GETTING YOUR SH*T PRINTED 101
If you are a client working with a design agency, you may eventually need to get something professionally printed or manufactured. Whether it’s business cards, menus, signage, or a full-on coffee table book. You may think it’s a good idea to get the files from your designer and just handle the printing yourself. You might think you’re evading the opportunity to be overcharged by your design firm. You may think “I don’t need whatever fancy printing company they use,” And you are completely in your right to do that. And, yes, you WILL absolutely save money by doing this. BUT understand that when you take responsibility for the printing, the outcome is then out of the designer’s hands. We, the designers, cannot guarantee a quality final product. Only half the journey is the design of a thing, the other half is the fabrication - getting it to look the way it did when it was presented to you on screen. There have been many occasions where I’ve designed masterpieces, and then… the client wants to print it themselves to save money. Resulting in a final product that, no exaggeration, is a garbage fire that assaults the eyes.
I’ll be honest: Your suspicions are correct – when you agree to have a design agency handle printing or manufacturing for you, they can charge you whatever TF they want in a lump sum. They can add hidden fees or markups that change based on how much money they think you have. It’s understandable to be skeptical as a consumer. From your perspective, you’re trying to pay for what is absolutely necessary, and by handling the printing yourself, you are attempting to save money for your company. BUT money is not the only thing at stake. By doing this, your product could heavily suffer. It’s an absolute shame that this transaction is based on mistrust. You suspect they are trying to overcharge you, so in turn, you try to cheat the system. No one ends up happy in this scenario. These reactionary decisions are based on distrust and almost always result in a subpar product. You need the expertise of a designer to communicate with a printer or manufacturer if you want your product to look its best. I realize it sucks having to blindly trust that you are being charged appropriately, but isn’t that the way it goes with all professions you’re unacquainted with? When you take your car to the mechanic, when you’re having work done by a contractor, when consorting with a lawyer, even when you go to the doctor. How do you know when you’re being unfairly charged? At the very least, with a design firm, you can always request an itemized bill. You may not know the meaning of everything on it, but you can always kindly request your design firm to go over each cost with you. This is standard practice at my studio because we want the client/designer relationship to be based on complete transparency so that our clients feel protected and aren’t forced to make knee-jerk reactions that may affect the integrity of the beautiful work we do here.
Some design studios are shadier than others. And I know that the advertising industry has a lot to apologize for (see our previous post for more on that topic), but marking up printer costs isn’t one of them. I’ll come right out and say it: my Studio absolutely charges a percentage on top of printing costs. We charge 10%, and it’s that same 10% every time. For example: if the printing of your business cards costs $500, 10% of that is $50 making the price we charge you $550. Now before you feel horrified, ripped off, and cheated, let's get to why we do it, and what it pays for.
In short, it’s a handling fee. If you are having us handle printing, that means that you don’t have to THINK about it. All you have to do is wait for the flawless prints to show up at your door. Meanwhile, on our end, we’re doing heavy research on how to get your piece looking perfect. We source different paper types (weights, colors, textures, varnishes, companies). The type of paper you use and how you print on it drastically affects the outcome of your piece. Easy example: If you want a purple business card with gold foil stamping. Are you sourcing a paper that’s already purple? Or are you printing purple onto a white paper stock? Another example: You want an embossed logo on your card. It may look good from the front, but what about the back? Are you ok with seeing the backward imprint on the reverse of your card? To resolve this, you might need to do something called duplexing, which could raise your cost significantly. There are millions of examples I could list, and I haven’t even touched on digital vs offset printing. What I’m saying is, we are seasoned designers that know the anatomy of printing and construction. What makes it look good, What raises the price, How we can cut corners to save money without drastically influencing the quality of the design. The fee that we charge is partly for our knowledge and problem-solving skills. We have the ability to quickly pivot when something doesn’t work out, or when we need to cut costs FAST.
We begin the print process by drafting a detailed spec sheet full of technical printer lingo that only really makes sense to the printing companies we sent it to. We don’t use online printers like Moo or Vistaprint because we would be at the mercy of the small library of things that they have to offer. Instead, we use printing companies that specialize in custom work - so that you have something that was made especially for your company. We sample printers’ capabilities - meaning researching who has the best ability to print the thing that YOU need. Every printing company has its strengths and weaknesses.
And finally, we are the liaison between you and the printing company. You approved the design we showed you, and now we are advocating for that design in order to get it made exactly as you envisioned. We are in constant contact with the printer. Which results in many emails and phone conversations about the details. Sometimes, we even have to GO to the printing facility in order to look at samples being printed in real-time so we can make on-press revisions. Even when we don’t have to go in person, each project involves several rounds of physical proofs. The proofs are sent to us and we inspect them for imperfections. We could go through multiple rounds of proofs. We continue to request them and tweak them until our trained eye is satisfied enough to allow them to print the full batch.
Now that all of this has been explained to you, do you still feel ripped off? A 10% mark-up is, in my opinion, sometimes not enough. An agency with more prestige could easily tack on a 20% print-handling mark-up, but we like to keep our services attainable.
The mindset of adding a percentage instead of a flat fee is that more expensive jobs are more complicated and time-intensive. If you need $20k worth of printing, by nature, it’s a job we have to spend more time on, source more things for, and request more proofs to look over. Using a percentage as our handling fee works as a sliding scale, which works in both our interest and the interest of our customers.
All agencies do this. The only difference is that WE are telling you upfront.