Paper or Plastic

Last year was the first year I sent out a holiday card to my clients. Well, to be honest, it was a postcard and I sent it out right before Thanksgiving. It was a card about how to deal with the stress of the holiday season. I made this card because I didn’t want to send a holiday card out at all. The main reason being that I didn’t want to design one. I knew my lack of interest in designing a card was only going to lead to one thing – me wasting a lot of time at my computer making a whole lot of terrible looking designs.

This year I decided to try a different idea. I was talking with an illustrator who was frustrated with the lack of demand for professional illustrators. Stock photography websites are now what designers use when they need an illustration or photo. A few days later the idea came to me. I decided I was going to work with an illustrator to create my holiday card for me. It would be a great way to support local handmade art and it would make my job designing a card a whole lot easier.

I was telling a friend about the idea and her response was that it sounded like it would be expensive. “That’s so fancy”, were her exact words. In reality, it was fairly inexpensive. I asked a few businesses if they would also be interested in using the design so that we could divide the cost amongst all of us. I felt so resourceful for thinking of a better alternative than avoiding the situation and having no card made at all and am excited that this year’s card will communicate to my friends and colleagues how much I value handmade art.

On a side note, hiring an illustrator is still more costly than buying your cards from Target. To cut costs, delete all those names on your list of people you haven’t talked to in over 3 years or sign up for a free mailchimp.com account and put them on the “digital card list”. Another great cost cutting tip is to make a postcard. They’re cheaper to print, don’t need an envelope and postage is less expensive. If you still think it’s too much, go to a craft fair and buy a few already made cards from artists. Let’s face it, buying handmade, local art is never going to be as cheap as going to a retail store and buying mass produced cards made in a factory in China by workers paid $1 a day. At some point it’s a decision you just have to make.

I was working on a postcard design for a client. It was a Save the Date card for a small event they were holding in a few months. They wanted to  use a local printer, recycled paper and eco-friendly inks. “Do you have a printer you can recommend for us to use,” they asked me. Well, yes, but none of them would want the project. Why? Because the client was looking to have only a couple hundred postcards printed. For a printer, anything under 500 usually isn’t worth their time, especially for a project as small as a postcard.

It’s projects like these that made companies like Kinko’s and Vistaprint popular. The problem is that these companies aren’t local or sustainable, to say the least. Luckily, there are a few alternatives:

1) Find a company similar to Vistaprint that is local to your area. In PA and NJ, there’s printresponsibly.com. Similar to Vistaprint, you can upload your design online and they offer quantities as low as 250.

2) If you’re looking to have at least 250 copies of your project printed, call up a few local printers. I highly recommend this option especially if you often have small projects that need to be printed. Talk to the same sales person each time you need a new project made and they will be more likely to take on a small run (especially if they know you will consistenly be giving them small projects throughout the year).

3) For last minute projects or when you need less than 100 copies, find a local copy shop instead of going to Kinko’s or Staples. They are just as competent and you will be supporting a local business. Often locally owned copy shops are found near universities and schools. If you really want to use recycled paper, you can purchase the paper separately and bring it with you to the copy shop. Make sure you go to the copy shop first and ask if this is OK. The copy shop near me only accepts laserjet paper in the original packaging and they do not charge less if you bring your own paper.

Another thing to remember when getting your project printed is that having your project printed digitally is going to be your best options for most small projects like fliers, postcards and business cards. It’s cheaper, faster and more sustainable. However, when printing digitally, a printer cannot use vegetable-based inks. I highly recommend choosing a digital printer anyway. Although vegetable-based inks are more eco-friendly than petroleum-based inks, the extra resources used to print your project on a press makes it not worth the added cost.