In-House Production Print—Take Control and Do It!

Ever felt unsure about something? Like about bringing all of the printing that you outsource “in-house” and doing it yourself?

It’s time to just do it. 

No, really DO IT! 

It will require a little more work on your end when it comes to the actual prepress process, but not much more than a quick “file” and “print” and you’re golden.

In the end, you will thank me, and here are four big reasons why:
1. Outsourcing Is Expensive

A print for pay shop is most always going to inflate prices. Most print shops are leasing printers from dealers like us and charging six to ten times the cost that they are paying for color. Say you want a 100 page report printed. At $.70 a page, that’s $70 just for the printed pages. Forget about the bindery costs.

Outsourcing costs more.

2. You DON’T Get What You Pay For

While the cost to outsource a job to a print for pay shop may be high, the technical skills of most of the people employed at most retail places like FedEx/Kinkos and Staples is rather low. Most associates are your typical minimum wage workers with very little technical expertise in graphic arts or printing. 

Most of these people pretty much know how to make copies, but when a job gets a little more complex, they send it off to their corporate reproduction division. 

The reason that these people have little technical acumen is because, in most cases, the shop that they work for isn’t going to pay for a subscription to professional design software to help you troubleshoot a prepress issue. Ever walk in to one of these places with your carefully packaged design files and they tell you they “need a JPEG file format” to print it?

If you know anything about graphics, JPEGs are the most compressed file type you can get. When artwork is compressed, resolution can be drastically decreased, sometimes to the point of pixelation depending on your export settings. In their defense, a JPEG, or a PDF file, is a safe bet on their end to ensure that what you saw on your screen is what will actually come out of their printers and they are not at fault.

Not only is the person taking your file not really skilled at understanding the complexities of art files, but you’re also adding in a middle man to the corporate division. More often than not, this leads to print error, mistakes in your final job, and major setbacks to your deadline.

3. If You Want It Done Right — DO IT Yourself

This old saying could hold more true when it comes to color printing of marketing materials. You’ve invested in having something designed, why skimp on the final product?

When you take production printing on yourself, you have many advantages. Not only can you stop the printer if something isn’t right, but you can actually fix it right there on the spot and continue on with your print job. If a print shop has a problem with your file, they will just throw it right back in your lap to correct. May as well take that on yourself and remove the middle man.

4. Control Is GOOD

Brining your printing in-house is all about control. And control is exactly what you need to print WHAT you want WHEN you want it. Short runs, at the 11th hour are exactly what having your own little reproduction department in house are made for.

The bottom line, follow Nike’s example and just do it. Take control and take the wheel. If you’re still not sure, give us a call and we can help.