Print & Collateral Design
Print design that comes back looking like it did on screen.
Menus, flyers, business cards, banners and flags, designed on brand and prepared properly for press so the printer has nothing to guess at.
Print design is two jobs that get treated as one. The first is making the piece work as a piece of communication, which means someone standing three feet away can tell what it is and what to do next. The second is preparing the file so the press reproduces it accurately: correct bleed, CMYK color, 300 DPI images, fonts outlined.
Most disappointing print jobs fail on the second, and the failure is invisible until the box arrives.
What we design
The everyday things a local business actually needs, designed as a set rather than one at a time.
- Business cards. Still the highest-frequency physical impression most local businesses make.
- Menus. Dine-in, takeout, seasonal inserts, and the specials format that gets reprinted weekly without needing a designer every time.
- Flyers and leaflets. Door drops, counter pieces, event handouts, and inserts.
- Banners, feather flags and A-frames. The outdoor pieces that do the work of a second storefront sign, and the ones most often designed at the wrong resolution.
- Window and vehicle graphics. A wrapped van is a moving billboard across an entire service area, which for a Renton business means visibility across Kent, Tukwila and Newcastle at no ongoing cost.
- Packaging, labels and stickers. Takeout boxes, retail labels, seals and thank-you cards.
- Posters, loyalty cards, appointment cards, event and trade show material.
The part that separates a good file from a bad one
Design that looks right on a laptop and prints badly is the normal outcome when the file was never prepared for press. The specifics matter and they are not obvious to anyone outside the trade.
- Bleed. Artwork has to extend past the trim line, usually by an eighth of an inch, because cutting is never perfectly accurate. Without bleed you get white slivers along the edges.
- Safe margin. Text too close to the trim gets cut. Anything that must survive needs to sit well inside the edge.
- CMYK, not RGB. Screens emit light, presses lay ink. Convert late and bright colors go flat.
- 300 DPI at final size. A photo that looks sharp on a website is usually far too low resolution for print. This is the single most common reason a banner arrives blurry.
- Fonts outlined or embedded. If the printer does not have your font, an un-outlined file silently substitutes something else.
- Rich black, not plain black. Large black areas printed with a single ink look washed out. Print work needs a mixed black.
None of this is visible in a PDF preview, which is exactly why it goes wrong so often.
Designed for the distance it is read from
A business card is read at nine inches. A menu is read at two feet, frequently in low light. A feather flag outside a shop on Rainier Avenue is read at forty feet from a moving car. Those are three different design problems, and treating them the same is why so much local print underperforms.
The flag needs one message and a mark, sized for a glance. The menu needs a hierarchy that makes scanning easy and puts margin where you want attention. The card needs the details legible and the brand recognisable.
Where print meets everything else
Print is not a separate channel from your digital presence, and the businesses that treat it that way lose most of its value. A flyer should carry the same identity as the website. A menu photographed well becomes content for social and a photo on your Google Business Profile, which is itself a local ranking input. A table card asking for a review feeds the review engine that moves Map Pack position.
That last one is worth stating plainly: a well designed card on a counter or in a takeout bag, pointing at your Google review link, is one of the cheapest and most reliable ways a local business generates review volume. It is a print job doing search work.
How it runs
How a print job runs.
Scope and specs
What the piece is for, where it will be read from, the finished size, the quantity, and the printer's requirements. Specs first, because they constrain the design.
Content and assets
Final text, vector logo, brand colors in CMYK, and photography at print resolution. Gathering this first is what prevents a redesign at proof stage.
Design
Laid out on brand, with hierarchy set for the reading distance, and a proof for review.
Press preparation
Bleed, safe margins, CMYK conversion, resolution check, fonts outlined, rich black where needed. The unglamorous step that decides how it arrives.
Handoff
Press-ready files that will work at any commercial printer, plus digital versions of the same piece where a screen version is useful.
Questions
Straight answers.
What printed materials do you design?
Business cards, flyers and leaflets, menus including takeout and dine-in formats, posters, banners, feather flags and A-frames, window and vehicle graphics, loyalty and appointment cards, packaging and labels, and event or trade show material.
If it gets printed and it has your name on it, it is in scope. The common thread is that all of it should look like the same business, which is why it works best on top of a defined brand identity.
Do you handle the printing as well as the design?
We design the artwork and supply press-ready files, set up correctly for whichever printer you use: right bleed, right color space, right resolution, fonts outlined. Those files will work at any commercial printer, local or online.
If you would rather not deal with the print vendor at all, ask and we will tell you what we can take off your hands for your specific job.
Why does my printed piece look different from the screen?
Almost always a color space problem. Screens display RGB, which is light, and presses print CMYK, which is ink. Bright RGB blues, greens and oranges have no exact CMYK equivalent, so they shift when converted. A design built in RGB and sent to a printer will come back duller than expected.
The fix is designing in CMYK from the start and defining brand colors in both spaces, which is part of what a proper identity system specifies. It is also why we ask for your brand's CMYK values before starting, and define them if they do not exist.
How much does menu or flyer design cost?
Single-piece design generally runs $150 to $600 depending on complexity and how much content preparation is involved. A multi-page menu or a full collateral set costs more, and a set designed together usually costs less per piece than the same items commissioned one at a time.
Printing is a separate cost paid to the printer and depends on quantity, stock and finish. Short runs cost far more per unit, so it is worth deciding quantities before designing.
What do you need from me to start?
Your logo in vector format, your brand colors, the final text, any photos you want used at print resolution, and the finished size and quantity. If you do not have vector files or defined colors, that is a sign the identity work should come first, because everything printed afterwards inherits those decisions.
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