The decision’s made: You need some fresh marketing materials. No matter what form these take – brochures, reports, newsletters or exhibition banners – you need to follow a certain process before you take delivery of the finished product. Planning the process properly lets your printer achieve the best results for you – and makes for a more enjoyable experience all round.
Start at the end
Sounds silly? Let us explain. The first thing we, as your printer, need to know is when you want to take delivery of your shiny new marketing materials. Sometimes there’s no set date but more often than not, items are required for a specific event, client visit or product launch. Once we have this key date, we can work back from it. This is really important if you need us to help out with design, layouts and text – of which more below…
Gather your thoughts
Although we can start from scratch, we generally require some form of brief from you. Hate writing things down? A chat on the ‘phone is fine. Sometimes you’ll have very clear ideas on what you want to include. That’s great too. Send us your text and any accompanying images and we’ll get to work. Perhaps your artwork is approved and ready to go – in which case we’re ready too!
The proof of the project…
…should be built into the planning schedule! We love to get things right first time but sometimes – once you see everything laid out – you might want to make a tweak or two. That’s natural – and we want you to be 100 per cent happy with the end result. Recommendation: Play safe with your schedule and allow for a few extra days in case proofs need to go back and forward. We’ll keep things moving as fast as possible by emailing your proofs as a PDF for ease of access.
Expect the unexpected
At the start of this blog post, we advised you to work back from your desired delivery date – particularly if your materials are tied to an important event or business milestone. However well organised you are, sometimes things catch you by surprise (the person who needs to approve the proofs is absent, the client is coming in a day early or the early train to the conference has been cancelled). We have a great local delivery service, plus excellent courier relationships, so we’ll always try to help in an emergency. It’s even better, though, to assume from the outset that there may be some glitches and factor in some extra time accordingly.
Here’s to stress-free print project planning!