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When you think of printing, you probably think of large machines, printing plates, lots of noise and ink. Well, that is traditional offset printing, and there is an image of an offset printing press below.

The features of offset printing presses are:

  • Four plates are used to print four different coloured inks onto the page (cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink):
    • Those four different inks create all the colours of the rainbow.
    • Those four printing plates (eight printing plates for double-sided jobs) are one of the most expensive parts of the offset printing process (and this explains why small quantities are quite expensive when compared to large quantities).
  • Jobs are gang printed — the print run is NOT devoted to just one jub. Instead, many different jobs share the print run..
    • Because the printing plates are expensive (four plates for single-sided jobs, or eight plates for double-sided jobs), any offset printer worth his salt will gather up lots of small jobs onto one print run.
    • For example: our B1-sized offset printing presses (about the same size as ten A4 letterheads) might have the following jobs on the one print run — ten different busines cards, four small A6 flyers, four A4 flyers, and three 6pp DL flyers (that fold our to A4 size).
  • Only predetermined 'set quantities' are available.
    • As mentioned above, the jobs are 'gang printed', so offset printing presses are NOT suitable for jobs of a specific quantity (e.g.: 234 business cards).
    • So, given the jobs are 'ganged', the quantities that are available are set. Normally starting at 250 or 500,  then 1,000, then 2,00 (or 2,500) and then increasing inincremenst that are roughly double the last quantity.
  • The paper options are limited.
    • The ability to match various size jobs (e.g.: A4 or A6) into a print run can be difficult — there might not be quite enough space for any job on the productio list.
    • To over come the availability of space problem, offset printing companies tend to offer very few paper options. The reasoning is simple:
      •  If few paper options are available; then
      • There will always be a job in the print queue that will be suitable for the space available on each and every print run.


The above image is an offset printing press.