Designing for Digital Printing

No one would blame you for felling snubbed. Digital printing is growing by leaps and bounds, but designers are often the last to learn about the nuances of a printing process—unless you count trial and error. Gaining knowledge about the unique aspects of digital printing can improve the effectiveness of your book design and reduce your frustration level.

Gutenberg Would Be Amazed
Digital presses are revolutionary. So while some of your offset design knowledge transfers to digital printing, there are also new things to learn. For starters, many presses are toner-based and have their own unique characteristics. A few, like the HP Indigo, use inks, but they still share many other digital printing nuances.

You can still do many of the same things with a digital press—like design with full bleeds—as you would any offset job. But the quality of the product depends on a few things, most notably the type of digital printer being used. All digital presses aren’t created equal, and with technology developments leapfrogging, the new, high-end presses often have considerably more advanced features than older or less sophisticated models.

Practical Limitations
Keep in mind that many digital presses can print beautiful, high-resolution colour with hundreds of levels of greyscale. So don’t be concerned that your beautifully designed book cover or jacket design is going to look low-end. At the same time, be aware of these limitations:

• Most presses are four units and require that colours be created within the CMYK gamut
• Varnish, as well as fluorescents and metallic inks, are outside the realm of most digital printers with the
  exception of a few presses like the HP Indigo with its extended colour gamut system
• Misregistration is a common shortcoming of digital presses on two-sided jobs, sometimes shifting as much
  as 0.125 of an inch
• Big blocks of solid colour and gradients can be tricky
• Special digitally optimized papers work best because most digital printers rely on extreme temperatures to
  fuse the toner to the paper
• Size restrictions exist, with today’s largest presses being 20” x 14”, so books must fit within standard
  sizes—typically 5” x 7”, 6” x 9” or 8.5” x 11”
• Lower resolution can make digital presses problematic for work where the details of charts, graphs and
  images are critical

Don’t Be Misled by Urban Legends
While there are some limitations with digital printing, lots of misinformation also exists. Xerox, a leading manufacturer of digital printing systems and related software, debunks these three popular urban legends.

Legend 1
The image quality isn’t good enough.

Debunked:
Digital colour presses achieve professional image quality that effectively complements offset in nearly every application. Engineering advancements allow high-level digital presses to achieve outstanding 2400 DPI resolution and digital halftone screens. Digitally printed materials are winning awards in prestigious graphic arts competitions worldwide.

Legend 2
Digital printing is too expensive.

Debunked:
Digital printing is cost-competitive. Short runs are less expensive than offset and, in fact, digital presses make short run colour printing cost-effective for the first time. Inventory and obsolescence costs associated with warehousing books are often reduced. Total costs are also lowered through faster turnaround times and greater workflow efficiencies.

Legend 3
The available papers are too limited.

Debunked:
Ongoing R&D continues to deliver an ever-widening range of digitally optimized coated and uncoated papers, parchments, cover stock and specialty media to meet almost every need. Paper manufacturers gear activities to meet new demands, and virtually every large and many smaller mills have launched or expanded their digital paper product lines. Though digital printing still represents a comparatively small part of the total printing industry, the digital segment is growing faster than traditional offset and gravure. Similarly, digital paper is the fastest growing category in paper.

In addition, most digital printing systems accept regular offset papers with no problem. The inkjet, toner-based systems are more sensitive to paper issues because of the high temperatures involved.

Transcontinental’s wide range of digital printing capabilities for book publishers is no urban legend. Contact us for more information on how we can assist you.

Looking for Digital Print Design Tips?
We put together 10 tips to help you design books, covers and jackets more effectively for digital printing systems. Read on to access this valuable information.