When working on a print project, sticking to a strict deadline often becomes essential. Print materials like brochures, pamphlets, and business cards play a critical role in events such as marketing campaigns and product launches. Missing deadlines can disrupt these efforts, so staying on schedule is vital.
While meeting tight timelines can be challenging, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With the right approach and by avoiding common mistakes, you can streamline the process and ensure your project is completed on time without unnecessary stress.
While there are various ways to ensure that the project delivery happens on time, however, today we would discuss six simple ways in which we can ensure that our print project is seamlessly executed even with tight deadlines.
Identify the stakeholders in your print job — the printer, the designer or the management. Discuss the project's objective and estimate the time each one would take tentatively for their role. Accordingly, make a rough plan and communicate the timeline to each member, so they are mentally prepared.
This ensures that you strike a sweet spot between sufficient execution time and accountability while going about the project without having an impact on print quality.
It's important that when a project is started, each stakeholder has clarity about the scope of work and their respective roles. For instance, while hiring a graphic designer to work on the print project, ask and clarify the following questions right away:
Similarly, know the basic details from your printing company like the material of the paper that would be used, print settings and dimensions beforehand. This helps to avoid any last minute edits to the designs. Fewer reworks mean faster print jobs!
Large projects like corporate rebranding, event marketing campaigns, and product launch require consistency across multiple materials and coordination between departments. Never assume that all the stages of the entire project will be completed as planned. It is a common issue to observe delays due to a lack of inputs or completion of work on time by one or the other department. Therefore, while planning for such projects, have a buffer time and cut-off time for each stage.
Having extra time in hand, thus provides some cushioning in the event of delays and prevents compromising finer details for the sake of achieving deadlines.
One of the time-saving techniques in any project is getting things done parallelly and in advance.
Imagine working on the catalogue of an educational institute. The final catalogue would possibly comprise photos of students, teachers and special events, a note from the Principal, and student achievements. Even before working on the layout and design of the catalogue, if these assets have already been collected and approved by management, the entire process of producing the final catalogue speeds up manifold.
While complex designs might sound cool and attractive, simple designs stand out with minimal effort. They have a good consistency of elements and are faster to prepare than complex, out-of-the-box ones. When racing against time, think of going for a simple design or editing an existing template and customizing it.
This has dual benefits. First, it reduces the designing time for the designer, Secondly, simple designs also ensures that the print time is reduced as the printing company would have to perform a lesser number of checks.
This is one step that can make or break the game while chasing a tight deadline. Requesting changes after the design has been sent for printing increases print time drastically.
This is because the print company has to stop the process midway and sometimes has to push the assignment to the back of the queue if it has other commitments as well. Sometimes this also adds up to the operational cost if they have already started printing.
To avoid such unnecessary issues, proofread your designs carefully before submission. Involve multiple people in the review process, so that even the intricate details are being taken care of before submitting.
Proofreading is an effective technique that plays a crucial role in time savings.
All in all, instead of jumping straight to the execution of the print project, spending some time to think of the respective stakeholders, having a level of clarity and communication with them can lead to effective planning. Effective planning with parallel execution, utilization of existing resources, and proofreading can help speed up the overall print job and result in faster prints without compromising on quality and design.
Are you looking for a printing company for your next printing project that strikes a perfect balance between speed and quality?
Then, SpeedPrint is here for you. We are known across Canada for helping business owners finish their print projects on time by ensuring faster prints. We cater to an array of printing needs, ranging from banners to business branding essentials. You name it, we have it!
We also boast of a design team with effective communication skills and timely delivery.