You’ve heard them all: “Perception is reality,” “Image is everything,” and “You don’t have a second chance to make a first impression.”

Although it’s easy to gloss over them, you can still find some truth in these adages. And with social media and text messaging, it’s tempting to talk to customers in shorthand. But prospects have so many options available to them, they want a reason not to do business with you. And a typo on your website’s homepage may be just the out their looking for. That’s why it’s important to convey professionalism in all of your business efforts. Especially with print collateral and business communications, from business forms, to invoices, an eight-page brochure or a simple email, impress your prospects…every time. Make sure to check these things off your list when proofreading your printed marketing materials and business communications:

• Double- and triple-check your contact information.
• Check dates and times, especially with newsletters, schedules and invitations.
• Review page numbers and cross-check with the table of contents.
• Check grammar and spelling. (Make sure you spell people’s names correctly, too.)
• Maintain consistency throughout the piece. If you have multiple contributors, assign one person to proofread the entire project.
• Be precise and concise; don’t use more words than necessary to get your point across.
• Avoid jargon or industry- or even company-specific acronyms – it alienates your audience.

Especially when it takes such little time to get it right, never let an unprofessional piece put your reputation at risk. Proofread, present a polished piece, and you will profit.

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If you’ve been running your marketing on auto-pilot for a while, it may be time to think about blowing the dust off your tactics.

Refresh. Retailers have been using this trick for years – by simply presenting what you offer in a new way you can inspire someone to purchase who has been “browsing” for years. So evaluate your marketing strategies and collateral pieces. Think about how you can rejuvenate your approach, the content or even the way you package a  service or product offering. Spruce up a stagnant mailing with a new theme or promotional offering. Think about a brochure redesign that will communicate your current business offerings in a new way. Look at the way your customers have bought from you in the past and see if there’s a package or bundle that makes sense. Then create a sell sheet for this new offering and add it to your sales tool kit.

Re-organize. Review your mailing lists and look for ways to segment. Create a campaign for the customers or prospects who have not done business with you for some time. Offer them an incentive to start doing business with you again. Scrub your list of the prospects that don’t convert, and start finding new names to add to your list.

Re-energize. People want to be out and about this time of year. Host an open house for your customers and prospects. Partner with strategic alliances and cross-promote to bring even more people to your event.

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When going to networking events or business meetings the first impression a potential client gets of your company is being handed your business card. Most of these cards are small rectangular pieces of thick paper with the company logo and the cardholders contact information on it. Yes, the company logo does help with making you standout in stacks of business cards but what if you did something edgier?

No one said that all business cards had to be the same shape and size so do something different. Subtle changes such as giving your card a glossy or mat finish. Want to try something daring?  Change the dimensions so that your card is a slimmer rectangle or even a square! This is a simple and inexpensive way to revamp your look for the New Year. At Signature you can get great deals on full color business cards, call us today to revamp your image!

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By Dan Bouchard

Sizing, scaling and cropping is an issue that comes up just about every day in the reprographics business. I cannot tell you how many times I have had a customer come in with a flash drive full of photos, wanting a personalized calendar printed, and they can’t understand why their vertical pictures won’t fill a horizontal page without cropping.

Then we have the customer who wants a 24 x 36 drawing reduced to “half size” 18 x 24 but doesn’t understand why it is not “half scale”.

The most important thing to remember is that when you reduce or enlarge a digital image, or any image for that matter, the percentage of change is accomplished in both the vertical and horizontal directions. Therefore, reducing a 24 x 36 architectural drawing by 50% will result in the 36 inches becoming 18 inches and the 24 inches becoming 12 inches, or a 12 x 18, NOT an 18 x 24. So, half size is not the same as 50%. If you are enlarging an 8 ½ x 11 photo by 200% you end up with a 17 x 22, not an 11 x 17. This is confusing to a lot of people. Isn’t 200% double the size? Don’t two 8 ½ by 11s make an 11 x 17? Again, 200% doubles the size in BOTH directions.

Most of the issues stem from simple terminology.  What most people consider “half size” is different than what will result from 50%. To avoid confusion, you should always predetermine the percentage of the enlargement or reduction that you require.

Sometimes, your desired effect can be achieved by cropping. Cropping can help you limit the amount of your reduction therefore maintaining the details in your image. Conversely, cropping an image you are enlarging will require a larger percentage of enlargement which may result in a lower resolution and a more pixilated image.

Your reprographer can help you with both scaling and cropping. For maximum results, bring them your unedited images at the highest resolution you can. Your 72 dpi image from your Social Media page just isn’t going to look good enlarged into a poster no matter what miracles your reprographer performs.

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By Dan Bouchard

It is a rare thing these days where a client sends a job to his or her commercial printer in anything other than a digital format. But which digital format is the best?

I would be remiss if I didn’t start out by saying that I would always recommend hiring a professional Graphic Artist to design your printed materials. You certainly can save some money doing the simple things yourself. But remember, Graphic Artists are trained in the proper use of colors, type styles and artwork in general. They have access to a vast array of professional resources including the multitude of layout and drawings programs, stock photos, special fonts and much more. If you want your printed materials to truly look professional, you should always hire a Professional Graphic Artist.

Be that as it may, a lot of clients for whatever reasons choose to do their own layout and design for simple things such as business cards, mailers and flyers. The first thing you have to remember is that there are literally thousands of computer programs that will do some sort of layout and design and no commercial printer in the world can possibly purchase and learn them all, never-mind keeping up with upgrades, patches and so on. There is however one file format that every commercial printer can work with, and that is PDF.

In today’s world, pdf has become the de facto standard of the printing industry. Every printer everywhere will accept a pdf file. However, like anything else, there are a few things you should know before just sending off a pdf. First and foremost, I highly recommend contacting your printer and asking if they have any special requirements for pdf files. Some don’t, but even so, there are a few things you can do to make sure you get a better printed piece. Convert your file to CMYK. Most low cost layout programs create files using the RGB standard. That’s fine for web based art, but if you are having it printed; make sure you convert it to CMYK. Embed your fonts and link your graphics. Nothing irritates a printer more than opening a file and finding out there are fonts or graphics missing. Not to mention, a lot of printers will charge you for this little oversight. Use only High Resolution Graphics. Those 72 dpi web graphics may look nice on your screen, but trust me they won’t look so good when printed. Be sure to create your pdf file at the proper size. I cannot tell you how many times I have received a pdf file that was intended to print at 24 x 36 but the pdf was 8 ½ x 11. Scaling a pdf up is never a good idea. Produce the pdf at the size you intend it to be printed.

PDF files are your best option when sending to a printer or service bureau. The latest versions of most layout software now offer an “export to pdf” option. You can save yourself and your printer a lot of aggravation by using this option and in the long run, that will save you money.

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By Dan Bouchard

One of the problems when planning a renovation of an older building is that the original plans for the building were most likely drawn before the “digital age”. So as an Architect, Engineer or Contractor you have been hired to facilitate a renovation and you have been handed an old set of mylars, vellums or worse, blueprints to work from. What do you do? How do you get these old drawings into a digital format for use in your CAD program?

There are three distinct options for turning paper drawings into digital. The first option is to simply redraw them in your CAD program. And although this is probably the most inefficient way of converting to digital, it is the most common. Not only is this method time consuming, but it also lends itself to errors. The second option would be to have your drawings scanned on a wide format scanner as a .tif file. (.tif by the way, is the default file format for large format scanner that most reprographers use.) You should be able to have this done for a minimal price per drawing. Most CAD programs will import .tif files as a background image. But remember, since a .tif file is a raster image and not a vector image, you will not be able to make changes to it in CAD. You can draw on top of it, but that’s all. In some cases this may be enough, but if total flexibility with the drawings is what you need, you should choose option three and have them converted to a vector file.

What is the difference between a raster and a vector file? A raster file is, simply put, a picture. It cannot be manipulated. Sure, you can bring it into a photo program and do some rudimentary editing, but you will need a steady hand and keen eye, and chances are, in the end your scale will be off. On the other hand, in a vector file all parts can be manipulated. Each line, curve, font, symbol or other part of the drawing is its own object. Grab it, move it, make it bigger, smaller, longer, shorter. Turn it, flip it or color it. Your CAD files are vector files. Digital pictures of your kids are raster files.

Converting drawings to vector files is not cheap. The going rate is between $100 and $200 per drawing depending on the complexity. But if you stop and consider the cost to have them re-drawn from scratch, you’ll see that it is a lot more economical to have them converted. You can also have these converted drawings saved in the format of your choice. Be it AutoCad, Microstation, or whatever. Most well known CAD programs are supported.

Finally, there are a number of software packages out there that claim to do raster to vector conversion. I have yet to see one that works consistently. Your best bet when having this done is to contact a professional.

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By Dan Bouchard

“I’ve been printing to this printer for years and now all of a sudden my files won’t print.” Does this sound familiar? If so, baring a mechanical malfunction in your printer, the most probable cause for this problem is an old or corrupt print driver. Symptoms: Very slow printing, garbled text, missing elements or not printing at all. All of these can be effects of your print driver gone bad.

A print or printer driver is a small program that allows your software application to communicate with your printer. If this program is out of date or ends up getting corrupted, your once simple task of click / print, turns into one more headache to deal with in your busy day.

“But I haven’t changed anything.” This may not be completely true. The driver must be able to “talk” to A) your printer, B) your software application and C) your operating system. A small change in any of these could spell doom for your print driver. For instance, has your Windows operating system gone through an update lately? Since Microsoft issues Windows updates on a regular basis, and most people have automatic updates turned on, chances are it has. Has your application vendor issued any patches or updates? Although it would be unlikely that you would get an update to an application without knowing, it’s possible especially in Microsoft Office. Have you had a mechanic in lately to work on your printer? If so, it’s possible that he installed some new “firmware” on your printer rendering your current driver unusable. Have you installed new software of any kind on your system? This can wreak havoc on print drivers.

If your driver is corrupt, usually reinstalling the driver will be sufficient to correct the problem; however it is a good idea to make sure you have the most recent driver installed. Given the fact that you have to install it anyway, it would be a good idea to go to the printer manufacture’s web site and download the most recent driver. All printer manufacturers update their drivers on a regular basis and make them available for download. Installing a new driver is a fairly straight forward process and the website should have instructions for installation of your particular driver. Just remember to uninstall your current driver prior to installing the new one.

For something that was originally designed to be a simple tool, print drivers have evolved to be very complicated programs. The nice thing is, updates are free to download and can contain new features. Don’t fool around with old drivers. For better, faster printing, the latest driver is the best driver.

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By Dan Bouchard

Creating your drawings in color can be a real benefit when viewing your drawings on screen, or when printed with a color plotter, but it can be a real nightmare when printing on a black and white machine.

Very often we are presented with plans to print that have been designed in color. The easiest way to reproduce these would be to print them out in color. However, this is usually not a feasible option for a large quantity of plans. Additionally, most contractors would prefer to work off of black and white plans.

High speed black and white machines are just that, black and white. They use black toner not ink. When presented with a color plan to be printed in black and white, we have two options. We can either, 1. Print in true black and white, meaning every line will be printed black, or we can 2. Print in grayscale which will attempt to print the colored lines as a screened percentage of black. This is somewhat of a simplification, but for our purposes here it will do.

In number one, our software will look at the image and very simply print everything it sees as black. This means that any distinction that the draftsman was attempting to create by using colors is completely lost. The only real way to compensate for this would be to use different line weights for each color. This would at lease help distinguish between the lines that were in color.

In number two, our software will attempt to render each color as a screened percentage of black. Darker colors such as Red and Blue will have darker screens and lighter colors such as yellow and green will have lighter screens, and while we have some control over this, the results generally are not what the draftsman was looking for. I would suggest only using a dark blue or red in this case.

Many times we will receive a drawing that the draftsman says was drawn using only black. When we examine the drawing however we realize that in an attempt to create lighter lines, a gray line was used. It is important to know that gray, is a color, just like red or green or any other color. Given this, the same rules apply as above. But wait, the draftsman complains that when he prints out the check plot on his machine, it prints fine. This is true because nine times out of ten he is using a color inkjet machine for his check plot and gray is not rendered as a screen on an inkjet machine. It is a combination of red, blue and black. If you want to get a better idea of how your print will look, you should set up your printer to use ONLY black ink to print.

Unlike inkjet plotters, high speed high quality toner machines used by most reprographic shops were designed to print very fine lines, actually as fine as .001 accurately. This is a great advantage for those draftsmen who use a variety of line weights, but it can result in lines that are very hard to see for those who draw in color. The results will also be much different than those that you get from an inkjet plotter which cannot produce lines as fine.

Finally, most reprographic shops are perfectly willing to print test prints for you to work with. I usually suggest to my clients to create a sheet with all of their line weights and colors on it. Send it to us in different formats and we can print it for them so they can see exactly what each line will look like when printed. The little time it takes to do this could save hours of time and stress when the day comes that the drawings are due out.

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By Dan Bouchard

If you have ever had to make a presentation to a small group, you will appreciate some of the latest advancements in Digital Color Copy Technology.

Consider this; you’re sitting outside your potential client’s conference room waiting for your turn to make your pitch. You’re reviewing your handouts when, you look around and you notice that your presentation materials are dull and drab compared to those of your competitors. I know that you tried your best. You went to the local office supply store and bought a package of presentation folders. You then had your office assistant carefully place your company label in a strategic location on the folder and you inserted your business cards into the slots on the pocket. Next you started to make the copies on your office copier to fill the pockets and realized that you needed a service call because your copies had lines going through them. When the technician finally showed up, he explained that your machine was going to need a part, which he would have to order. He would be back on Monday. But wait, you have to make the presentation on Tuesday. So you were there till midnight Monday, but you were able to get it all done, but at what cost? There’s the cost of materials, the time you spent putting this together and are you really going to be at the top of your game Tuesday, having been up all night Monday?

What has happened here is your competitors have found out that it is easy and inexpensive to produce high quality, color presentations in small quantities.

Color copying is no longer priced out of reach. A lot of people still think that if you want something done in color, you have to order large quantities to make it worthwhile. This is no longer the case. Hi speed Digital Color copiers have come a long way in recent years and pricing has dropped significantly with this advanced technology. Color is now easy for anyone to afford.

So you say that with color you are very limited on the type of paper you can use? Well, that has changed also. Virtually every paper manufacturer has a full digital line. From gloss to matte, heavy weight to light weight, papers, card stocks, Tyvek you can let your imagination run wild.

But what’s even more exciting is the large line of specialty items that are available for Digital Color machines. Pocket folders, bumper stickers, tent cards, door hangers, business cards, raffle tickets, postcards, reply mailers, even CD shipping boxes just to name a few. And the most surprising thing is you can get any of these items in small quantities, even as low as single copies. Professional Color is no longer the sole domain of the big boys.

The next time you need to make an impression, try adding Digital Color. Not only will it make you stand out, but it can actually save you time and money.

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Signature Digital Imaging, your Document Management Experts, is proud to introduce the latest addition to our line of high end digital equipment. The Canon C9065 Pro is the latest release from Canon USA.

With advanced paper handling and multiple finishing capabilities, the imageRUNNER ADVANCE C9065 PRO system handles a wide range of jobs efficiently and cost-effectively. From saddle-stitched booklets to direct mail pieces to marketing collateral. High-quality output whether printing on coated, matte, or specialty stocks in weights from 14 lb. bond to 110 lb cover.

To schedule a demonstration, please call Signature Digital Imaging at 603.624.4025.

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