Business Card Chaos

Home Office Computing, Dec, 2000 by Marilyn Zelinsky Syarto

They don't make print shops like they used to

IT WAS A NO-BRAINER PLAN: GO TO AN OFFSET PRINTING house and get four-color business cards made up for my husband's new business. But the easy project turned into a nightmare, thanks to printing companies that haven't kept up with technology and can't serve soloists with small orders. Here's how my husband's ordeal unfolded.

In July, Steve hired a hip-and-happening graphic designer to execute his idea for business cards and stationery. The outstanding results were handed to Steve on a Zip disk, which he took to a well-established print house ... which said the project was a problem to print because the colors touched each other. Steve left the shop somewhat befuddled, but confident they'd figure it out. A week later, he called and heard that the shop's graphic designer couldn't find the font folder on the disk. Furious, Steve retrieved the disk in hopes of finding a more intelligent printer.

Those hopes were dashed as he called a dozen printers--some of whom said the job was too complicated, while others said it was too small. One dusty print house said yes and outsourced the cards to the "largest printer in the country," but that crew bungled the job because of more alleged font problems.

After six weeks had passed without business cards, we searched for simple announcement cards to send out--but despite traipsing from town to town, we had no luck there, either. Finally, I turned to the Internet and found iPrint.com, our new favorite resource. One week later, Steve had affordable, high-quality announcement cards that he designed on the company's Web site.

As for the business cards? He finally marched into Kinko's, found a young, font-savvy associate who printed them using a less dazzling but perfectly acceptable Canon Fiery format, and walked out with the cards the same day. So much for old-fashioned print houses--Kinko's and iPrint.com have our vote for future projects.