Printing

One of our printers recently sent us these poll results:

Due to the economy, how much has your print spend decreased for 2009?

a) There has been a tremendous decrease in our print spend    35%

b) There has been a marginal decrease in our print spend    33%

c) There has been a slight decrease in our print spend    20%

d) There has been no decrease in our print spend    13%

How about you? Are you printing less these days? Or are you printing differently? What media are you using instead – or are you just doing without?

Let’s have a conversation!

Of all the human senses, smell has the most direct pathway to the emotional center of the brain.

We see changes in the printing industry often – from paper to technology and processes … The industry is set on keeping us on our toes. And now, on our nose…

We recently received a holiday mailing from Think Patented, one of our long-time printing partners, that included scent.

So, we had a few questions. And Rich Baker, our senior sales representative, was happy to oblige:

Q. What did you use?
A. Gingerbread scented Rub’nSmell.

Q. How’d you do it?
A. There were a couple of steps that helped make sure everything went smooth. We printed four color process + PMS 187 + flood of wax free gloss aqueous on 100# Gloss Coated Cover. Coated stock is recommended – gloss, dull, silk, matte or anything coated would be fine. We let the inks and aqueous cure for two days before applying the scented varnish, as recommended. We ran the scent as a separate pass.

Q. If I used this in a magazine, would it smell-up my publication?
A. No, it won’t. The scent releases when it’s rubbed and remains dormant until then. And, ads scented with Rub’nSmell can be rubbed multiple times (so it won’t lose scent or strength as it’s passed-along).The scent lasts for years in printed form.

Q. Can you see it?
A. Rub’nSmell is transparent and non-obtrusive. You can apply it over graphics without issue.

Q. Is it pricey?
A. It’s priced at about $400 per pound and you can cover about 200,000 square inches per pound. So, it depends on your application. Because it’s printed as a fifth color, it can be less expensive than traditional scented inserts (like perfume samples).

Q. What was the response?
A. Good. People loved the concept and were surprised at how strongly it smelled.

So, while we’re still waiting for smell-a-vision to become a reality, we can tide the cravings with scent-vertising.

Selby and I recently attended “Printing 101 training – a “Magical Mystery Tour” into the world of printing. The session was presented by Kathy Goodman at 3G-Graphic Solutions in Springfield, Ohio.

Kathy helped unveil the ‘Smoke and Mirrors” behind the magic that is printing. Even though I was never trained in design or print, I work closely with designers and this training helped me to understand their processes (and frustrations).

For example, here are a few lessons that I took home and some of the topics that we covered:

1. How to measure paper – an 8 ½ ” x 11″ is not 8 ½ ” x 11″
2. What upright and oblong means (landscape is not a correct answer)
3. How to count pages (this is more complicated than you think)
4. What is a bleed and why you want it
5. Printers spreads vs. reader spreads (it matters)
6. At 70#, linen paper does not have any linen in it
7. Printing is actually tiny dots on the paper – the dots are so close they fool your eye
8. CMYK does not mean – Color My Yak Khaki. It stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black. (What you see on your monitor right now is not CMYK though; it is RGB – Red, Green, Blue)
9. There are over 16 ways you can fold piece and over 16 ways you can bind a piece
10. Who knew there were so many shades of white?

This may be novice information to seasoned designers or collateral creators out there, but it was a great learning experience for me. I have more of the know-how needed to keep projects moving forward and I learned some important questions to ask.

(And when Selby and I showed up at Bing dressed alike, we knew the training would be a true team event.)