Getting a short print run right the first time

On a run of 50,000 boxes, a reprint is an annoyance. On a run of 500, it can be the whole budget. Small businesses print small, so the margin for error is about the width of a fold line.

I spent three years at a packaging studio in Tallinn before I went freelance, and most of what I learned there happened after the file had left my computer. This is the version I use now for bakeries, coffee shops and anyone else ordering a few hundred of something.

Talk to the printer before you design

A printer knows things about your job that no file can tell you: which boards they keep in stock, the largest sheet their press takes and what a new cutting form costs. Ask first, while the answers can still change the design.

For Bolo, the bakery’s printer is two streets from the shop. One visit told me their press sheet fits two cake boxes side by side, with a cupcake box and a candle box in the gaps, so the dieline was drawn to that sheet. Every reorder since has used the same layout.

Four questions worth asking

Most of what matters comes out of four questions:

• Which papers and boards do you keep in stock?

• What size is your press sheet?

• Do you own a cutting form close to this shape?

• How long does a proof take to come back?

The third one saves the most money. An existing cutting form can cost you nothing, while a new one is often the biggest line on a small quote.

When to try another printer

If the answers keep coming back as “we’d have to order that in”, you may be at the wrong printer for the job. A shop that prints cups every week will beat a brilliant book printer at cups.

Files that print the way they look

Screens glow and paper doesn’t, so a file that looks right on a laptop can come back dull or muddy. Most of the fixes are dull too, which is why they get skipped.

Large areas of black print deeper with a little cyan under them, but small text should stay plain black, so the letters keep sharp edges. Ask the printer for their mix. Most have one they trust.

Choose colour by number

Give every colour a printed reference and pick it from a swatch book in daylight, not from the screen. Kopje’s four cup colours were chosen from a printed fan held against the actual cup stock, because white board and brown board turn the same ink into two different colours.

Leave room for the knife

Run every colour 3 mm past the cut line and keep text at least 5 mm inside it. Cutting drifts by a millimetre or two on any press, and a name that touches the edge will be trimmed on some of the boxes.

Try this before you send it

Print the file at home at full size, cut it out with scissors and fold it. It costs a few sheets of paper and finds the flap that covers the name before 500 customers do.

Read the proof like a stranger

The proof is the last cheap moment to change anything. Read it as someone who has never seen the design, because by then you can’t.

Check what’s hard to see on screen: spelling on the back panel, the barcode, which flap tucks into which, and whether the colour matches the swatch you chose. Then sign it and keep a copy somewhere you’ll find it again.

The second quarter cost us about half what the first did to print, because nothing had to be fixed.

Operations lead, Recibo

Recibo prints a report every quarter, so a mistake fixed once stays fixed. That’s the quiet reason to keep the signed proof: it becomes the reference every later run is checked against.

Make the reorder easy

A short run is almost always followed by another one, and it’s usually ordered by someone who isn’t the designer. Give that person four things in one place: the colour references, the name and weight of the board, the cutting form number and the signed proof.

For Bolo all of it fits on one page, kept in a drawer under the till. The bakery has reordered three times without writing to me, which is the best review a print file can get.

If you’re about to order your first few hundred of anything, tell me what you’re making and I’ll tell you what to ask the printer.