Make Design, Not War

A friend of mine (and a good designer and a studio veteran) ran into an interesting problem earlier this week. After designing a brochure in Photoshop and sending it to print (as flat .tif files), the printer rejected the files and requested an InDesign package, which he didn’t have. Needless to say, after submitting several similar projects through other printers as flat files, he was baffled at the printer’s inflexibility and hit me up for some printer advice.

Old School vs. New School…

Now, I’ve taken a few print-production classes in the past year, and the “by the book” practice is that you always, always, always design multipage documents in a page-design program like InDesign. Ok. Fine. But on a number of small projects, I’ve been known to hammer them out in Photoshop and send them out for quick digital printing as flat files. As I understand, this isn’t really a huge deviation in terms of practice – and if you ask me – for most small projects, digital printing is the way to go simply because it’s quality has improved markedly in recent years and the cost is pretty hard to beat.

…or Right vs. Wrong

My take is that if the client’s willing to pay the bill for a nice quality offset print of the project, you always build the file the proper way – in InDesign with a clean & complete pre-flight with assets included. It takes longer, but it keeps the buck off you when you’re dealing with the clients print budget. Plus, especially with text, offset printing is always crisper and easier to read. That said, digital printing for small budget projects is nothing to scoff at. Sure, there’s a chance the text isn’t perfectly crisp, but beggars can’t be choosers right? Perhaps this is part of the problem with the democratization of the print industry – as lower cost (and lower quality) options become available, it blurs the lines between ‘best practices’ and ‘acceptable practices’.

Still, my bud was caught in a strange predicament. A finished project, signed off, and sent off to print; A printer refusing the print the files as flat images; a client just wanting his/her project completed and in hand. What would you do? Find a new printer? Take the time to rebuild the file in InDesign?

Update:

In this particular problem, the printer actually called the designer back and offered to rebuild the entire brochure in InDesign for him. My guess is that the printer is a) worried about the project being sent off to a digital shop and b) being paid by the client for labor.

Feedback

Any thoughts?
At what point in a project do you talk with a printer to decide how you’ll be building the design?
Is the responsibility on the designer or the printer in this situation?

I don’t do much print work at the moment, but when I do it’s usually digital. The only InDesign work that I do is for larger book runs that I do as personal work for myself or the studios that I work with… and even then, it’s usually easier & there’s more creative freedom with Photoshop if I have the choice.