[2201] in APO Printshop
Re: poster printing inquiry
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mitchell E Berger)
Thu Apr 20 15:48:23 2006
To: Austin Zimmerman <austinz@MIT.EDU>
cc: apo-printshop@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 20 Apr 2006 11:11:37 EDT."
<20060420111137.c9lnsdhauockog4c@webmail.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 15:48:11 -0400
From: Mitchell E Berger <mitchb@MIT.EDU>
Hi Austin,
> I saw on your website that you do printing. We are doing publicity for AXO
> Lip Sync, our philanthropy event next weekend. I'm guessing it's too late
> for this year, but I'm wondering what the details are. Do you do full color
> and big posters like 11x17? What is the cost?
First, I'd like to thank you for writing to us and expressing interest in
our services - it's always great to hear from people who haven't used us
in the past. Unfortunately, as you've guessed, we don't really have the
manpower resources available to set up and print a job on this short notice,
though.
It's unlikely that the APO printshop could do exactly what you want anyway,
but I'd be happy to explain the types of things that we are good at
printing in the hopes that we might be able to do something else for you
in the future, as well as a couple of other options you might be able to
investigate for posters.
Our offset press can print a variety of sizes of media, roughly up to
8.5" x 11", though most often we specialize in smaller media (down to
business card size). Examples of things we've printed include business
cards, admission tickets to MIT theatrical productions, Multicards and
Munchipasses for LSC, save-the-date and RSVP cards, small event announcement
cards, and perhaps most impressively wedding invitations. If you're
interested, we'd be happy to set up a time to show you samples of the
various print jobs we've run. We have a good variety of fonts and print
sizes, and with enough lead time, it's possible to have images turned into
printable blocks. In general, though, we're not able to print arbitrary
pictures. We can print in any of a number of colors, and can put multiple
colors into a single job (either fading color from side-to-side or having
specific parts of the design be specific colors). However, it depends on
what you mean by "full color" - we can put an arbitrary number of colors
into a design (though more colors is more expensive), but it's not a CMYK
process where we can mix colors to produce a photograph-quality image.
Our prices are quite modest - not much above cost. I don't have them
on-hand, but if you're still interested in looking at the types of jobs
we've done, we can go through our price list at the same time.
As for your 11x17 posters, depending on the color requirements, one
possibly inexpensive way to do them would be to silkscreen them. APO
also has a silkscreening program that used to produce very nice large
posters for lots of MIT groups. In recent times, our silkscreening program
hasn't produced anything other than shirts, but our Silkscreening Chair
has expressed interest in talking with you about what you'd like to do
and seeing if it would be possible to do what you'd like in the future.
As with the printshop, they don't have enough leadtime to do a good job
for you this time around. If you'd like to talk with our silkscreen
chair, you should drop an e-mail to riv@mit.edu (or
apo-silkscreen-chair@mit.edu).
Finally, LSC has a printing press that's better suited to handling large
print media than ours is (but as a tradeoff, it's not as good at handling
small items, which is why we print their Munchicards and Multipasses).
I don't know very many details about their press, but I am told that they
accept outside jobs. I've also heard that their color capabilities are
similar to our printshop's as described above, and that they also wouldn't
have enough leadtime to do the job for you this time. If you'd like to
discuss your requirements with them and see what sort of quote they can
provide, you should drop a note to their Publicity Director at
lsc-publicity-dir@mit.edu.
Good luck with these leads - we hope we'll be able to help you in some
way in the future. Best of luck with Lip Sync, too!
Mitch Berger
APO Printshop Manager
