The Printing Process: All About Digital Printing

There are many misconceptions about printing services for today’s businesses, particularly digital printing and demand printing services. But digital printing is a multifaceted process with lots of benefits.

What is Digital Printing?

Simply put, digital printing is transferring digital content onto paper. Unlike more traditional commercial printing techniques, digital printing doesn’t require any sort of major techniques, like manual type setting and its cumbersome printing presses; these can now be controlled through a computer interface. With digital printing, you use higher-quality inking units that allow for better resolutions. You can pick and choose from an endless spectrum of printing options, including paper stock, sizing, formatting, and binding.

No Printing Plate Needed

Another great thing about digital printing is that you don’t have to use the old plate creation printing technique; instead, a digital printing press can just take your text and images from the files and directly transfer them to the paper. This saves a lot of time, reduces efficiency problems like machine breakdowns, and lowers costs significantly.

It’s Perfect for Short-Run Printing

Saving time and money is essential for effectively conducting business, and it’s important to employ the most modern printing methods to do just that, no matter how small your printing batch is. Digital printing allows you to do short-run printing of books and large orders in short time frames for a lot less money; this allows you to get the smaller jobs done quickly and produce larger quantities of products for clients and associates in a timely manner.

What is Print-on-Demand?

Thanks to digital printing, you can print as many pieces as you want, when you want, and without the week- or month-long wait; that’s print-on-demand (POD), a common term in digital printing. Before the age of digital, publishing houses usually did what’s called “batch publishing,” where thousands of books were printed over a long stretch of time. Nowadays, POD allows you to print as little as one book at a rapid speed.

Technology has made this more remotely accessible today, too; you can now access a digital printing house’s POD interface online, choose what you want to print, input the data and images, then pay for it all at once. And once everything is ordered and paid for, you often have the option of having your print products distributed as well.

What is Variable Data Printing?

Print-on-demand is often combined with another, older printing technique called variable data printing (VDP). This method entails printing business materials based on whatever particular data you want to process, specifically marketing materials like direct mail flyers, postcards, catalogs, and self-mailers.

In the past, this process meant producing large quantities for costly fees and with long processing times, but with POD, you can access your printing platform online and design your marketing pieces before making a printing request. Most printing houses should have the correct templates to create a variety of print marketing materials in addition to whatever business documents you need.

Also keep in mind that many printing houses allow their clients to use their VDP services to create digital marketing pieces, such as e-ads or e-mail campaigns.

Your Call-to-Action

Now that you have the scoop on digital printing, it’s time to think about how you want to use it to benefit your business. With all the available options out there, it’s advisable to get your designer to help you select the right design templates for your print materials.

It’s smart to shop around for the proper third-party digital printing services that will meet your business’ needs. Finally, note that digital printing can be performed over long distances; for example, you could live in New York while outsourcing your printing to digital services in Florida.

Need solutions to your product fulfillment problems? APS Fulfillment, Inc. has the knowledge and services to make your direct mail and product fulfillment ventures more successful. Contact APS Fulfillment, Inc. by e-mail at info@apsfulfillment.com, visit their website at www.apsfulfillment.com, or phone at (954) 582-7450.