Stress free print... how to take the stress out of printing

Not that long ago, ordering print was a lengthy, confusing and expensive process. Luckily, with the advent of the internet and new digital printing technologies, the whole process has become easier, quicker, cheaper and thankfully a lot less stressful.

Nowadays, you can knock up some artwork on your home PC, upload it to an online print shop and have your order delivered to your door in a matter of days. It's certainly a far cry from when I first started out as a printer.

Back then, printing was an incredibly labour intensive process. As a result it was costly. Very costly! A full colour leaflet would set you back at least a couple of hundred pounds... even if you only wanted a handful. Next day delivery? You must be joking! You'd normally expect to wait around a fortnight for a simple brochure to be printed.

Because print was so expensive and turnaround times so protracted, most people would go to great lengths to minimise any chance of things going wrong. The consequences of a reprint (in terms of both time and cost) didn't bear thinking about... especially if it was caused by something as trivial as a spelling mistake. Therefore, before it was passed to the print shop, artwork was always checked, double checked and checked again. As an extra precaution the print shop would invariably be asked to supply - at considerable cost to the customer - a high quality 'contract' proof.

The contract proof was then reviewed - and reviewed again - to ensure everything was as it should be. Only when you'd checked every letter of every word and checked every element of every graphic would you nervously sign the proof approval slip and authorise your order for printing. Hardly a stress free experience!

As I say, these days things are very different. Advances in technology have revolutionised the industry, drastically reducing the cost of print and slashing turnaround times. It's enabled people with no knowledge of print processes to quickly, easily and confidently prepare artwork and to order printed goods, something which was largely the domain of industry experts until a few years ago.

However, there is one unfortunate side effect to all this progress. It's something I encounter almost every day and which causes a good number of my Stress Free Print customers needless time, money and hassle.

Now that printing is so relatively inexpensive, people no longer seem to fear the prospect of a reprint in the same way they used to. The result? They don't put as much effort into reviewing their artwork before it's printed. Day-in-day-out my team are confronted with client-supplied artwork sporting glaring spelling mistakes, typos or inaccuracies.

We don't have the time to read everything we print but if we do spot a problem we always try to let our customer know about it before we press ahead. In addition, all our customers receive a free printed proof... a last chance for them to identify any issues before we print their order. Thanks to our proofing service, most mistakes are spotted at that point and thankfully reprints are rare.

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts - and our proofs - some errors do slip through the net and our customer is faced with the cost of reprinting their order. Which is a shame because quite often it can easily be avoided.

So, what's the secret of stress free printing? Before you upload your artwork, always review it thoroughly for mistakes... and then check it again just to be sure!