Pretty strong statement, that. After all, Staples are one of the bigger business supply chains, and surely their printing department should be up to snuff. Apparently not. Here’s the back story – received a call from a rather flustered client who (despite our recommendations) had taken their brand new business card artwork to the local Staples store to be printed. A couple of hours later, our client takes a phone call from the Staples service department – not to tell her that everything was ready for pick up – but rather, to tell her that the business cards were ‘blurry’, and that the file setups were ‘horrible’. Needless to say, our client was none too happy, figuring that our logo designers has sent her crappy files and business card setups. Sigh. As we’ve been doing since day one, we set up all our business card artwork as print ready impositions, in .eps and .pdf formats, in CMYK Four Color Process or PANTONE Spot Color formats depending on the color palette (see our logo file formats guide for more). Hasn’t ever been a problem. Shouldn’t be a problem now. I advised the client to calm down, and offered to speak with the kind people at Staples to see what’s what.
And here’s what I learned – Staples doesn’t consider themselves a printing center, but a copying center (a rather important distinction). They utilize (at least at the location I was talking to) software known as Photo Impact, a $49 self described ‘photo imaging’ software package that while it can (at least according to their website) handle .eps files – something the ‘tech help’ people at Staples are blissfully unaware of – is decidedly not for professional print quality reproduction. In fact, Barbara – my new pal at Staples – tells me that the only files they’re supposed to take are .jpgs, have no idea how to process professional print files, don’t know what CMYK or RGB is, but only what their “business card machine” could deal with. After the rather enlightening phone call, I suggested our client take her files to a local offset printer who would give her the result she was after. And that’s the advice I’m giving to you too. Staples (and similar outfits) may be fine for quick and dirty copy jobs (cheap too), but if you want professional results (especially after spending the time and money to develop professional artwork) talk to your local printer. The results you’ll get are more than worth the few extra bucks you’ll spend. There’s also some online printing companies you can try, but quality differs from vendor to vendor. Decent rule of thumb? You get what you pay for.
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You know you can upload the logos you’re doing and print free business cards with them? there are few sites offering this service. i did it in http://www.dcp-print.com but i’m sure there are a lot more