Digital Offset Printing

 

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Introduction

Indigo Press

In Tandem Design, inc. offers Digital Offset Printing. Unlike dry-toner printing, our HP-Indigo prints liquid ink on paper. Reproduction of color separations is excellent, and, in some cases, superior to traditional offset lithography. Skeptical, eh?! Well, we admit that there are some quirks of digital offset printing, just as there are in any printing process (see process description). However, we can show you that quality of color reproduction is not a concern with our press.


There are four advantages to our Digital Offset Printing:


Short Run Color

Our printing process makes it possible to consider full-color jobs in quantities as small as one (price is similar to a digital color proof). More importantly, runs of 100 or 300 or 500 are now economical and practical. A quantity of 1,000 cost about the same as traditional offset lithography (consider 8.5 X 11 4C/4C). Quantities of thousands are less expensive with traditional offset lithography; however, our turnaround is significantly faster.

Because you can now get a few hundred prints of something in full color, small mailings of postcards or sell sheets are feasible. Also the ability to customize materials for different market segments becomes a reality. For instance, you can take 300 sell sheets for distribution at one industry show this month, and 300 of a slightly different sell sheet to another industry show next month. The sell sheets can be customized for each show, or improved after feedback from each show.

If you have many product sell sheets or technical specifiation sheets, you can order only a few hundred. When you run short of one, a few hundred more can be ordered and arrive within 24 hours (depending on delivery arrangements). The others do not have to be reordered until needed. You won't end up with thousands of a less-used sheet, while running out of the most-used sheet. And when the specifiations change or your product is upgraded, how many obsolete marketing materials must you now discard? On-demand printing allows for on-demand inventory control of your printed pieces.


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Fast Turnaround

If you provide the files for your job on one day, you can have the finished print job on the next day. Please, remember that you are going directly from file to finished piece.

We retain the press files of your printed pieces. If you need a rerun, we only need to put it in the queue again. We can reprint several hundred within 24 hours. We could even do them on the same day or while you wait, but there might be additional rush charges. If you're at the show in Chicago, and are running out of one piece, you could call and have a reprint shipped overnight.

If you have a presentation to as few as five or ten, but want good quality handouts, we can print them for you directly from Word or PowerPoint. If you need covers for presentation materials, we can print them as you need them.


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Variable Data Printing

Our printing press provides the opportunity for variable data printing. We can have a client's name and mailing address in color and in any font you want. No more mailings with dot matrix addresses.

But variable data printing can go much farther than that. Names, words, entire paragraphs, and photographs can be treated as variables. You can print brochures that are client-specific or salesperson-specific ... and include graphics or photographs that change accordingly. You can incorporate client names within the body of the text, or paragraphs of information specific to regions or markets.

Please, be aware that setting up the database(s) of information and/or graphics can be somewaht time consuming, and would require a bit of interaction with us. However, once set up, it (they) can be used for many different mailings or projects.


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Six-Color Process Printing

The six-color process capabilities of our press allow for "Hi-Fi" color as well as more accurate screen builds of certain match colors.

For certain, special applications, the slight but noticeable improvement in six-color photographic separations (sometimes referred to as "Hi-Fi" or "High-Fidelity" color) is desireable. Blues are blue, not purple. Skin tones are not too ruddy. Shadow detail can be improved. Tonal variation in reds and blues is expanded. Be aware that we must do the separation(s) from an RGB colorspace file that has not been converted to CMYK and back. If the file has been converted to CMYK, it is already missing the hues of the expanded color space of six-color process. Please, contact us before embarking on a six-color process project.

Screen builds of certain match colors are vastly improved from CMYK. We can do a screen build of reflex blue or 293! We can provide a wide range of clean oranges! We can do reds like you've never seen in process color. Many other colors are built more accurately with six process colors than with four. However, the process is not as automatic as we would like it to be. It is relatively easy to change the color callouts in a pagelayout program to use the six-color builds. However, it is much more difficult to change vector art. We need the source files, and blends or complex illustrations are difficult or impossible. Please, contact us before embarking on a six-color process project (did we say that before?).


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