Computer printed brochure

[windwarddesigns]

My client wants to print out brochures himself as he needs them. Unless he buys a borderless or large format printer we are gong to have a brochure with a white border around it which is going to be funky - not only in setting up but when it folds etc... any suggestions????

[Silence04]

invest in a paper cutter
or have kinkos print and cut them... they are fairly the same price as doing it in-house.

[urstwile]

Or if he insists on printing the brochures in-house and you have a printer capable of printing large enough to accommodate bleed and crops, you could have Kinko's trim them down. I think it's a dollar a cut. They can stack up a bunch of 'em and trim 'em down in one shot.

[budafist]

Make the brochures smaller than your paper size and then cut the edges off.

[dmonks]

use white background

[budafist]

Excellent idea dmonks...I sometimes forget that.

[BJMRGTIVR6]

I too was going to suggest designing teh brochure to print nicely with a margin. depending on the look, it can be done nicely and not impact the brochure that badly. just have to rethink the design a little.

[cgmpowers]

Printing on the cheap..

Kinkos and Minutemen both print relatively cheap but I find their quality to be less than professional for serious use.

When I've tried Kinkos, they often cropped wrong or folded wrong or printing documents not flipped properly.

Minutemen prints usually aren't very good, too often I rejected jobs from them completely because the colors were too dark or overbleed.

As for as printing inhouse on a large format printer. I have a 13x19 printer and would never print brochures for use on them. Ink from an inkjet just bleeds when wet and overtime will look like crap.

I would tell them, its entirely up to them where they get it printed but don't be suprised if you're disappointed if you print on the cheap.

After all, you get what you pay for.

[budafist]

I can't imagine that printing brochures yourself would be cheaper than doing it professionally. Cartridges are too expensive. The only reason why would be purely because you could print only when needed - especially good if details/pricing is changing on a regular basis.

[windwarddesigns]

Thanks all. I'm going with the white background idea. JE

[Alan G]

I agree. Negative space is a great design element, and in this case you use the limitation to your advantage.

John McWade published an excellent article a while back in Before and After magazine on designing for desktop printers that can't create a bleed, with some good examples and ideas.

[JWAM]

Is white is good! Bleeding colour to the edges and trimming is a pain in the B!

[Virgo Nightingale]

Just find out what the printer's margins are before you design the brochure. Depending on the kind of printer, the margins can be as large as 0.75" and you'll have to account for that in your design.

[SurfPark]

Depending on the size of the brochures, you can get away with using a standard 8.5 x 11" piece of paper. I would talk to your client and ask what the typical size of their do-it-yourself-brochure needs to be. Remind him/her it may not be cost effective to publish their own materials depending on size, quantity, and their printer. I would run the numbers by them once.

Keep in mind that by printing on the cheap means limiting the quality of the media, restricting size and color, and bleeds. If they're alright with that, then go ahead with the template design. The last thing you want is a client complaining to you claiming its your fault for not making the template correctly.

[urstwile]

I agree. Negative space is a great design element, and in this case you use the limitation to your advantage.

John McWade published an excellent article a while back in Before and After magazine on designing for desktop printers that can't create a bleed, with some good examples and ideas.
Do you find this to be a worthwhile publication, Alan? I've been considering subscribing to it. Sorry to stray off topic there for moment. I now return this thread to its originally posted schedule. :D

[BJMRGTIVR6]

I had a Before & After subscription last year. articles were well written but it seemed like they'd offer a lot of free ones or ones that were free year(s) ago under the subscription headline. the online subscription was only around $18 though.