Your company’s brochure is a great sales tool. It conveys much more information than can be put on a business card, a display advertisement, or even a flyer. And when someone asks you for your company’s brochure, it could be a signal of real interest in your product or service.

Examine a variety of brochures, and you’ll find they share certain characteristics: all have text mixed with visual elements such as photographs, illustrations, diagrams, charts, and graphs; all have an underlying organization; and all provide the identity and contact information of the company that published the brochure.

http://macgra.com/0612Printips.pdf

Are you familiar with all the ways today’s modern print shop has integrated digital technology into the printing process? It starts with desktop publishing, continues through electronic prepress, then goes on to platemaking for offset printing or raster image processing for output to a digital printing device.

Digital technology as applied to design and desktop publishing gives us more control over layout, special effects, and the ability to make alterations. It also allows us to build a digital file to obtain the best output image, whether using an offset press or a digital printer.

In this issue of Printips, we’ll provide some tips and tricks for preparing a file specifically for output on a digital printer.

http://macgra.com/0602Printips.pdf

How long has it been since you’ve taken a critical look at your business’s or organization’s printing? Business stationery (letterheads, envelopes, business cards), marketing materials, forms – chances are that it has been more than a few years since these were originally designed, they may benefit from an upgrade.

In this case, we’re not talking about a complete makeover. Rather, we are thinking of simple steps to refresh the look or improve functionality. You may be surprised to learn that some upgrades can be undertaken without any increase in the cost of your printing, while others may add minimally to cost.

So here we go – simple steps to upgrade your printing.

http://macgra.com/0509Printips.pdf

Publishing an informational newsletter is a wonderful way to keep your name in front of customers or prospects. (In fact, it’s one of the reasons we provide Printips to you each month.) A newsletter may entertain, educate, inspire, or inform. And a well designed newsletter communicates much about the organization that publishes it.

To achieve a great looking newsletter, adhere to a few basic principles of composition and design. You will produce a publication that will catch the eye of your readers.

http://macgra.com/0505Printips.pdf

Microsoft Word is a program we printers both love and hate. We love it because it has substantially improved the quality of the documents our customers bring us to have reproduced. Originals created in Word have many desirable characteristics that formerly could only be achieved with professional typesetting. Proportional spacing of letters, attributes such as italics and bold, different point sizes for headlines and body copy, special characters, and features such as sub- and superscript are all available in Word and greatly enhance the appearance of documents.

With all these benefits, it may be hard to understand why we printers sometimes shudder when we learn a document has been created in Word. In this issue of Printips, we’re going to explain why, as well as provide some useful tips on how to use Word to best advantage when you will be giving us a document to print or copy.

http://macgra.com/0502Printips.pdf

When you think of a marketing brochure, you probably think of the standard trifold – a letter- or legal-sized sheet of paper folded in thirds, creating six pages. And while the popularity of this format is undeniable, there are other ways to fold a sheet that allow you to tell your company or product story in a completely different way.

But we’re getting a bit ahead. Whether you use a standard trifold or something more exotic, you must first analyze the information you are presenting in the brochure to determine how many segments or sections it has, which in turn indicates how many transitions will be made in the brochure. Having this information at hand as you are thinking about design and layout will guide your decision about folding.

http://macgra.com/0501Printips.pdf

An important part of our printing business is to ensure that you have a professionally presented message to describe your business, organization, product, or service. Getting from your idea to the final printed piece requires a few simple steps – creating and editing the text, selecting images that illustrate the text, and putting it all together in a cohesive design. Whether you are functioning as a desktop publisher by preparing files from which we will print, or using our graphic design department, the road from idea to execution is the same. In this issue of Printips, we will travel the road together and discuss the functions required – planning, writing, design, production art, and preparation for printing.

http://macgra.com/0412Printips.pdf

When is it time to consider a redesign of your company’s advertising material? Some may answer, “When its effectiveness drops” or “When the competition does” or “When we hire a new marketing director”. We agree that these are good reasons, but we also would add that periodic redesign should be part of your regular advertising cycle. A good redesign will refresh your ads, and renew them for your loyal customers and your prospects alike.

Your company’s advertising material may need a redesign if any of these conditions exist:

•It has been more than five years since you first developed the advertising material.

•Your company today is much different than it was when the advertising material was developed.

•The target audience for your product or service has changed since the advertising material was developed.

Your advertising material may also show signs of aging; i.e., its typeface, the layout, or the color palette.

http://macgra.com/0402Printips.pdf