Thursday, December 10, 2009

The Evolution of Brochure Printing

By David Lonney

Circulating brochures has always been a successful marketing strategy for any organization. They can be distributed like leaflets or mailed at clients' addresses, or can just be stacked in retail outlets for clients to take with them. The need to have printed brochures has led to the rise of a sector of the printing services business, which specifically caters to brochures. Brochure printing has witnessed a series of developments in recent years, with the dawn and increasing use of the internet heralding the most recent of these changes.

Before computers were used for the purpose, brochure printing involved a number of time-consuming jobs like multiple rounds of test printing, changing settings, obtaining film negatives, and using plate-making machines. Even in design, the clients could not provide detailed inputs and the printers mostly took care of the design job, working with a restricted set of pre decided formats.

Nowadays, the client from his office can himself design the brochure and send it online to the printing company, and he also doesn't have to wait for weeks for the end product to be supplied to him. Supply of final prints in large quantities in a single day is possible now, thanks to improvements in technology.

A crucial feature of brochure printing is that it entails important elements like layout, content, and use of graphics. The digitisation of the printing process has revolutionised these aspects, providing a plethora of alternatives, including superior quality full-colour printing, modern and complicated layout options, and content-building packages.

Clients these days usually prefer full-colour brochures and digital brochures amongst the latest types of brochures offered by printing services companies. Such brochures are meant for circulation for medium or extended time spans. Dazzling and catchy but concise brochures are best for limited circulation in massive volumes, which are printed through a restricted print run. Off-set printing, which is a comparatively older method, is still very popular for these brochures as even though it requires a longer time to make the brochures, a large quantity of brochures can be printed in a single run.

Alongside the improvement in the standard of printing, ancillary services are now provided by most brochure printing companies as well. These include circulation, direct mailing, designing, and a lot more.

The internet has introduced a client-centric way of approaching brochure printing, with clients now placing their orders with companies online and selecting colours, designs and layouts for their brochure on their own computer screen. Thus, brochure printing has undergone ground-breaking alterations in recent times, and the prospects of further change seem to be endless.

Technology makes brochure printing as easy as possible. Brochure printing becomes more competitive, therefore, make use of technology the most out of it and be imaginative as you can.

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