The Benefits of Digital Printing

Digital printing, while a relatively new process in the history of printing, has taken the world by storm as an economically viable way to produce small runs. Digital printing levels the playing field between small businesses and large corporations. The following details the benefits of digital printing and how you can use digital printing as part of your marketing strategy.

Cheaper printing

At one time offset printing ruled the world, and only large companies could afford it. That's because offset printing requires plates to be made and associated setup fees – and for small print runs, those setup fees could be cumbersome for small businesses. As the quantity of printed pieces goes up, offset printing becomes cheaper; but if you were a small company with a local marketing base you could find yourself forced between choosing quality offset printing at a big price tag or inferior quality printing. With the advent of digital printing, that has changed. Digital printing requires no setup fees, so you can print as few marketing materials as you need without incurring a large initial fee. As your quantity goes up, you can save money. And the more you print, the closer you get to the threshold where offset printing would be cheaper (and a good online printing company will tell you where that threshold is, taking the guesswork out of making frugal business decisions).

High quality

Offset printing remains the king of quality, but today's advances in digital printing technology make it a close second. In fact, if you print two identical postcards using the two different printing processes, it would take a trained eye to be able to tell which was printed on an offset press and which was printed on a digital press. With this little disparity, there's no reason to not feel good about choosing digital printing as an economical way to put your marketing message in front of potential customers. Always remember how important value is to your marketing decisions. You wouldn't pay next to nothing for low-quality materials or the highest dollar for even the most advanced marketing materials. Instead, you want to find a value balance, and this is precisely what digital printing provides to small enterprises – or even large enterprises with many small target audience segments.

More options

As mentioned, there was a time when digital printing produced poor quality results. Now as those days are over, digital printing provides marketers, graphic designers, and small business owners and managers more options than ever before. A good digital printing company will offer you the same or similar choices of paper stocks, advanced printing techniques — such as foil stamps and die cuts, UV and aqueous finishes, and binding options such as saddle stitch and Wire-O — as they do to their offset printing customers. With so many options available, and such high-quality output from today's state-of-the-art digital printing presses, there's no reason not to choose digital printing for low-quantity, high-quality, economical print marketing.

Of course there are benefits limitations to both print processes, and thankfully our knowledgeable staff at TPH can help guide you to which best suits your needs. For example, for high volume jobs offset printing will make your unit cost more effective. The larger sheet sizes allow us to ‘gang’ up many jobs, but this is nothing new really. At a later date we will walk you through more benefits of offset printing. For now however, we’d like to put a spotlight on digital print and its benefits. It may give you more of an insight into digital printing and help guide you which process is best for your next job.

In the past when choosing to digitally print your project as apposed to offset print, you would be controlled by limitations such as paper stocks and thickness, quality on the printed image, cost, size of the worksheet and the inability to apply finishing processes to the printed piece. All of these, and more, are now diminished with today’s digital print technology.

This month we are putting the spotlight on digital printing. Within the last few years, technical advancements in digital printing has seen the quality and control of digitally printed jobs stand toe to toe with the traditional offset printed projects.

Short turnaround times
The digital print process has an extremely quick setup time. Jobs can be approved and printing in a matter of minutes or hours as opposed to offset printing which takes time to imposed jobs, produce printing plates and allow for the printing press setup time. It is the answer for urgent projects with short turnaround times.

New Increased Sheet Size
Recent advances in technology allow us to now print on an oversized sheet measuring 330mm x 660mm. This allows us to now digitally print A4 landscape covers, 3 panel A4 portrait brochures and short run presentation folders, to name a few. What would have previously been forced to be offset printed can now be affordably done in low quantities, with the same high quality finish.

Personalised Printing
Variable Data Printing is a form of customisable digital printing. Customised marketing collateral is now easily achievable and often now expected to achieve results. Using information from a database, text and graphics can be changed on each piece without stopping or slowing down the digital press.

Cheaper Low Volume Printing
Digital printing provides lower per unit costs for small print runs. Minimal setup and run costs allow for this.

Envelope Printing
Digitally printed envelopes are now achievable. Perfect for weddings, corporate events and mail-out campaigns. Previously the setup costs of offset printing limited envelope printing to larger runs to be cost effective, now digital print technology makes small envelope print runs viable.

Quality Short Run Books Now Achievable
High-quality, low-quantity books are now achievable through digital printing. Whether they are stapled or perfect bound, small runs of publications can now be produced in a cost-effective way, in a fraction of the time, to the exact quantity you need.

Ideal uses for digital printing
Digital printing is great for short runs of business cards, flyers, rack cards, menus, price lists, in which colour one or two side (with out to much additional cost) can be achieved. Some of our promotional products can be digitally printed to allowing for a great full colour print.

If you have any questions about which printing process would best suit your project email us at orders@tph.co.nz or drop us a line at 0800 533 677.