Offset Printing

Identical pieces, consistent color

Offset printing puts the image on a plate, transfers it to a blanket, and offsets that image onto the sheet. Every sheet in the run carries the same image. That is the reason to choose it. When a brochure, a flyer, or a catalog has to look the same in the first carton and the last, offset is the process built for that match.

Digital printing is the other path. It does not use plates, and each sheet can differ from the next. Choose digital when the pieces are not identical. Choose offset when they are, and the color has to hold for the whole run. You do not have to know which one fits. Describe the job on a quote request. The quote names the process. Nothing here is a promise about how large a run must be, or how soon it ships. Quantity and timing come back with the quote.

What you decide

You decide the product, the finished size, the quantity, and whether every piece is the same. You also decide stock and finish — matte, gloss, or another surface you name — and, on a bound piece, the page count and binding. Put the sheet you want on the quote. We confirm it there. We do not keep a public menu of weights.

Color is part of that decision. Say whether the job is color throughout or whether a cover carries the color and the inside does not. If a color has to match a card or an older piece, describe it. We will say on the quote whether a match is something we can confirm. We will not promise one from a verbal description alone.

Versions matter. One design repeated is the straightforward offset job. Ten store lines on one flyer, or a lunch menu and a dinner menu, are a different setup. List them. If the differences are really a change on every single piece, that is a digital question, not an offset one.

The file an offset run needs

Send a PDF at the finished size, with bleed so ink runs past the trim, type kept off the cut, and fonts embedded. Photographs have to stay sharp at the size they will print. A slide, a Word page, or a logo on a white rectangle is not that file. Folds, pockets, and page order have to be in the PDF the way the piece will be built, not described in a note after the fact.

Graphic design and prepress checks bleed, type, fonts, image sharpness, and how the pages impose. They can also build the file if you are starting from a logo and copy. The proof you approve is the gate. We print after that approval, then ship anywhere in the United States.

Products that use this process

These are the pieces whose pages already point here. Each one still has its own choices. This page is only the printing path.

Presentation folders when one folder has to match across the run. Postcards and mailers, door hangers, flyers, and brochures when the stack is identical. Menus when one menu is repeated. Catalogs and booklets when the pages have to stay consistent once they are bound. Envelopes and letterhead when a run of one mark has to agree. If a product is not in that list, its page points at digital instead. Say what you are printing and the quote will still name the process.