No matter your line of work you need to work with printers if you want to step your game up and give off that professional aura. From business cards, letterheads, sticky notes, envelops, stationery and more there are many options to boost your business. But the world of print and design can be confusing, you’ve probably overheard of digital and offset printing before but which is best for you entirely depends.
University Printers understands this world and you, by being providing graphic design serving Langley, Abbotsford, Maple Ridge, Surrey and neighbouring areas our team is well-versed in printing and all its technicalities. Want to level up your business with fresh business cards and stationery but need a logo update first? We provide logo design services in BC to get your business looking its best to clients and customers.
Digital printing is akin to the printing you do yourself, using options such as toner like in your laser printers or allowing for liquid ink in larger printers. Digital is a great fit for any scale of job, from 10 items to 10,000 and up. A great advantage of digital is it can change as needed, so it works great for things like business cards where the design stays the same but number, name, job title, and email change. Digital is the go-to for smaller businesses, if your print job is smaller than a couple of hundred digital gives you the best bang for your buck.
Digital is easy to set up and run, allowing for last-minute jobs. Black and white jobs are especially inexpensive, giving the option of both rich black (black with additional colour added in, which backs up the black more) or flat black (just pure black ink or toner). Digitial is accessible for everyone letting you do a range of prints from a single page to hundreds easy.
The name offset comes from the process of how ink is laid out, instead of directly from the printing plates to paper the process is transferred or offset to another surface as an intermediary, typically a rubber cylinder or “blanket” which the paper passes under. This creates a perfectly efficient process that provides accurate colour matching and a crisp, clean professional looking print.
Offset printing is best for large quantities for this reason, the more you print using offset the cheaper the price per piece. With smaller print jobs offset isn’t a great fit. Offset allows for a variety of paper types being used and having custom finishes. Offset printing generally works off of Pantone colours, which are standardized within the industry so you get the exact same colours each time, no slightly off and darker or lighter colours in your print job, each print will be the exact same.
This entirely depends on your print job, a large scale print with over 5000 copies might seem fit for offset but then if its business cards and details need to change for each 100 then a digital would be the best fit. Which is cheaper also depends on your order, digital stays at a constant price per sheet or page so it’s really worth it for smaller amounts. Meanwhile, offset gets cheaper the larger the print job is, having a smaller cost per page the more there are.
That’s totally reasonable, but now that you have a better understanding of digital VS offset you can go in and have a discussion with your printers. Our team at University Printers is here to help you find the best fit for your order and give you quality prints for a great price.
To learn more about our services and how we can help you, call us at (604)-533-0053 or email us at info@universityprinters.com. You can also use our contact form to send us any of your thoughts and questions.