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Offset Printing Vs Digital Printing

Offset Printing Vs Digital Printing

Once you’ve selected the layout, colour scheme, and print volume of your promotion materials, you’ll have to take another crucial decision.

Should you choose digital or offset printing for printing your leaflets, pamphlets, business cards, and brochures? Take a quick look at two printouts with identical design, one created using offset printing and the other digitally printed.

You bet you won’t be able to tell the difference. So, how’ll you decide, which printing technique would be apt for branding?

 

Offset Printing

Offset printing often referred to as lithography, has been the go-to printing method for over 100 years. Offset technology is extensively used for printing in bulk.

Aluminium plates transfer illustrations to rubber rolls that in turn transfer the images to sheets of paper. The technology is called offset as metal plates pass on the design to paper sheets via the rubber rolls, instead of transferring directly.

Usually, CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) colours are used but Pantone (customised colours) colours can also be applied.

Offset Printing: Benefits and Drawbacks

When it comes to producing spotless and vivid images, offset printing is your best bet. No matter the material you use, you’ll always get high-quality printouts. At the same time, you can choose your preferred colour tones for every job without sacrificing quality.

Most importantly, you get the most bang for your buck, especially if you are looking to print in volume.

Conversely, offset printing could be expensive if you order prints in low quantities. Additionally, you’d need to invest quite a sum for making the plates and the entire process is time-consuming.

Furthermore, if you fail to create the appropriate typeset, the entire batch is ruined. You’d have to restart from scratch.

Digital Printing

With digital printing, we do away with plates, page proofs, rubberised rolls, and liquid inks. We make use of a laser or inkjet printer for applying the design onto the print surface. The ink cartridge of an inkjet printer and toner of a laser printer substitutes the liquid inks used in offset printing.

Digital Printing: Advantages and Downsides

Digital printing is ideal when you need printouts in small quantities. We can produce the prints quickly, and every printout is uniform. The printing cost per page also works out cheaper compared to offset, particularly for low volumes.

However, your options are limited with respect to choosing a printing surface of your preference. Colour fidelity is less owing to the use of standardised inks that fail to create the depth and tone of Pantone colours. Opting for digital printing for high volume orders could burn a hole in your pocket.

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