LEARN HOW MUCH IT WILL COST YOU TO PRINTING YOUR JOB IN NIGERIA
Printing Production Process and Analysis:
My name is Paul Abidakun I will be your host on this platform all through, teaching you everything you need to know, and also to become a printing agent in less than a month. In this, article you will be taught step-by-step how to start any kind of printing project from start to finishing. Projects like Calendar production, invitation card, jotter, shopping bag, handbill, posters, business cards, letterhead, etc.
I will not only teach you how to do all these, but also show you the secrets to costing any form of projects no matter what quantity it is. All for free!
Flier Production Process:
Flier is also known to be handbill. It is usually recognized by a particular size called "A5" in printing term. This size may either be vertical or horizontal depending on the choice adopted by the graphic designer who created it as stipulated in the brief by the owner of the project.
If you want to dabble into production of filers; certain number of factor must be considered, starting with design source. Who is that person or company to handle the art work.
This is a very important aspect that must be handled with care; because whatever is designed will be used in the remaining stages of the production process.
What do I mean?
In any form of printing, art work plays a major role which can make or mar any project.
I will advise you to pay much more attention to where, who and why your design or artwork has to be trusted in to the custody of a particular person or agent.
Your artwork must be handled by an expert in that field; who has made every necessary bad and good judgment in that profession with years of experience is qualified to handle such delicate and sensitive stage of production. I will be there for you, should you have anything to involving graphic design/artwork. Contact me for honest and professional advice.
Requirement For Hand Bill Production .
a. Artwork
b. Paper
c. Digital film
d. Impression
e. Plate making
f. Finishing
Obviously, we have spent some valuable time discussing artwork, but doesn’t mean we still don’t have relevant things to mention. This time around I only want to make a salient point on your design presentation and setting. Designs are meant for various purposes; church program flier design is expected to wear a different look from that of entertainment industry. Make sure that you are not carried away with the beauty of any design. Be certain that it suits the category it is meant for, before proceeding to filming stage
Digital Filming: This is the stage when designed artwork is being transformed into film by a machine called Digital Separation Machine. This machine is programmed in such a way that all colours present in any artwork design is separated into one, two, three or four process colours that will eventually enable plate making. Note this: before an artwork gets to late making stage you must consider the number of colours involved in the designed artwork.
An artwork could be single colour, 2colours, 3colours or 4colours termed cyan, magenta, yellow and black. These colors formed the basis on which price is fixed on printing machine. The process whereby film is exposed on to the surface of a plate sheet is called lithography.
Impression Running: Here is the stage where images that are exposed on the plates is being transferred to the surface of paper material. This process could be better understood if you can take a visit in form of excursion to a nearby printing press around you. This is just for you to physically comprehend what I am teaching you in theory. But if you are going to have challenge with that; I can organize one for you in my printing press. Depending on the quantity needed, a printing machine could print as many as possible quantity of project at hand. Lest I forget, quantity is usually measured in number of papers (print run) to be used.
Paper: This is a crucial stage in printing where choices are made in what kind/type and quality as well as quantity of paper material needed to execute a printing project.
There are different types of paper available for printing predominantly we have papers and card. In the paper category; present are art-paper, mart-paper, bond-paper, conqueror etc. While in the card category, we have art-card, mart-card, alabaster-card, vanguard-card, chip board etc. The choice of kind of paper or card to be used depends largely on the nature of the project before you.
Printing Run /Quantity: This is the most important part of this article, and I will advise you pay utmost attention to every single point mentioned.
For an aspiring printing contract agent; understanding the quantity and cost implication in any project will be a pointer to your success in this industry. Let’s take for instance, you have an order to produce 20,000 copies of 6”x 9” handbill; the pertinent question should be “how much am I going to charge per copy? And how do I go about determination the cost involved?.
Don’t worry; you are not alone …..
To start with, I will want to make a check list of what is required to produce such quantity of handbill as well as the cost attached to each.
Check list;
a. Art work d. Paper
b. Film Making e. Impression
c. Plate making (Lithograghy)
d.finishing
Before any cost could be determined, you must firstly consider the type of printing machine you want to use for printing-run, which is going to be the yard- stick for the cost of each item on your checklist.
There are different types of printing machines available, but at this stage of learning, I will want to restrict you to the most commonly used.
Types of printing machines:
1. Speed master (SM) 4 - 5 colours at a time
2. Sord - 2colour at a time
3. Kord - 1color at a time
4. Gestetner-1colour a time
Section 2:
I will love to start with the third on list above. KORD printing machine is arguably one of the most commonly used machine in Nigeria at present. It has the capacity of printing any image and paper size measured at 18inches by 24inches (18” x 24”). In a situation where size requirement is beyond this said size, a larger machine must be considered for use.
In this case SORD and SPEEDMASTER(SM) printing machine will be perfect for such larger sizes. They have the capacity of printing twice the size of that of KORD. While the GESTETNER earlier mentioned can only print a quarter size of KORD image/paper size called A4 as well as Legal size.
In printing term, sizes are named in As. A KORD paper printing size is called A2, SORD/SPEEDMASTER is called A1 and the GESTETNER size known to be A4.
…Back to the matter!
Please don’t open or close anything here, because we are discussing print, lol.
The figure below is an assumed handbill size I wanted to produce.
Everybody knows what A4 papers is.
Half of A4 is A5
Double of A4 is A3
Double of A3 is A2
Double of A2 is A1
*N.B. the pic won’t show here because of the platform you are reading this article. But you can get for it in the PDF format. But not withstanding you is still going to get what am about to discuss here.
Assuming I have an order to produce 20,000 copies of a 6”x 9” handbill. I make Art paper my choice of paper to do the printing. Usually papers are packed in a unique and universal size. Art paper and some in its category for instance are measured in size to be 24” x 36”. This is exact size a SORD and SM can comfortably print on without a need to cut it before use.
In this project, I am considering using KORD printing machine to produce the 20,000 copies of 6”x 8” handbill for economic reason. This you will understand in the course of my writing. Here is what I will always advise you to do first. You will need to have it in mind that KORD paper size is 24”x 18”, that makes it half on the paper size you will buy from the paper merchant.
See figure below:
The diagram above explains how the raw paper size look like. Then the you will have to cut it into two equal halves in order to suit the machine planned for the print run.
This other diagram below shows the number of ups(times) an handbill size of 6”x9” can go in a single sheet of 24”x36”. The reason we are doing this is to understand the number of A1 sheets as well as A2sheets we will actually need to print 20,000copies.
…Here is what you will do!
If in A2 size we can achieve 8 sheets of A5(6”x9”) handbill size, that means we will need (20,000/8 sheets) = 2,500 sheets of A2 size. Don’t forget that I told you that paper is usually packed in A1 size. i:e 24x36 meaning you will still have to divide 2500sheets by half, in order to determine the cost. Therefore, half of 2500 sheets will be 1,250 in sheets.
I will once again advise you not to get bored at this stage of learning; because once you can get this right, every other things will be a piece of cake. This is actually the costing stage in printing knowledge.
In the paper industry, papers are packaged in reams while cards are usually packaged in packets. A ream of paper has 500 sheets in it while packet of card is usually wrapped in 100s.
Papers and cards are also being differentiated by weight, which is measured in grams. Each grams has its price be it low or high. As at the time of writing this article, a ream of art paper costs N9,500 of 150grams. We have 115grm, 135grms, and also 170grms depending on the specification required for the project.
Now that we have been able to establish the number of sheets of A2 to produce 20,000 sheets of handbill, the next thing is to ascertain how many reams we will need. Remember that I mentioned how many sheets in a ream to be 500. And its been established that we need 1,250 sheets of A1(24”x36”). Therefore, 1250 is to be divided by 500 and that will give us two and half reams.
Moreover, what we need to do here is to multiply the cost of a ream with the number of reams just calculated. At this point N9,500 will be multiply by 2.5 reams making it N23,750. That is the cost required to get the paper needed.
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