So you have this great new design for a postcard. Its perfect really, you’ve selected 3 beautiful PMS colors, found an amazing paper that you love and you cannot wait until your customer gets it in their hands. Because certainly their jaws will drop and they will rush headlong to give you their business. You plan on a small run of 1,000 cards and head to your printer to get a quote.
And that is the precise time at which your own jaw drops.
To print both sides of the design you will need a total of 6 plates. Changing plates and inks, as well as setting up the press to run each plate will take time – all of which adds up.
Ah, how can this be? What to do? What to do?
There are options of course. One might be to cut out that third color, which would substantially reduce press-time and lower you costs accordingly. But of course, that would ruin your fantastic design. You feel crestfallen as you imagine your customers tossing your precious card into the trash – all for the loss of the warm sale-closing hue of PMS 165.
“No,” you decide. “The design must stand.”
And then you hear your printer mumble. “Oh, wait. Let me re-quote this as a Work and Turn.”
” A what? A who?” you think, “Yes, I can both work and turn, but what good is that for me now?”
A few minutes later your printer offers you a fresh quote. And your whole body relaxes as you realize you can do this project in budget.
So what is a Work and Turn?
Its a way of setting up a printing plate that allows both sides of a piece ( in this case our imaginary designer’s card) on one printing plate. In the example above, the card has 3 colors on both sides, which printing in a straightforward manner would require 6 separate plates – one for each color on each side.
Such as in this example of our designer’s awesome card.
Here the 2 sides of the card are set up to print separately. Each has 3 colors , and each side will require a plate for each color.
But by setting the job up as a work and turn, both the front and back will be printed at the same time. So the required plates will be cut in half from 6 to 3.
You’ll notice that the front and back are printed on the same side, with their bottoms facing each other. This is so the pressman can print one side, and then simply turn the plate to print the back (or front) on the other side. As you can imagine, this saves our pressman time and also saves money on the printing.
There are of course other ways that the press can be set up to save you and your clients money. As each job has its own idiosyncrasies, we would be happy to discuss any questions you might have to help you get your next project printed as perfectly and cost-effectively as possible.
As always, feel free to comment or question below.
