Gang Up On Your Printing

One of the easiest ways to save money when you are printing is to gang run your pieces.  Whether you are printing business cards, postcards, brochures or posters a gang run can save you a lot of money.  Now whenever someone tells me they know of a way to save money, I always think that there’s a catch; so what’s the catch?  Well, the catch is that you need to have your cards ready to print all at once.  If you are planning an advertising campaign using printing you should do this anyway, but the money you save will be well worth the effort to plan your printing ahead.

A gang run is when you run two or more jobs together at the same time on the same sheet.  They have to be the same paper (don’t laugh, I’ve had that question asked) and this is primarily a function of 4/4 printing, with the exception usually being business cards.  The different versions are the same dimensions 99% of the time, though we have been able to put together a gang run for a customer who had two different sizes in their run.  That, however, was mostly just a case of the customer lucking out more than anything else.

How much money you can save depends on a few variables.  The size of the piece you are running is an important factor in determining how many can be run on a sheet in the gang run.  If you are just running two versions, then there shouldn’t be too much of an issue about how many you can get up on a sheet for a work and turn job (work and turn is when you print the front of a piece and the back of a piece on the same side of a sheet of paper, saving time and money on your job).  If you are running an extremely large piece there might be an issue depending on the size of the press of your printer.  However, if you are running more than two versions then you need to figure out what is the best way to run your job to save the most money.  I have been able to save customers a lot of money when they asked me BEFORE they design a card what the optimum size would be for the number of versions (and the quantity of each version) they want.  The size of the press is also important but so is the size of the sheet.  If a standard size sheet is needed then you are golden, but if some cutting is involved or there is a lot of waste on the sheet (empty space) then a gang run may not be cost effective.

One thing to consider with a gang run is color.  If you are looking for museum quality printing, then a gang run is not for you.  If your job is color critical, you only want one version of a piece on the press at a time for you to color match.

If you are running multiple versions of a piece, then your potential savings are huge, just make sure to go over with your printer what you are trying to accomplish to see if they have any suggestions to help you out.

For questions of comments, please visit us at www.GagePress.com.