A great deal of our black and white work is now going to our high-speed copiers. It is often faster and more economical than using offset printng, and the quality is comparable.

For envelopes (even black and white), one-color or multi-color letterhead and business forms, offset printing is still the best way to accomplish the job.

When you need full color work, you open another entire set of issues, the primary one being quantity, or run length. Full color digital imaging can be very cost effective for short runs (less than 500). Digital imaging uses the laser printing process and the same four ink colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) that are used in offset printing of most full color work. Digital imaging costs more per image, but does not require printing plates or any setup at all, so it has a much, much lower fixed cost per job. That is why it is a great alternative for short, full color work.

When you start talking 1,000 pieces and more of full color printing, then offset printing is most likely to be the best approach. Hot Spot Printing will help you understand these choices.

Hot Spot Printing operates three offset presses. One we keep set up for black ink printing. One we keep just for colored ink jobs. And the third, our Century 3000 can be used for either multi-color, or full-color printing.

Since 1988 when we opened, our goal has been to give our customers the best possible quality product at a fair and competitive price. Today we have more choices available to us in how we can do a customer's job. Perhaps it would cost less to offset print 1,000 pieces, but the client needs those 1,000 pieces later today. We now have the option of doing them with digital imaging. It may cost a bit more, but at 40 images per minute and no setup time, we're done with that job in less than an hour. It's regrettable when our customer doesn't plan ahead and has to choose a more expensive way to get their job done. We feel their pain....just not as much as they feel it. So, the lesson here is to leave yourself enough time so that you can choose the best, most cost-effective way to get your job done from the many options available to you today at Hot Spot Printing.