Category: Digital Printing

Let’s face it – it’s a competitive world out there these days. Everyone is looking for the lowest price and quickest turnaround to meet tight deadlines and budgets. But one should be careful in choosing the lowest price right off the bat. Quite often the lowest price doesn’t always mean the best, most complete service. There are few “extras” that can be overlooked, that may require additional charges in the long run.

Art charges are one of they key areas that can be missed. Does your bid include film? How about packaging? Often times, big jobs with multiple items have specific packaging requirements. Has this been accounted for? Your job has to be delivered, did your bid happen to include shipping and freight? Assuring that these items are included in your quotes will help give you a better idea of the complete price of your job.

Our Planning Department can quote your job any way you would like. Usually, we will include everything in our quotes, including shipping. This will ensure that order for multiple vinyl banners will be delivered to your front door. For big jobs with multiple items, we break out packaging and shipping charges as separate costs. We can do the same for your art charges.

Make sure you are comparing apples to apples the next time you review job bids. Getting to know how your job is priced will help avoid any surprise costs that make that great price not so great after all.

The Pantone® Matching System is the standard color matching system for the print industry. Pantone offers many different books to define colors. From spot colors to process colors, Pantone has the match that’s right for your project. Let’s get to know some of the books.

Everyone is familiar with the standard PMS solid color book. It contains over 900 spot colors on both coated and uncoated stock. These colors are often chosen when screen printing. These colors appear in both the Pantone Matching Guide, which contains perforated chips, and the Pantone Formula Guide, which comes in a fan style book for easy reference.

Pantone also categorizes process colors. The Pantone Process Guide contains over 3,000 process color combinations contained in either two binders of removable chips, or a convenient fan book. These colors are arranged chromatically and have been assigned easy referencing numbers.

Another helpful guide is the Solid to Process conversion book. It shows the closest simulated process match to Pantone’s solid colors. Some colors don’t convert as well as others, so this guide is invaluable when choosing spot colors that will be separated as process.

We recommend investing in any of these color guides. They provide an accurate color reference before the job prints and provide your printer with a way to match your colors exactly.

Pantone Solid Colors
Over 900 colors to choose from. Popular colors for screen printing. C or U after the number indicate coated or uncoated stock.

Pantone Process Colors
3,000 color mixes to choose from. The “S” stands for SWOP inks (Specifications of Web Publications). The number is the page number in the guide with the row number on the page after it.

Pantone Solid to Process
Solid color side by side with its closest process equivalent. Remember, solid PMS colors don’t always convert to process as well as expected.