Graphic Design & Printing Solutions
Service vs. Price
Often times companies are faced to choose between a professionally designed print piece and an option that is affordable. I don’t believe that my clients should have to make that choice. Subtle Network Design offers pricing that is competitive with discount printers while providing quality design services comparable to that of high end marketing firms. Why waste money or settle for substandard work when you don’t have to? In the next sections I will compare my services with several other popular solutions. I hope to illustrate how SN Design truly intersects the best of both worlds.
SN vs. a Marketing Firm
On one end of the spectrum are marketing firms or high end graphic designstudios. They‘ll often charge thousands of dollars to develop something as simple as a postcard. That money usually goes towards complex presentation proposals and highly paid sales representatives. The truth is that often times a marketing firm won’t have a better idea how to market your company than you do. Advertising is always a fickle business and so anyone who guarantees you a certain outcome is probably just blowing very expensive smoke. Unless you are a fortune 500 company with a million dollar marketing budget, high end design and marketing firms are an unnecessary indulgence. Subtle Network Design can help you develop a unique, effective and creative marketing piece for a fraction of the price.
SN vs. a Freelance Artist
The smaller design studios or freelance artists are another tempting possibility. They offer personalized service without the outlandish prices of their lavish competitors. Most of the boutique design studios, however, are limited in the services they provide. A talented freelance artist will typically charge between 70 and 100 dollars per hour and only solve part of the problem. After spending hundreds of dollars on the design of a piece, the client still has to pay to have the piece printed. Working with a separate printer and designer can get expensive and create file compatibility nightmares. Subtle Network design handles both aspects of the process. This enables us to provide “package” pricing that is more convenient and less costly for our clients. Our files always print correctly and we work to ensure your project is produced at the best rate with the best technology available.
SN vs. a Local Printer
Another very common mistake that businesses make is dealing with their local printer. This approach has several shortcomings. First of all, print houses usually never have a talented artist on staff. They either have an unqualified employee who specializes in prepress or they farm out the design to a freelance artist. The client usually either overpays for a good design or receives a substandard layout. Both of these options should be unacceptable. Secondly, most printers will produce your piece on the equipment that they own. Small print houses do not have the high end equipment that marketing pieces should be printed on. Full color printing is therefore often very expensive and is not the quality product that customers deserve. Subtle Network Design sells the best quality printing available and usually for less than you would pay at your local press because our printing is always produced with the best technology available. Clients who have used their local printer for years are astonished by our prices and services. Not only do we provide them a higher quality, more complete range of products, we also can handle the smaller jobs, like NCR and forms, for competitive prices.
SN vs. an Online Wholesaler
The last common option a business will consider is online print wholesalers. These companies are often fly-by night and sometimes offer tempting leader pricing. We strongly recommend avoiding these companies for a number of reasons. First, a lot of these websites do not stick around. Companies will often lose a lot of their files and work because a website changed names or went out of business. Second, most of these websites do not offer design services. Sure their prices look good, but without a quality design, a marketing piece can be rendered useless. Even when these companies offer design services, the art is never created by the same person from project to project and is almost always handled with a turn and burn attitude. Thirdly, these companies have famously poor customer service and since they always require prepayment, businesses don’t ever have much recourse when they are dissatisfied. Lastly, the prices that you see online are often dishonest. There are normally a lot of hidden fees like inflated shipping to pad the discounted prices they advertise. Subtle Network Design has honest, up front pricing that always includes shipping. We are surprisingly competitive with the online printers without all of the headache and poor service. Give us a chance to bid on a project and I think that you’ll find that when comparing apples to apples, our prices are difficult to beat.
