Offset or Digital Print?
With many staff that have travelled the journey with us since 1982, we have grown together and learned to diversify and innovate into a solutions provider. We offer the experience and expertise that come with our proven track record.
In some cases, both our Offset and Digital Departments may be utilised for your project in order to speed up lead times, optimise for quality or utilise variable data which can maximise ROI and the trackability of campaign success.
In 2021 we increased our production capacity to 3 Offset Presses and updated our Digital Department with the latest technology installing a new HP Indigo Press. This only part of our commitment to the future of our people and the printing industry.
Offset Printing refers to the transfer process of an inked image from a metal plate to a rubber blanket, and then on to the final paper substrate. Colour is created through tiny dots made from four primary ink colours – cyan, magenta, yellow and black. This is commonly known as CMYK or four colour process.
Offset printing is best suited to larger print runs. Depending on the size, a general rule of thumb quantities over 500 units for multi-page books, and 5,000 for A5 or DL flyers.
Today, the finish and quality of offset printing are excellent, reproducing fine lines, skin tones, gradients, solid blocks of colour plus gold, silver and other metallics with outstanding results.
Our Digital Department has both an Indigo and an IGen Machine, allowing us to cater for smaller volumes, at affordable prices without compromising on quality.
With both ink and toner solutions in the digital space, we have the bases covered. The Indigo press is synonymous with quality when it comes to digital printing and the iGen handles a different range of stocks and sizes. As pioneers in this space, Printcraft has applied the same colour management principles learned and perfected over the years, blending both digital and litho on the same job is seamless.
The direct transfer process in digital means every sheet can be different, either with variable text or variable images. Campaigns featuring personalisation often stand out from their static competitors and see higher response rates. Variable Data Printing (VDP) is one of the often-overlooked benefits exclusive to digital.
Large Format Printing is part of our Digital Departments service offering. This larger than life medium lets you get your message out big, bright, bold and loud.
Thanks to state of the art HP technology, our prints are clean and crisp. The colours are bright, and print resolution is outstanding!
Our Latex inks also have the added benefit of a three year UV rating and are far more eco-friendly than their solvent counterparts.
The added bonus - prints come out dry! So there's no downtime before your posters, banners or point of sale material can be trimmed down and shipped out.
Need Help?
Visit our extensive Resource Database where you can download useful Templates, Keylines from our Knife Library and How-To Tutorials covering Desgning for Print 101 and Advanced skills to help you provide Print-Ready documents to optimise your projects production times.
What's the Spine Width?
Guessing the spine width if your PUR bound book or magazine can result in artwork needing to be change when it gets to our Pre-Press Department, which means artwork need to return to you for adjustment. Instead, try our easy to use Spine Width Calculator or give us a call
ISO COLOUR MANAGEMENT
ISO Colour Management is a daily part of our quality assurance and the baseline for our Print, proofing and colour management. It's these guidelines, combined with proper calibration and rigorous quality control test that guarantees consistent and predictable quality in the reproduction of printed matter.
In the video below our press Room Manager, Ben Nolan talks about his responsibility in maintaining Printcraft's ISO certification and our consistently high level of print quality.
ISO sets the minimum standards for us. From here, it only gets better.
– Matt Naughton, Printcraft General Manager
PROOFING
Some jobs at Printcraft are proofed before they are printed, others are proofed through the Kodak Insight Portal and run to ISO standards. A digital book is made for all jobs when there is more than one page for clients to check and see the product in a finished form.
Hard proofs are generated within the tolerance levels set by our ISO colour certification. Printcraft can produce on coated or uncoated stocks to ISO standards.
On approval of hard or soft proof further production commences.
