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Home Articles & Tutorials Digital, or Litho – how do I choose?

August 16, 2015 By castle Leave a Comment

Digital, or Litho – how do I choose?

Digital or Litho

Digital or LithoOver the last few years, digital printing technology has come along in leaps and bounds, and quality-wise, there is not a great deal to separate the two.

From a print supplier’s point of view, digital is by far the ‘easiest’ option, as anyone who is comfortable with working with computers/printers etc. can usually be trained to operate a digital machine, whereas a skilled litho press operator is worth their weight in gold.

Early digital machines were not a substitute for litho print, as the quality wasn’t at the level its reached in today’s marketplace, and were usually reserved for ‘throwaway’ jobs, leaflets, dance tickets, luggage tags etc. etc. These days, although the print quality is not quite on a par with litho, the results are perfectly acceptable for many.

Digital machines can now handle thicker materials, whereas previously only very thin paper & boards were printable.

The industry-standard colour matching system for many years has been an ink-based matching system developed by the Pantone® company, and the toner-based system used by digital print has as yet, not been able to compete fully in this area.

The first question one should ask oneself before deciding on either of the two systems: how important to you is consistent colour across your corporate brand?

Achieving colour consistency across all your business stationery and promotional items is a technical business. Just think of the differences in materials used across items such as business cards, letterheads, glossy leaflets, plastics, vynil, clothing etc. and you’ll understand the headaches involved in getting colour to look consistent on all the different materials.

For more on colour issues/colour consistency etc. please check out this short article. Colour Issues

So, before you dive in and start having all your stationery produced digitally, you will need to decide how important you consider keeping the colour consistent for your corporate image.

The amount of stationery you require will also have a bearing on which method to choose. If you are routinely ordering low-quantity stationery, then digital might be the way forward as this should save you money. Larger runs, say upwards of 1,000 letterheads, compliment slips etc. would be more cost effective to produce lithographically.

Digital-only suppliers will probably tell you that this is the best method, whereas litho-only suppliers will often tell you the opposite. Companies who utilise both technologies will hopefully give you the advice that’s best for your particular situation.

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Filed Under: Articles & Tutorials Tagged With: digital, litho, lithographic

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Bleeds explained

Basically, a bleed is artwork that goes over the edge of the printed sheet.

If your design needs to have a bleed then it’s important to allow 3mm overlap (see image A below). As the letterhead will be printed on oversize material (SRA4), this gives the guillotine operator a chance to cut into the artwork and produce a good finished letterhead. (see image B below).

A
How to design a letterhead fig. 3
B
How to design a letterhead fig. 4

Why do we need a bleed?

If the artwork ended at the edge of the sheet and the guillotine cut was only 0.5mm out, then we could end up with an unsightly thin white strip down one edge of the sheet, which is not ideal.

Also, if there is a large stack of paper on the press, with the best will in the world there will be the odd sheet that doesn’t get fed through the press 100% accurately so if a bleed hasn’t been put in place this could cause issues.

Extending the artwork over the edge of the sheet allows for a little leeway when it comes to the time for trimming.

If you’ve set your workspace for A4 and intend to use bleeds then, depending on what software package you are using you may need to set the workspace to oversize A4 (SRA4), which measures 225mm x 320mm.