Full color calendar printing

What you need to know about calendar printing:

• If price is a concern, then it is in your best interests to use less pages than more. In calendar printing the key for best calendar printing pricing, is to maintain a 16 page printing form on the press. This means that an 8.5 x 11" page size is ideal not only for being a standard calendar printing page size, but because it can print 16 pages at once on a reasonably sized press sheet.
• With standard calendar printing you can also print a 9 x 12" page size, with only a small cost increase on the parent paper sheet on the printing press.  However, as you move up in size to, let's say a 10 x 13" page, the run changes. Here your calendar printing run no longer is as press efficient. The standard commercial 40" printing press can only run a 12 page "form" or press sheet, vs. the standard 16 page calendar printing form. You can see from the math here that your costs will be increased  by about  25% due to one more form running on the printing press, or the fact that your print run increases by 25%.
• What you need to know about page count: When some folks request a printing quote for calendar printing, many times the request is for a 12 month calendar or sometimes for a custom calendar printing of 16, 18 or even 24 months.  This is not, however, the language of printing!
• Here are some things you will need to know when requesting a quote for calendar printing:     

  1-You should decide on your page count based on your requirements for images and monthly calendar grids. Each image is one page and each grid is one page. It is just like reading your favorite magazine or book. Most times your magazine or book pages are numbered. Of course, you start by reading the first page, which is page one. As you turn the page over to read the back side, this becomes page two. While I am sure you will say this is obvious to you, you would be much surprised to know that a large segment of people out there, who request a quote from calendar printing companies, do so with a monthly count and not a page count. Therefore a 12 month publication would equate to a 24 page publication and if you add a cover you are 24 pages of text plus a four page cover = 28 total calendar printing pages.

  2-You can economize with a custom calendar printing layout. You could, for example, print all 12 months of the year as 12 pages with black ink only and add a custom four page color cover with all of your images presented there. This would save you considerably over a standard one.

  3-The question arises by customers, seeking quotes: Will a 4/1 (color front/black back) print run offer me a potential for savings as a result of using less color? In booklet making, the front and back you receive in the finished, bound version is not what the press sees nor reproduces. Your job on the press runs as a flat sheet, called the "parent sheet". If you are running 16 pages at once and the bound, finished printing has a color image on one page and a black ink only date grid on the back, the printing press produces this with 4 pages of color on each side of the parent sheet. Therefore when the sheet is folded, trimmed and stitched, this "press imposition" of the pages results in the appropriately paginated finished and bound piece.

• Can you request a custom calendar printing quote? Of course, but please understand that is easier to swim downstream than upstream on a press, especially if your raft is your wallet. The more you go against the grain for what the press is best equipped to produce, the more the cost to you for your custom calendar printing job.

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