Full Color Postcard Printing

Series Summary

It doesn't matter how good a product or service is; without the proper marketing plan, it is doomed to fail. Marketing is a complex process of planning how to appeal to buyers. Using the four Ps - product, price, place and promotion - individuals use creativity to interact with buyers. It takes a great deal of study, especially in the social sciences, to appeal to a particular group. Focusing on psychology, sociology, economics and anthropology, marketers interpret modern culture, and one could argue that they may actually help create it. In this free video series on marketing and design, the owner of a successful marketing agency discusses how to design marketing tools for specialty printing. Get ideas for printing full color postcards, flyers and bumper stickers, and find out what kind of size requirements and color choices are available. Learn how to design and print things online, and even get tips on designing menu covers for a restaurant. Printing is a huge part of marketing that requires a creative eye.

Video Transcript

"In this clip we're going to talk about designing a full color postcard. Full color basically means C and YK. So there's two things that you need to talk, think about when you're designing a postcard. First is how you're going to use it and the second is who's going to print it, how are you going to get it printed. So, in the how are you going to use it, it means do you want the postcard to go through the mail as a postcard or are you going to use it as a handout or are you going to give it, put it in an envelope. If you're going to put it in an envelope, the first thing you need to do is find the envelope first and design from that size backwards. Because if you design your postcard first and think you'll find the envelope later, many times it doesn't happen like that and you'll end up adjusting your files to fit the envelope. So, these postcards were designed to go through the mail, so see how they've left that area. So, that's what you need to think about is how much area do you need for the postage and the address. The U.S. Postal Service has a chart that you can get and it shows that the maximum postcard size is four and a quarter by six, which is this size right here, that's the maximum that you can get for postage, for postcard postage, that's the maximum your card, maximum size your card can be for postcard postage and the minimum size is three and a half by five, anything smaller than that cannot go through the mail. The other thing that you need to think about when you're going, when you're doing full color postcard printing is who's going to print it. So, what you want to do is find your printer, select your printer and then find out what their requirements are. So before you put your files together and you design everything, you need to look at what are the sizes that they offer and then work within their, whatever their requirements are. Many times what happens is you'll find someone who just prints postcards and they're printing in bulk, so everything is, your job is going on the press with many other jobs and that way it's a great way to get a job, get your job done and pay a lot less for it. If you're not that, your color doesn't have to be just specifically right, then this is a great deal for you because you can get a bunch, they can print a bunch at once and you can get your cards for a fraction of the cost it would be if your job was on press by itself. So, once you find what the printer's requirements are, many times they will say what you need to think about is what your file needs to be if it's C and YK, RGB, what the maximum file size is and then also what the bleed area is. So you want to make sure that if you're going to use an image that you have an eighth of an inch of your image extra to go onto the card. So, when you're setting this file up, like in this instance there was an eighth of an inch of the image all the way around the card than is actually what you see here because that part is cut off and that's what you call your bleed area. That allows to adjust for if there's a shift on the printer or it gets cut slightly wrong, then you're still okay, no one will, you probably won't even notice but because you don't have, you have ink on that area, so it's a great safety for everyone involved. So, one thing you need to make sure of is before you get your photo in there and you get it just right is that you do leave yourself extra room so that you have that bleed area. The other thing to think about is coating, many of the postcard houses offer specialty coating. This card here is UV coating. UV coating is this super shiny coating that's like what I call the, like disco night kind of coating, it's super shiny and this is a great way if you want to give your card, it gives it a little bit of extra weight, it gives it a longer lifespan, but it also can't be written on. So, if you're going to hand address your envelopes you do not want this kind of coating because it's really hard to write on it. You have to use a sharpie or things like and your postage doesn't stick and for regular postcards it's really not necessary, they're just fine to get through the mail like that as they are. So the other coating is AQ coating and that's a coating that will just cover your inks and will also allow you to, it allows your ink to dry faster, it's just a good, it's just a good coating to have. That's generally what your choices are AQ or UV and so, those are the things that you need to think about when designing a full color postcard."