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Comment by michaelpinto | Hacker News Reader

To me printing is more of an art than a science — and as a graphic designer I can tell you that you usually get what you pay for in terms of quality. Another problem the author may have had is that the quantity of said order is so tiny that a major printer wouldn't have taken the job, so you get the small guys.

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Thanks for the comment. What are your criteria for judging the quality of a printer (besides price)?

one criteria is the prepress process. Before committing to print, good quality printers usually have a whole prepress process - from checking the correctness of file formats (I think this is why you were missing certain things on your deck - maybe they can't read your file, or had outdated and/or pirated software), to generating digital proofs - the best printers have a way to let you check the proofs before they even print up a sample. Some even let you come in and check it on their proofing workstations at their press. That's what you're paying for when you go for the "expensive" local printers - it's not really expensive when you think about it - by getting it right the first time you go to press.

As you found out, samples don't always turn out right, and it's great to be able to "double check" their work.

As for the print run size - if you look locally, you should be able to find a good quality press that does gang run printing - basically printing multiple clients' projects together to save on overhead.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gang_run_prin...

In your case, the special card stock for playing cards might make it difficult to find someone to do this type of printing for you - but in your case, you should be looking for a specialty card printer - maybe even printing on plastic (not paper) - which would involve searching within a whole different industry all together...

A number of years ago I was in a job that had me doing weekly press checks for high-run gang print jobs. The press operators were all very professional and well-trained, but it was surprising how many defects would be present after the colors had been calibrated and the "make-readies" had been printed. Some of these were huge runs on Heidleberg presses, with measurable offsets on registration or Pantone colors that were off.

My takeaway from this: if you care about impeccable quality, it's a constant fight to get it and keep it. No one will care about your product as much as you do.

Some things I found useful for these high-value offset print jobs:

1. Print out a hard proof (at full size obviously), and have multiple people review its accuracy.

2. Provide your printer with both a PDF/X file and your Indesign file. Use Indesign. Ask your printer if they have a preference for the PDF/X settings.

3. Provide all of the above to your print house.

4. Request, at the very least, an e-proof from your printer. This is generated after they push it through their processing workflow. If it looks good, your only other concern would be press calibration.

5. If it makes financial sense, schedule a press check. I believe we paid $100/hour for ours, but they would not usually take more than an hour. I'd usually ask for adjustments if they were needed, then pluck off a print that looked good and sign it. I'd take an identical copy for myself. They'd then use this to compare press output with during the printing job. If any part of the job came out like crap, I could use my copy to show how off it was and get a refund or credit on my next job.

wow that was incredibly useful. whats funny is I didn't even consider not outsourcing the project. In fact, most of the costs associated with outsourcing was shipping. I wonder if I'd be able to find a local printer that does playing cards. As far as the plastic goes yea, that would be difficult.

You don't happen to know of any good printers in the Portland area do you?

Glad to help with some information, but no, I don't know the Portland area. Perhaps other commenters will be able to give you some tips.

Well I'm a designer so I may see things that a non-designer wouldn't pick up on. The first thing you want to do is to see printed samples of their work. This is a test not just to see the work itself, but to see how quickly they get it to you and if they follow up after it's been sent. When you're looking at the printing see how black the blacks are — are things trimmed well? How are their communication skills? Also a must have for me is the ability to see a printed proof — looking at an acrobat file on a computer screen is a waste of time.

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