What Are The Different Types Of Printing?

Not all printing companies are created equal. There are those that are able to give you full color printing for your marketing collaterals. Still there are printing houses that offer excellent offset printing to provide you a cost effective print job, hence, bigger savings.

Whatever kind of printer you need to accomplish the job you require, you also have to learn to distinguish the differences among the printing techniques. This is so you could discuss with your printer the most suitable method for your marketing campaign.

Here are the different types of printing that you may want to get acquainted with before you go to a printing company for your print job:

Offset Lithography – The most common printing method in the industry, most printers use offset lithography to save on ink and limit set up time. Hence, you are able to avail of a more affordable and cost effective print job for your color printing requirements. What printers usually do is to offset the ink (thus, the name) from metal plates to a rubber cylinder and then transfer it onto the paper stock.

Digital Printing – It is probably the most popular printing method since its introduction. Digital printing is very effective since it reduces the time to complete the printing process. It doesn’t need films and plates anymore. What it does is to transfer the digital file directly to the printing press with the help of a computer. It’s relatively fast that customers often rely on digital printing to meet deadlines and schedules.

Letterpress – Created by Gutenberg, the Letterpress is considered as one of the first and original printing methods of all time. The letterpress gave birth to the concept of relief printing, where the image being printed is raised from the surface. However, the method is slowly going obsolete with the new and much faster methods being introduced in the market today.

Electrostatic Printing – Similar to photocopying, this method lets the color attach to a drum and is blended with the paper with the application of heat. It is similar to digital printing as it also provides cost effective production of short print runs.

Thermography – This method produces raised image that you see mostly in stationeries. What the printer does is to use a special powder or dust that easily sticks to wet ink. Then they apply heat to blend the ink and the powder to form the raised image.

These are still more types of printing methods. The bottom line is to know what would be the most suitable to your needs. We hope that the next time you hire a commercial printer for your marketing collateral you are able to discuss clearly what kind of printing method you require to achieve the results you imagined.

For more information, you can visit this page on http://www.justprint.com