How To Get High-Quality Results Printing Business Forms With A Third Party
Working with a business forms printing services company is a great way to minimize costs while producing a high-quality product. Customers need to be involved in the process, though. If you want to achieve high-quality results, these four recommendations will help you.
Uniform Digital Formats
Digital file interchange is one of the most common sources of corruption in forms. If you send a file to a printing company in a format they don't commonly use, there is always a chance that the shift in format will corrupt the results.
The best solution is to work with the business printing company in their preferred digital format. If you can't use the exact type of layout and design software they employ, try to get as close to it as possible. Even if you have to find a copy of an old version that's a couple of years out of date, the newer one will usually support the older one's file format. This can significantly reduce the odds something will get interposed, changed, or ignored during the loading process before editing and printing.
Paper and Ink
Know the paper sizes and color processes for every form. Make sure you and the printing company are on the same page. If you need a note card form with CMYK ink, for example, make sure the printer has your precise specifications.
Clean Forms
More than anything, the forms should use crisp and clean designs. Unless there's a compelling reason to do so, avoid using photos or complex graphics. These can create scanning problems for automated systems and readability issues for people.
Sharp lines in black and white are best. If you must use color, try to use colors that will be strong and deep on the page. Have your business printing solutions provider run off some proofs so you can see if the forms are visually sharp and clean.
Testing
If you're using a fully automated system, you'll want to test how the forms go in and what the results are. Particularly, you'll want to measure the accuracy rate by filling in forms with data that you know to be accurate. Even the best press printing process can produce errors, and it's important to minimize them. Also, you'll want to identify spots where errors are common so you can revise the forms to reduce issues once you do a full business printing production run.
Even if a person reads every form and then transcribes the inputs, you need to run some tests. If a form is a little buggy, you want to see where it causes problems so you can fix it.
For more information, contact a local company, like Wally's Printing.
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