I don’t know about you, but when I started getting familiar with printing and the printing industry I was under the impression that there was a hotly developing turf war a la West Side Story between offset printers and digital printers–offset printers, clearly the Sharks, with their old world technology and traditions up against the modern, new world attitudes and technology of the Jets. I imagined weekly rumbles with chains, switchblades, and other improvised weapons in the seediest areas of cities across America. And, because I work for a commercial offset lithographer, the Jets had their butts handed to them every week!

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.