Just a quick tip, if anybody claiming to be a Reverend Richard (or similar) gets in touch, asking for quotes on leaflets/flyers in quantities of around 90,000+, this is a scam.

Below is a recent enquiry that we received today, one of many similar over the past 12 months…

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On the 24th November 2008 the Chancellor announced that the standard rate of VAT will be reduced from 17.5% to 15% from the 1st December 2008.

The 15% rate will remain until the 31st December 2009, from the 1st January 2010 it will revert back to 17.5%.

Please note that any applicable prices on our website will reflect this change from the 1st December 2008.

I was going to blog about the difference between RGB colour space and CMYK colour space, however, I have already written about this on our main website and have decided to post a link to it instead.

CMYK Printing

Most designers with experience of the printing industry will know the following, for those that don’t, this article will hopefully be of use to you ensuring you get exactly what you require.

How many pages?

We often get asked to give quotes on bespoke jobs, the customer will say for example “I need a quote on 500 x A4 Booklets with 8 pages”.

We spend time creating a quote only to realise when the customer sends their artwork that they actually require 16 pages, why? In the printing industry 1 page is classed as one side of a sheet of paper, so in the example above we would presume that the customer wanted 2 x A3 sheets of paper folded in half to A4, giving 8 x A4 pages. However, the customer actually requires 4 x A3 sheets of paper folded in half to A4, giving 16 x A4 pages in our terms and the required 8 pages in the customers terms.

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Due to the amount of times we are asked, I thought I would make a post explaining what (by law) must be displayed on your business stationery if you are a UK limited company.

Under the Companies Act 1985 your company must state its name (as it appears in its memorandum of association) on its business stationery. Your company must also give certain information on all its business letters, order forms and websites.

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VAT on printed products explained.

VAT on printed items can be difficult to understand, even for us! Mainly because what is printed on the product in question can determine if the product is standard rated (vatable) or zero rated (VAT exempt).

As an example, leaflets are zero rated as standard, however, if your leaflet was to offer discount on a product or service then this is now classed as a voucher and becomes standard rated.

We have shown some information below provided by HM Revenue & Customs, it is also available on their website but is so difficult to find, hence, we decided to post it here for all to see. The information is VERY detailed and far more than most people need, however, we decided to post the full article to cover every eventuality.

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Does Cheap Print = Quality Print?…the honest answer is rarely.

One of our print resellers contacted us as they had sourced a cheaper supplier of A6 Flyers, 5000 x A6 Flyers for £60, £20 cheaper than us. Can you match or beat this they asked? The answer was no, unfortunately we cannot match/beat every single price/offer out there, all we can do is be consistently competitive.

The print reseller in question regularly placed orders with us, however, we received no orders from them for over 3 weeks, obviously the cheaper prices were important to them (so they thought) and they went elsewhere. Week 4 they start placing orders with us again, so I asked them what had happened, their response was that in the 3 week period where they used the cheaper supplier they had received 3 complaints of poor quality print, an order that was not dispatched or lost and unfortunately bad customer service with a slow response to rectifying these issues.

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Coated Stock Explained

Stock is a term used in the printing industry and refers to the material that is to be printed on, for example, paper, card, vinyl etc.

As the name suggests, coated stock has a coating and this is usually of china clay, this gives the paper/card a smooth surface which can be gloss or silk in finish (gloss being shiny and silk offering more of a matt finish). Coated stock is used for projects that require a high quality finish such as presentation folders, leaflets, flyers and brochures, the list goes on!

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Printer’s Bleed
If you haven’t designed print ready artwork before then one of the most important factors to take into consideration is printer’s bleed.

Firstly, you need to understand how a commercial printer prints, the following applies to the majority of printed products, however, as an example:

You require 5,000 300gsm A6 Flyers, these are not printed onto individual A6 pieces of card like some people think, instead we print 8 x A6 Flyers onto SRA3 card, this is slightly larger than standard A3 at 450mm x 320mm, we then trim the printed Flyers down to the required A6 size.

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At Stationery Direct we offer a wide selection of FREE print templates, our print templates are set in the correct colour mode (CMYK) and contain a blank canvas with the correct trim and bleed for commercial printing.

Our print templates are FREE for anybody to download, once you have created your masterpiece they can then be supplied back to us for print (recommended) or a printer of your choice.

Although the templates are set-up correctly you may find that reading our FAQ page helps in understanding what is required from a professional printer, please note that although our requirements will be the same as 99% of UK printers, some may vary.

We offer a wide selection of FREE Print Templates…

…from FREE Business Card Templates to FREE Flyer Templates, and many more!

If you are based in the UK and have any questions then do not hesitate to
get in touch via our main website, or post a comment below.