Why Add a Print Business to a Web Design Business?
If you already have ink running through your veins, then you may understand how the addition of print services can help to expand your Web design business. You can control branding, colour management, and layout so that your clients’ printed materials complement their Website designs or visa versa. You might also know that by managing a client’s printed materials, you thereby have more input from the client about upcoming needs or changes. You could make yourself more integral to your client’s needs and make yourself somewhat indispensable if you’re good at what you do.
Several approaches to entering the print business exist:
- You can build a business with in-house print presses, an expansion that requires serious investment which may or may not be recovered depending on your current client base and/or future prospects. You then become a print house with design services, rather than a design house with print services.
- You can become a print broker, or liaison between the client and the printer. You take the orders and the print house designs the print layouts, but you control prepress approvals and you take the final prepress to the printer for completion.
- You can become a desktop publisher for clients. If you already own the needed software (QuarkXpress, Adobe InDesign, etc.), overhead would be minimal and you could maintain some control over paper choices and print options.
- You can become a designer for client print jobs and for print houses and never touch a print order.
Linda Goin carries an A.A. in graphic design, a B.F.A. in visual communications with a minor in business and marketing and an M.A. in American History with a minor in the Reformation. While the latter degree doesn't seem to fit with the first two educational experiences, Linda used her 25-year design expertise on archaeological digs and in the study of material culture. Now she uses her education and experiences in social media experiments.