If you are a business owner operating in a cosmopolitan area like Los Angeles, you constantly need to be on your toes in order to stay one step ahead of the competition. Since your booklets, brochures, business cards, flyers, and other printed materials are among the first things that introduce your company to a prospective customer, custom printing in Los Angeles becomes a necessity.

Custom printing in Los Angeles allows you to stand out from the crowd and capture the attention of your targeted audience. A sleek business card can leave a good first impression. Outstanding envelopes, letterheads, and stationeries can give you an advertising advantage. Custom printing in Los Angeles is also geared towards creating a personalized piece that is tailored for the particular interest of your clients or customers. For example, if you are in retail and are aware that a number of your clients are interested in basketball shoes, then it would be a good idea to feature different brands of basketball shoes more prominently than your other products.

The Benefits of Custom Printing in Los Angeles

Custom printing allows you to use your marketing materials to personally address your clients — from the envelope to its contents. Personalizing the marketing piece lets your clients know that you care enough to address them by name, increasing the chances that they will actually read your message. It pays to get up close and personal with your clients and customers and make them feel important.

If you devote time for market research and have demographic data, you can customize your marketing pieces to target a specific group. Doing this ensures that those who receive your material have a genuine need for your product or service. Maintain a comprehensive database so you can maximize the potential of your custom business printing in generating leads. When you do your research and align your offer with the needs of a particular niche, chances are you will get a higher return on investment.

Another great thing about custom printing in Los Angeles is you get to be the king of the project.  You decide the color, content, design, materials, printing format, process, size, shape, and other details of your marketing materials. To ensure the success of your custom printing project, plan your specifications according to the demands and requirements of your business. You are limited only by your imagination. Wow your clients and customers with your creativity.

Looking for custom printing services in Los Angeles? Contact F.A. Daniels today and make an impact with your marketing materials. Aside from taking care of your custom printing project, F.A. Daniels’ mailing services makes it even easier for you to get your message across.

So you want to have a batch of marketing materials printed but are concerned that the printer that you choose may not be implementing green printing practices. No worries, as there are a lot of printing Los Angeles companies that do their part in reducing waste and saving trees. You just have to exert some effort, as some printing companies do not break out the soy-based inks and recycled paper unless a customer asks. It’s up to you if you want to go for an all-out eco-friendly printing Los Angeles company or stick with your friendly neighborhood printer, never forgetting that you have to specifically request soy-based or vegetable-based inks, different grades of environmental paper, and 100 percent non-toxic toner for digital printers to be used on your printing projects.

Greening your in-house printing processes

Now if you decide to not outsource your printing requirements to a printing Los Angeles company, it would not be a problem if you are already implementing green printing tactics in relation to your in-house printing processes. Such tactics include:

• Stocking up on chlorine-free paper with post-consumer fiber and low-polluting or recycled ink
• Using both sides of each sheet of paper and avoiding non-standard sizes for your printing projects
• Investing on a printer that utilizes a waterless printing system and minimizing the use of varnishes and other coatings that prevents you from recycling the papers used for printing job
• Making sure that you leave the papers used for a particular printing job recyclable by avoiding binding adhesives, foils, and plastic bags that are typically used during the finishing or packaging stages
• Publishing your documents online whenever possible; remember that the greenest printing practice that you can adopt involves not using any paper at all.

Questions to ask your printing Los Angeles partner

Aside from asking for soy-based or vegetable-based inks, non-toxic toner, and recyclable paper to be used for your printing projects, you may also ask your printing Los Angeles partner if they have a green printer that can accommodate rush jobs without sacrificing sustainability. This is important especially if you have large files to upload and you need the job done fast without compromising any green printing principles that you and your company believes in. For your part, you must also make sure that the files to be uploaded are in the right formats and have no bleeds. There should also be someone from your team who is ready to proof the test copy (once it is ready) to avoid having another batch printed out, which of course defeats the purpose of hiring a printing Los Angeles company that offers green printing services.

 Should you print a booklet for one of your company’s projects? Booklets are great for effectively promoting your products or services without overstraining your marketing budget. Unlike other promotional materials like business cards and flyers, booklets allow you to present important and more detailed information in a larger and more convenient format.

Booklets help you share your business and products to new and potential customers. You can send them via mail, display them for visitors in your office, or distribute them personally during events. Since they are easy to carry around and share, booklets have the potential to reach a wide audience and create awareness of your brand.

A professionally-designed and printed booklet helps you convey your message and boost you company’s image to readers. But before you place an order to print a booklet, here are some things that you should consider:

• Plan your cover carefully. Choose images and fonts that are sure to capture a reader’s attention. If you are promoting your products, then the image on the cover should be about your products. The font should be appropriate, easy to read, neat, and professional-looking.
• Don’t beat around the bush. It’s a booklet, not a book, so be sure to keep the content short and simple but engaging and informative enough to make your reader want to learn more about your products and services.
• Whenever possible, the design of your booklets should be consistent with your other promotional tools. Reinforce your brand and identity to your audience by putting your company’s logo and colors on your booklets.
• Choose the binding carefully. What’s the use of having an awesome cover and even greater content if the booklet falls apart easily? Make sure that the binding you select is strong enough for the number of pages your booklet has.

Whether you decide to print a booklet in full color or in black and white, it’s important that you choose the right printing company in Los Angeles for the project. Don’t waste your money on inferior prints because you want your booklet to be clear and crisp so your reader will understand your sales message.

If you want to print a booklet that’s guaranteed to leave a lasting impact on your audience, entrust your project to F.A. Daniels. We’ll be happy to handle your booklet printing project. Whether you want to print a booklet that has 10 pages or 100 pages, a few copies or thousands of copies, you can expect your project to be completed according to your exact specifications and at the same high quality.

If you are as in love with Valentine’s Day as we are, then you will love the greeting cards, billboards, postcards, bookmarks, and so on that we’ve gathered from around the web. Enjoy!

Greeting Cards

Forget about e-cards, those are too impersonal. If you really want to impress your sweetheart this V-Day, then consider giving him or her a greeting card that doesn’t just feature the obligatory hearts and “I love yous.” Check out the samples below:

Billboards

Popular holiday plus huge space equals the perfect opportunity for advertisers or marketers to promote something – a movie, a product, a service, and so on. Enjoy the creativeness with a dash of cheekiness with the following billboards.

Postcards

V-Day postcards? Why not? Sometimes greeting cards could be a tad predictable and if your loved one is in another city or country, it might be more fun if you send out a postcard. Take a look at the postcards below to see what we are on about.

Bookmarks

So no chocolates and flowers this year, eh? Well, you are in luck if your girlfriend/boyfriend is the type who takes pleasure in reading good books. But before you head off to the nearest bookstore, you might want to give him/her a cute bookmark for a complete Valentine’s Day gift.

Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. If you are still at a loss as to what to give your darling on this very special, very romantic holiday, why not go old-school and send him or her, a lovely greeting card or postcard or bookmark? Of course, you can also put up a billboard if you have some cash to spare but otherwise a simple something would do – something that can easily be provided by a printing services Los Angeles company. Don’t worry, as you still have some time before the big day. With that said, we wish you good luck and hope that you don’t get stressed too much while you are preparing for your V-day date.

Because business cards are such effective marketing tools, the last thing you want as a business owner is to be thought of as boring or unprofessional simply because your business card is not well-designed or is printed shoddily. Fortunately, there are a lot of companies that offer superb business card printing services. They can help you design a business card that makes use of the latest printing technologies so that the end result is something that is truly worthy of your target customer’s attention.

Of course, if you feel like you can do a better job than the companies that are offering printing services Los Angeles, perhaps you should take a look at what you are up against so you can judge for yourself if a conventional card fits into your networking strategy. If you decide to stick to a traditional business card design, don’t worry, you will still get a good response as long as you heed the advice of business card printing experts. But if you plan to be more adventurous with your card, then the collection below will hopefully give you a stack full of inspiration.

Got a light, mate?

Get yourself back into shape!

Going green

Baa, baa, white sheep, have you any wool?

Have a seat, please.

Whatcha lookin’ at?

Bring your own beer!

Optical illusion

How refreshing!

Work on your fitness!

 Are you ready to print your ultra special, never before seen, totally awesome business card? Well, if you need any help coming up with an attention-grabbing design that works wonders for your branding efforts, we would like to offer our services. Our business cards come in various colors, coatings, and covers and can be delivered the same day or the next day with just a minimum order of 100 pieces. We also offer a wide variety of finishing such as foil stamping, embossing, debossing, and die-cutting.

Call us today at 800.454.5414 or send us an e-mail via our online Contact Us form so we can discuss your business card printing needs in detail. We also invite you to check our design online tool so you can see what the finished product will look like after we get your artwork ready for printing.

Whether it’s a spelling mistake or a low resolution image or simply a bad design, printing bloopers are just unacceptable. You don’t even have to be in publishing to realize how a copyediting mistake can spell the difference between a customer taking you seriously and thinking that your company is just good for a couple of laughs. To avoid printing mistakes that could cost your company a lot of money, here are some tips to ensure that your next batch of printouts is for the most part, error-free.

Pixelated images

One advantage of partnering with a company that offers printing services Los Angeles is that you get to work with in-house graphic designers who know well enough not to scale up a small image that it creates noticeable pixelation.

Now if you are taking charge of your printing project without any help whatsoever from the pros, you can avoid this problem by using high-resolution images or recreating a particular image using vector tools. The latter is especially tedious so you might want to really think about not teaming up with a full-service printer.

Wrong fonts

Ever wonder why your printout features a different font other than the one you used in your template? You may have used a corrupt font that cannot be embedded into your PDF. One way to solve this is to send all the fonts that you have used to your printer or if you are using Adobe InDesign, there is a feature that allows you to organize all your fonts and links into one neat folder, which you can use to avoid those pesky font problems.

Smudged ink

There is a reason why for certain printed products, it is advisable to outsource the job to a company that offers quality printing services in Los Angeles. With home printers, there is a tendency for the ink to smudge and bleed. And if you use more than 300 percent in terms of total ink value, even if you use a high-quality ink, there is a big possibility that the ink will take too long to dry and smudge when being printed. Your options if you really want to DIY are: to have quick-drying paper in stock or paper with smudge-proof coatings; buy high quality ink cartridges; and invest in a good art protectant or sealant. Some use hair spray as an emergency sealant but it is better if you can buy one that is really intended to protect your printout.

F.A. Daniels is a full-service printing company based in Los Angeles. If you are interested in knowing more about what printing services Los Angeles can do for your business, we invite you to explore our site, give us a call at (323) 871-1800, or send us an e-mail through our online Contact Us form for more information.

You don’t need to wait for the first day of Christmas to send out greeting cards to your family and friends.

This season, don’t worry too much about how many Christmas greeting cards you will receive. Instead tap into the spirit of the holidays by being more enthusiastic about giving.

And speaking of giving, we think it would be cool if your Christmas cards are way better than a partridge in a pear tree, two turtle doves, or three French hens. We know that you’ve got a lot of ideas so we are inviting you to play with our Design Online Tool and come up with cool, personalized holiday greeting cards.

Now, we hope that your designs turn out to be solid winners – worth more than four calling birds, five golden rings, and six geese a-laying. Who knows, you might even be able to incorporate seven swans a-swimming, eight maids a-milking, and nine ladies dancing in your greeting cards. The point is, you can make Christmas more memorable for your loved ones by thinking festive and being creative. We know you can do it even without the help of ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, and twelve drummers drumming.

From everyone here at F.A. Daniels, we wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Printing services in Los Angeles and other big cities are likely to get busier this December due to bulk and rush printing orders for Christmas cards. And while many consider sending out Christmas cards as a personal gesture, many companies have made it a point to mail greeting cards to their clients and customers. But is this a good business practice?

The answer is a resounding yes — but only if your intentions are clear: that you are wishing them happy holidays because you want them to feel that they are important to you. Sending your clients and customers greeting cards is a good way of nurturing your relationships with them.

Allotting time and money for your business holiday greeting card project can help reaffirm ties with established clients. It allows your company to develop relationships with hesitant customers (not to mention make companies that offer printing services in Los Angeles and elsewhere happy). Spreading holiday cheer will also go a long way in boosting your company’s image.

Send with Sincerity

Sending high-quality business Christmas cards produced by professional printing services in Los Angeles and other major areas will show your sincerity to your clients and customers. Don’t forget to send cards to your employees. Cheap greeting cards will make you look insincere and well, cheap so don’t be afraid to spend on this project. After all, giving embodies the spirit of this holiday.

Stick with What Works

Sending out funny Christmas cards will be a hit-or-miss affair since sense of humor is subjective. Go for what works: traditional colors, symbols, and images with heartwarming messages. If it’s your first time to mail out Christmas greeting cards, you don’t want the risk of making a bad impression. Now, don’t forget that not everyone celebrates Christmas. You can send a politically correct greeting card or do a generic message or theme. If you know the profession of the recipient, it’s possible to send out unique and humorous profession-related greeting cards.

Add a Personal Touch

Handwrite the recipient’s address on the envelope. Compose a brief personal message (still handwritten), affix your signature, and add your business information under it. You can insert a business card inside the envelope if you don’t have a company stamp for the greeting card. If you know the client or customer personally, you can send the greeting card to his or her residence. Otherwise, send the cards to the business addresses of the recipients.

There are a number of different envelopes, ink colors, and paper stock choices to choose from. Accents and matching envelopes will make the greeting cards more elegant. Companies that provide quality printing services in Los Angeles and other areas can help ensure that your greeting cards are designed and printed correctly so you can convey your message to your clients, customers, and employees.

With “Turkey Day” just around the corner, we figure it would be cool to feature some of the best Thanksgiving-themed greeting cards that we have found on the web. Of course, nothing beats spending time with your loved ones on Thanksgiving, but if for some reason you cannot be with them, we hope that this collection of greeting cards will inspire you to at least give them a call if not send out cards that are just as amazing.

1. Thanks Card by Melissa Mann

Featured in American Crafts Studio, this greeting card is created by Melissa Mann, a scrapbooking enthusiast who blogs at melissa-mann.blogspot.com.

2. Vintage Thanksgiving Card

ModCloth blogger Hannah Rothstein recently did a post on vintage Thanksgiving cards. Check out the other just-as-awesome cards in her blog post.

3. Thanksgiving Craft Card

Here’s something for the kiddies. Yes, it looks deceptively simple but there is some sewing involved using a plastic yarn needle, some yarn (of course), and a fall cookie cutter. You can check out the tutorial for this card here.

4. Give Thanks Card

Created using Unity Fall Family Memories stamps, this greeting card also uses twine from The Twinery. Don’t forget to check out Sarah Vait’s blog to check out her other Thanksgiving-themed greeting cards.

5. Thanksgiving Wreath Card

You only need 5 minutes to complete this card, according to Diane of Charmingly Creative. Make sure you have all the supplies like Fall stickers, rotary cutter, maple leaf punch, and Martha Stewart Edge to successfully recreate this Thanksgiving card.

Are you interested in sending out Thanksgiving-themed greeting cards? We offer rush printing services including Same Day/Next Day printing for greeting cards, as well as other print products such as business cards, flyers, postcards, and so on at affordable prices. Visit FADaniels.com now for more information.

Here’s something you might not know: In the UK, as well as in other parts of the world, billboards are known as hoardings or hoarding displays. Now, we don’t know exactly why that fascinates us but we’re just going to “blame” it on the fact that billboards or hoardings (tee-hee!) are by nature, entertaining.

Speaking of entertainment, below are some amazingly creative billboards recognized by various award-giving bodies including CLIO Awards, OBIE Awards, John Caples International Awards, and more.

Bond & Bond: Fridge Magnet Billboard

Named as one of the 2010 Gold Winners of the prestigious John Caples International Awards, this giant fridge magnet billboard is the brainchild of Draftfcb’s New Zealand team. We suggest you check out how this outdoor ad actually works by viewing the video here or here, as the picture doesn’t really do justice to the brilliance of the concept.

BMW Light Wall – Reflection

 Created by the Serviceplan Gruppe Hamburg GmbH & Co. KG for BMW / M3 Coupe, this billboard won a New York Festivals(r) Silver World Medal under the Best Use of Medium/Billboards category. The ad, which was displayed at the Hamburg airport, was actually a 50 x 2m light wall right smack in the middle of the arrivals hall.

Kleenex: Yes-No

Not only did this billboard win the Cannes Lions 2010 Press Bronze, it also bagged the Cannes Lions 2010 Outdoor Billboards & Street Furniture Gold award. Created by JWT, London, United Kingdom, this ad had Russell Ramsey and Dominick Lynch-Robinson as its Creative Directors, and Christiano Neves as Art Director and Copywriter.

 Saridon: Butcher

From the geniuses at BBDO Guerrero/Proximity, Philippines, comes this Clio Award-winning campaign. The billboard is actually one of the many produced by BBDO Guerrero (Persistent Headaches campaign) for Saridon, a popular analgesic.

Wear a Seatbelt

Aptly titled, this billboard is created by Esparza Advertising for the New Mexico Department of Transportation. It won a Silver OBIE award, and was actually very effective in reducing driving –related fatalities. In fact, the statistics showed that there was a 33% drop in the number of casualties due to driving accidents compared to the previous year.

Interested in putting out a billboard? A quality printing services company like FADaniels.com can help turn your creative concept into a winning outdoor ad!