Posts Tagged ‘digital printing’

Black and White and Color Copies

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

We used to have a copy center in downtown Santa Rosa and before that we were the Ajalon Lettershop in Sebastopol.  We migrated from letterpress printing to offset printing and into the copying business. We still do all those things, now we just use computers in the process.

What this means for the somebody who wants to get something printed is that with digital printing we can produce the quantity that you need at a cost savings to you.  This is particularly true with color printing.  Short runs of full color printing are now economically done.

It used to be that in order to produce a full color brochure the only way to do that was to put down the four process colored inks, cyan (blue), magenta (red), yellow and black.  This was expensive and only made sense with long runs over several thousand.  Quality was good; however, set up expenses were high and short runs meant individual pieces could be quite costly.

With digital printing it is now possible to apply the same four color process, but it is done directly from a digital file.  This saves all the production costs of film and plating and the time to set up the proper inking.  All this means that we can produce printed pieces for you at a cost savings.

So printing and copying have changed and merged and the distinctions that used to be made no longer hold up. The old adage, printing is expensive, copying is cheap but the quality isn’t there, is no longer true.  Today printing is economical and copy quality is very good.  The two worlds continue to meld and the winner is our customers.

Ajalon has been helping businesses with their communication needs here in Sonoma County for over 50 years and we will continue to stay on top of the printing marketplace so that we continue to give you great service and value.

Innovation and Versatility

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

We had an open house recently for the members in our Sonoma County Executives business networking and referral group. The planning took weeks and everyone got involved in the preparations. It was sort of like having the entire family over to your house for a holiday meal, only in July.

The weather cooperated beautifully, as the day before the temperature was in the 90′s, but on this evening it was a beautiful summer day with the cooling breeze coming from the ocean and our large roll up doors open, bringing in plenty of fresh air.

We had explanations of offset printing, digital printing and letterpress printing. During the letterpress demonstration I was explaining how we are using presses that were built 40 or more years ago, based on the printing practices that were hundreds of years old, and use modern plastics’ technology to make photopolymer plates that are used instead of the traditional lead type.

Afterward, one of our guests pointed out how it was ironic that the computer and modern imaging practices had impacted the printing industry so much and yet it was the internet and our website that was making it possible for us to be letterpress printing wedding invitations for clients all over the United States and foreign countries.

I was struck by this observation and realized that, yes, we are given new opportunities in today’s business climate to be versatile and innovative.

After we have been at it a few years there is a tendency to want to sit back and want to rule over the king/queendom that has been created and we forget about our earlier desires to be innovative and creative. We want to do the things that we like and sometimes neglect tasks we do not find as satisfying and fulfilling. In these challenging times it may be necessary to step out of our comfortable success and build new sources of business.


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