I, like many moms, receive a varied collection of parenting magazines each month. Each of these magazines has the usual articles mingled lightly among the boundless print ads. As I am sure is the case with many magazine readers, I have become somewhat immune to these ads, and, with few exceptions, my brain passes over them without a thought. But in a recent magazine one marketing insert made a lasting impact on me.

It was for a simple product, tissue. The full four page insert was similar to other magazine inserts at first (although the paper quality was outstanding). But when I opened it up, the ad showed a picture of a full size tissue box with a hole in the top and a sample of the tissue popping out. The sample, also printed, invited me to feel the softness of the product. I was able to pull out the piece and make use of the product immediately. I got to sample their product without even asking. Now, almost a week later, I remember the name of the product. I know what the packaging looks like. I know that the tissue is soft and has a touch of lotion. I know that this is a product I would buy when I need tissue.

This was an effective print ad. A real, tangible, memorable marketing piece that did exactly what print media does best. It drew me in with multiple senses, sight, touch, smell, and made the piece more real and more important to me.

Now, don’t get me wrong, email and web marketing are tremendously effective and creating a marketing piece with the kind of impact described above is a challenge. I am not a marketing expert by any means and I may have a greater appreciation for an ad like this because I know what it takes to create it. But I am reminded that with a creative approach the power of print goes unmatched as a marketing tool.

The truth of the matter is, and any good printer will tell you, that there is room in the world for both offset printing and digital printing. The reason is because they serve different markets and provide different printing solutions. 

Digital printing is the reproduction of digital images to a physical surface, like paper. The most basic form of digital printing is the office printer. You have the ability to easily produce several reproductions of the same digital image or print different images one right after the other. It’s highly customizable because of the ability to use variable data and lends itself to short print runs or print-on-demand (POD).

Offset printing is the process by which inked images are transferred from an aluminum plate to a rubber press blanket then “pressed” onto the printing surface. This process produces very high quality imagery and text. Offset printing is ideal for the mass production of identical pieces like catalogs and other marketing collateral.

As a consumer, your job is understand your printers’ sweet spot. The sweet spot is where the printer can produce your piece with consistent high quality at the lowest price possible. In other words, everybody wins. The printer loves to print your kind of job because it’s perfect for the equipment she has and it’s easy to make some money and you win because you’re going to get a great result and get it for a very good price.

A very important aspect to the sweet spot is the quantity you need. At low quantities, digital printing will be better because of the price. Offset printers have a lot of set up at the beginning that makes printing low quantities more expensive. However, as the quantity gets higher there is a point at which, depending on the equipment of the offset printer, the price per piece begins to plummet and offset printing is the better choice. One of the best questions to ask yourself is “what is this piece going to used for?” If it’s a date-sensitive piece, for example, and you only need a hundred, then digital is the way to go. If it’s a sales slick or spec sheet that you’ll hand out to everyone at a trade show and you need 1500 pieces, then offset printing is for you.

Quality is a whole other issue. Those stinkin’ Jets know they got nothin’ on what us Sharks can do.

Certainly, CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black) and RGB (Red, Green & Blue) are nothing to be afraid of. They are just a color settings. But, if you’re a print buyer, designer, or jack-of-all-trades small business owner, it’s important to know what those color settings mean in relation to your printed piece.

I’m not going to explain the physics behind RGB and CMYK in this space. You can find great resources for that here and here. In a nutshell, the RGB color space incorporates all of the visible spectrum of light and therefore is very large. Millions of colors are available to choose from and display devices such as monitors and televisions use that spectrum. CMYK is a much smaller color gamut offering thousands of colors by comparison and is used for commercial offset lithography. You can think of the RGB color space in terms of a large circle and the CMYK color space as a much smaller circle within it.

Here’s the kicker. All pieces designed in the RGB color space must go through a RGB to CMYK conversion process to be printed on a press. It’s not hard to see that if you choose a color in RGB that does not exist in CMYK, when it comes time to get your file ready for the press, there might be a problem. 

One of the most common problems I see are solid RGB colors like bright blue converted into CMYK and turning purple. The device doing the converting, whether it’s Photoshop, Illustrator or even Publisher, is trying to come up with a solution for a color that doesn’t exist so it comes up with something it thinks is close.

Enough with the problems, how do we solve this thing? Well, one of the best things you can do is have a good consultative relationship with your printer. Have your printer provide you with a CMYK swatch book printed on the paper you’re going to use for your project. Choose colors for your logo or other design elements that fall easily within the CMYK color space. If you need to employ a designer, be sure to ask how much experience he or she has with designing for print compared to the web. Taking the time to educate yourself just a little bit about color will return your investment in peace of mind and great looking print.