel when they buy 7 (assuming you’re in the pizza bagel business). A small business card sized piece of cardstock with tiny pictures of pizza bagels on it can be all that you need to get your point across. Every time the card is brought into the shop, stamp it or punch and the happy pizza bagel fan will be overjoyed that they are only 2 bagels away from that free food. Even if you can’t give away one of your goodies for free, you can create a loyalty program based on a total purchase discount.

“Buy 7 pizza bagels and get 20% off your next purchase!” for example. It’s all about making the customer feel loved and appreciated. The end prize doesn’t really matter, it’s the journey that they’ll remember most every time they come through your doors.

Loyalty Cards

 

The Weight of Paper

weight of paperPaper comes in all sizes and colors, but did you know you can get it in just as many thicknesses and weights? Learning how to decipher the weight of paper is important to getting exactly what you expect when you place your next printing order.

The most common way to distinguish the thickness of a paper is by the pound number on the package. You’ve probably heard of 20# or 28# paper and wondered what it meant. The number refers to the physical weight of 500 sheets (also known as a ream) of the paper at a specific size. That specific size (known as the ‘basis size’) is dependent on the class of paper in question, which can lead to even more confusion when choosing the right stock for an invitation. The thicker the sheet is, the heavier the paper, and the higher the number.

The term “bond” refers to copier or printer paper. The weight of bond is determined by weighing 17×22″ sheets. The average weight of a ream of 20# bond is, you guessed it, 20 lbs. While bond paper is measured in 17×22″ sheets, offset paper sizes are usually different, so the numbers will be different. Offset paper is the type of paper used in printing presses, versus copy machines. These sheets are weighed at a basis size of 25″x38″. So a sheet of 60# offset paper feels the same as a sheet of normal 20# bond paper because the the measurement size is bigger in the offset sheet.

 Equivalent bond/writing and offset weights: 

16# bond or writing = 40# offset
20# bond or writing = 50# offset
24# bond or writing = 60# offset
28# bond or writing = 70# offset
32# bond or writing = 80# offset

Confused yet? The problem compounds itself when comparing bond and offset papers to cover and card stocks, which have their own rules for measurement. The kind of cover stocks used in postcards and business cards use a basis size of 24″x36″ and can range from 60# to over 130#.

Hopefully this gives you a basic idea of how to ask for the right paper for the job at hand.

Remember: Bond/Offset is for letters, brochures, and everyday printing; Cover is for business cards and postcards. There are other types of paper, of course, but if you understand the basics you’ll be just fine. It’s not enough to ask for a 60# paper, you’ll usually need to specify the class, too.

Setting up Bleed for Print

Bleed for Print

One of the most difficult concepts to understand in printing is Bleed. Don’t worry, it’s not as dangerous or messy as it sounds. It’s a way of planning for the inherent imperfections in the process of turning your files into printed products.

P&B Spot Business CardsIf your design has color or elements that run off the edge of the page, you’ll need to add a BLEED to your document. Think of it as the extra bit around the edges that can be cut away without affecting the design. Printing is ultimately a mechanical process; paper enters a machine (in this case a printer or press), ink is applied, and it comes out the other side. Every sheet of paper that runs through the machine can shift and move by a sixteenth of an inch or more because that paper has such a long path to travel.

This is oversimplifying a bit, but the basic idea is there. If we didn’t take these shifts of paper into account, when the sheet is cut out, you may see extra white paper around the edges of the offending sheets. To avoid this, we want to stretch the color of the design out past where we want to cut it. This way, even if it shifts, we won’t see it.

NOTE: Another tricky-wicket when designing can be borders. If you have a solid border around your artwork, you’ll want to make sure that it extends INTO the Safe Zone of your design by at least.25″. This way, when your print is cut the border will appear even despite the variances in printing. Otherwise you could end up with a lopsided border that isn’t consistent throughout the run of prints.

 

Bleed Guide

Cut Edge: This line represents the finished cut edge of the piece.

Live Area (Safe Zone): The area that is considered safe to keep information or important elements within.

Bleed Area & Edge: The more bleed, the better. This area is the overage you need to provide if the color of your design goes all the way to the edge. Keep in mind anything in this area will be cut off, but you need something here so you don’t get white space at the edge of your finished card. Printers tend to shift minutely when printing, so not every sheet is always perfectly aligned, this extra space accounts for that shift.

The absolute minimum bleed you need for a printed piece is 0.125 in (1/8 in) per edge but some pieces require more than that. So if you are working with an image in Photoshop or Illustrator and placing it in InDesign for print preparation, keep in mind the area you might need to use for the bleed.

Crop Marks: Indicates where the print shop with cut the paper to create the finished piece.

Digital Printing vs. Offset Printing

When you start a business it’s important to get the essentials out of the way first. One could argue that aside from the business name and logo, there is nothing more important than business stationery! Business cards, letterhead, envelopes, and flyers are all vital pieces of collateral that help to spread the news that you are in the marketplace. Potential customers will keep your business card long after you’ve parted company, and it could mean the difference of being fresh in their mind when they are in need of your services, or simply being a face that they can’t quite remember a few months later.

Now that you know the importance of branded paper goodies, we have a few things to look out for when you’re out shopping for them. You may be asked whether you want a “digitally printed” card or an “offset” print, and you may scratch your head in confusion and shrug. It’s okay! We’re here to help!

Digital Printing

Digital printing is what most people think of when they need copies made. The truth is, digitally printing is not just “Xeroxing” or copying, though. Now it’s the primary way that laser and inkjet printers work. A file is sent from a computer to the printer, and the printer interprets the information and lays toner on paper producing the finished piece. Most digital printers work using the CMYK color gamut (learn all about it in a previous post), or some combination of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black toner. These 4 colors are combined to approximate the hundreds-of-thousands of colors you see in your document or photo. The important thing to keep in mind is that digital printing can only APPROXIMATE color; and the colors it can produce will vary from machine to machine, and are even dependent on the type of paper it’s printed on–and even the weather! Moisture in the air can affect the way the ink appears when printed on a laser printer.

Digital printing is usually a little more expensive (especially for color) in smaller quantities. But the ease of the process allows for small quantities and faster turnaround times, where Offset Printing does not.

Offset Printing

If color matching is imperative, or you’re looking for the best price on large quantities, offset printing may be what you need. Typically you’ll find letterhead and envelopes printed with this method. One-color or two-color artwork is ideal for offset printing, as each color needs to be printed separately. If an image has 8 different colors in it, for example, each color is pulled from a can of ink and put into a printing press, then printed on the page. It can get expensive when printing multiple colors in this way. Digital printing can make those same 8 colors by mixing the 4 CMYK colors, but you don’t usually have that option with offset. Each color is represented by a can of ink.

Each color would then need to be washed out of the press after each run, so it’s time consuming. But, it’s perfect for printing 1000 sheets of red and black letterhead, or 5000 black & white envelopes. Large printing runs are the most cost effective, because once the ink is loaded up, paper can be continuously fed through the press without much intervention, and at a faster rate than digital printing. And as the addage says, “time is money”!

Offset press - magenta ink

These are just the basic broad strokes of the two major printing types. Obviously, there is more to each of them that, but this should give you some rudimentary idea of which one you may need to ask for when you are ready to show off that new logo for your business.

If you need any help deciphering the mysteries of printing, give us a call! We would love to help you take your brand to the next level.