Business Printing Services Key Terms

Communicate your needs to business printers better by understanding key printing terms

Business printing services offer your company the ability to mass produce marketing and informational documents, brochures, pamphlets and the like. You may design the products yourself or work with the printing service to come up with a design that perfectly fits your needs. They also offer copying services when you have hundreds of pages to copy but don’t have the time or resources to do it yourself.

In order to obtain the best results, a basic understanding of business printing services key terms would be extremely helpful. Learning more about the printing service will help your business in the following ways:

1. You will be able to obtain the right paper and other products that fit your specific needs from business copying services.

2. Understanding of general layout and design terms for document services will help you to communicate what you want more clearly.

3. You will be able to answer production questions from business printing service providers with ease.

Choose the right business printing products

As you work with commercial printing services, you will need to know what sort of products and materials you want to use for your project. For example, caliper describes the thickness of a sheet of paper, measured in thousandths of an inch. Bulk is the thickness of paper relative to its weight. Finish is the quality of a paper's surface. These and other terms are important in understanding the products available and selecting what will work best for your printing.

Design a concise layout for business printing services

A layout is a diagram showing where you want elements like the text and images for your final printing results. As you discuss the layout with a printing business, it may help to understand some of the terms they commonly use when referring to layout designs. For example, the baseline is the imaginary horizon line on which all letters and punctuation sit, making them level. When kerning letters, you position them closer to each other so that they take up less space on the layout. A logotype is your company's logo or specific font style that you want to maintain on all your printings.
Eastern Washington University provides a glossary of print layout and design terms to assist you with explaining your design ideas. Visit PrintUSA for a full glossary of printing service terms.

Discuss production elements with printing companies

If the printing company calls to ask you questions about how you want your documents produced or begins explaining the production process they intend to use, knowing some of the key terms is helpful. For example, when the document services refer to the dummy (or comp), you'll know that is the initial culmination of all of the printing elements, used as an example for the quality of the remaining production. If the printing company asked if you want your production scored, they want to know if you want a crease made to simplify folding.
The printing service terms glossary on PrintingForLess.com is very helpful. The Printing Industry Exchange provides basic key terms and recommends a book as a beginner’s guide to the printing process.

• Understanding these key terms will help you find the business printing service that will most adequately meet your copying and printing needs, because you'll have a better grasp on the prospective services that business printing companies have to offer.

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