Shuffling cards
Apr. 23rd, 2019 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrFor years, my business cards looked like this: simple graphics, black ink on a nice card stock. I got them printed at an independent copy shop a short walk from downtown Eugene that employed one of our former Craft Center studio employees. They had a nice assortment of Wausau Speckletone papers, and Neenah Cottonwood card stock, which is what I printed the cards on. They printed 12 per page, and were super cheap--pennies per card--so I could afford to issue them like popcorn, to everyone who even might be interested.
Time moved on. Kinko's doomed the corner copy shop, and were in turn sunk by the big-box office supply stores. None of them carried specialty papers, so I had to start buying my own stock (Neenah Birch, a lighter, warmer-toned speckled stock) from a paper supply house and bring it in to the local Office Max, now a convenient bike ride from our new house on River Road.
Then Office Depot swallowed up Max and closed our neighborhood store. The copy shop employees got younger and less experienced, too used to pressing a button without thinking about how it affected the printed product. Every six months, it seemed, I was training in a new operator. Yes, it's two-sided. This is how the sides line up. Trimmed cards are 2 x 3.5", cut in this pattern. No, you can't let the computer shrink to fit page (seemingly the default) as this messes up the registration.
Everything finally came to a head about two weeks ago, when I went in to get cards printed for Ceramic Showcase. We can't print them here, I was told, We're not allowed to print two-sided cards in house anymore. We have to send them out to a regional printing center.
Yeah, not happy.
So I brought my 75 remaining sheets of Birch card stock home for Denise to use in book binding projects, and sat down at my computer to design a new business card. And went online.
Online color printers have proliferated since the days when I wrote this. Digital processing, economies of scale and sheer competition mean that a full color card these days costs what my black ink on speckly paper version did back in the day. This is my new business card.
I ordered 5000 from GotPrint.com--where Clay Fest gets its postcards and bookmarks--for just under 2¢ each, including shipping.
Time moved on. Kinko's doomed the corner copy shop, and were in turn sunk by the big-box office supply stores. None of them carried specialty papers, so I had to start buying my own stock (Neenah Birch, a lighter, warmer-toned speckled stock) from a paper supply house and bring it in to the local Office Max, now a convenient bike ride from our new house on River Road.
Then Office Depot swallowed up Max and closed our neighborhood store. The copy shop employees got younger and less experienced, too used to pressing a button without thinking about how it affected the printed product. Every six months, it seemed, I was training in a new operator. Yes, it's two-sided. This is how the sides line up. Trimmed cards are 2 x 3.5", cut in this pattern. No, you can't let the computer shrink to fit page (seemingly the default) as this messes up the registration.
Everything finally came to a head about two weeks ago, when I went in to get cards printed for Ceramic Showcase. We can't print them here, I was told, We're not allowed to print two-sided cards in house anymore. We have to send them out to a regional printing center.
Yeah, not happy.
So I brought my 75 remaining sheets of Birch card stock home for Denise to use in book binding projects, and sat down at my computer to design a new business card. And went online.
Online color printers have proliferated since the days when I wrote this. Digital processing, economies of scale and sheer competition mean that a full color card these days costs what my black ink on speckly paper version did back in the day. This is my new business card.
I ordered 5000 from GotPrint.com--where Clay Fest gets its postcards and bookmarks--for just under 2¢ each, including shipping.