Preparing a printable document

"Think" before you "Create".

"Think" of "The End" product before you start "The Beginning":

- First, determine the approximate budget allowed for the printing of your document. This is the primary limit of most printing project. It occurs too often at a printer that someone walking in with a very fancy and/or colorful document that he/she had spent sleepless nights to design, only later finding out that his/her limited budget does not allow him/her to print it the way it was intended to be with the demanded quantity. In some cases, the document has to be 'degraded' or sacrified in quality (ie. printed in BW instead of Color) in order to match up with the budget. Knowing your budget at first will often save you unnecessary time and/or wasting money in the creation process of the document.

Figure 1

- Once the budget is known, the second factor to decide is the color of your document: color or black & white ? If in color, would it be 1 single color (other than black) document, 2 color ? 3 color ? Or full color ? Remember that mixed color (ie. 1 side is bw, the other side is in color, or all pages are full color) will likely result in higher cost while black & white printing is least expensive. "Color" is the most important factor affecting the cost of a printing project.

- What kind & size of paper you will intend to print the document on ? Next to "Color", paper "Kind" & "Size" is the next important factor affecting the budget of a printing project. Which kind of paper to choose depends on the intended audience who would read your document: for yourself ? For a school project ? A massive ad campaign ? A casual business meeting ? Or, a high-level executive meeting ? ... Also pay attention to the difference between European paper size & American paper size as many printers in North America do not usually carry paper size in European dimension (ie. A4, A3).

- Once the "Budget", "Color", "Paper Size & Kind" questions are answered, you should now have a basic framework to start designing the document for the printing project. The remaining factors are the Finishing, Quantity & finally Quality of the printed document. These 3 factors will complete the balance for the printing project within the budget constraint.

Finishing refers to any type of bindery, hole-punching, stapling, lamination, triming to the documents right after printing or just collating the document or inserting pages from different originals. Finishing is a labor-intensive process for the majority of printers even if they're well-equipped with many assisting machines.

Figure 2 You can only get this much from the boundary of your budget.

Find out from your chosen printer company about what kind of printer or technology that will be used to print your document. Different types of printers produce different quality. Quality is the last factor to consider after deducting other factors from the given budget (you get what you pay for!).

There're 4 different common categories of commercial printers:

	Category	Printing Temperature	Printing Method	Benefits / Disadvantage
1	Digital laser press	HOT	Toner being melt & thermally fused on paper	Very fast turn-around. Easy to personalize or implement variable data printing. Cost efficient in small quantities.
2	Traditional offset press	COLD	Liquid ink mixed with oil which then is emulsified with water to rinse off leaving the ink pigment on the paper	Strict guidelines for color separation. Cost efficient in mass quantities. A page printed by an offset press can be fed through a hot laser printer later on (ie. letterhead) without any melting problem.
3	Architechtual large format (LED technology)	HOT	Similar to a laser printer, except instead of the laser, the cheaper & less intensive & accurate LED (Light Emitting Diode) is used. Achieved resolution is not very high due to the physical limitation of the LED	Currently (2005) only monochrome or 2-color mode is available. Dramatically cheap per "printing area".
4	Inkjet-based poster-maker (also called "large format" printer)	COLD	Tiny jets of ink spraying on the paper. Note that the paper has to have higher absorbability than usual types so that the ink would dry quicker & not smear.	Vibrant color. Great for a typical order of several posters. Can print on many paper types including vinyl & plastics (substrate). Becomes very expensive for mass quantities.

Within each categories, there could be many further sub-types of printers, but the underlying technology is still based on one of these 4 common categories.