As one of the people who does estimating in our shop, I get to see a myriad of ways that people ask for pricing for their print projects. This is due to people’s various experience levels with everything that goes into making a print project work.
Even in print shops, not everyone can understand everything there is to know about print, so don’t feel bad. If your print shop is truly customer service oriented, they’ll take the time to walk you through the necessary items (color vs. black and white; single/double sided, etc.) so that they get all the information they need to give you an accurate price.
What is one of the common things we see?
The Pages vs. Sheets Dilemma
This is one of the most common miss-communication issues between printers and their clients. The reason for this is that the definition of what is a PAGE and what is a SHEET often differs from the way these terms are used in common conversation. Even printers use the terms casually in normal conversations. However, since almost all printing is custom, specifications need to be precise, that is, let’s all be on the same page (pun intended).
For an understanding of the difference between a sheet and a page grab yourself a piece of paper. Any old 8-1/2” x 11” copy paper will do. Now look at it. You are now looking at a SHEET. The sheet is the medium upon which your printing will be done.
Now look at the front of the sheet and then the back. How many sides did you see? I bet it was 2! That’s the number of PAGES there are. Doesn’t matter whether both sides are printed or only 1 side. Confused? We’ll try to make it a little clearer by transforming that lowly sheet of paper into some thing else.
I ask you now to fold that piece of paper in half, parallel to the short edge, to create a 5-1/2 x 8-1/2 folded piece of paper. Now look at the piece of paper. How many SHEETS do you see? Still 1, I bet.
Now, I want you to number each panel of the folded piece, front and back. I bet you came up with 4 panels. So, magically, by folding the lowly piece of paper, we transformed it from 2 PAGES to 4 PAGES.
Getting the idea? This is the basis for correctly describing how many pages you want to your printer. Of course there are a lot of combinations and it can get confusing.
Here’s what you do to get your thinking correct: Make a mock-up. Grab some paper and make it look like what you want to buy, even if it’s not the correct size, fold it, mangle it, do whatever you need to do to make it look like what’s in your mind’s eye.
Oh, and printers call their mock-ups “dummies”, because we are dummies if we don’t do one before we estimate the job.
Next Time: The Finished Size vs. Sheet Size Dilemma