How To Design And Print Booklets On A Budget

With the economy slowing down as it is today, it is prudent to tighten those belts and save money when we can. This is true even for publishing. If you are a business that makes periodic investment in booklet printing or catalog printing, you should know that printing costs take a significant chunk of your budget. So if there is a possibility of cutting cost there most businesses welcome the opportunity. If you are one of those businesses and you want to save money on booklet printing, this simple guide should help you. Below is the step by step process on how to design print booklets on a budget.

Things You Will Need

All you'll need is a graphic design software (ie: Photoshop, Publisher, InDesign) and enough creative juice. :)

Write your own content. The first thing you can do to save money on booklet printing is to create your own content. Professional writers can be expensive to hire. With a little effort and training you can actually write your booklet content yourself. Just make an outline of the parts of your booklet. With these headings as guides, start detailing what each outline topic or heading is all about. In no time at all you should have a working copy of your booklet.

Look for booklet templates. Once you have some decent content, it is time to look for booklet templates. Booklet templates are pre-formatted booklets that you can just fill out with your content. There are a lot available on the Internet and some of them can be downloaded for free. Just look for a well designed booklet template that is perfect for the tone and manner of your content.

Design your own layout. Of course sometimes the booklet template may not be enough. Usually you will have a professional layout artist or graphic designer to tweak its design, or you can even have them design one from scratch. But employing the services of these designers are quite expensive. To cut on cost, it is a good idea to try it out yourself. The booklet templates you can find online cover pretty much the basics of a booklet layout so all you've have to do is make sure you have the right size images, headlines and content on every page aside from the other cosmetic stuff. If you learn how to do this, you have the added advantage of being in direct control over the layout of your booklet. And if you don't quite trust your creative ability, you can always ask a friend or someone from the family to do this for you at a very small fee. After all, the use of graphic design software is already very widespread, almost mandatory, among youngsters and college graduates that it is very likely that most, if not all, of them know how to use the software.

Search extensively for printing deals. Once you have a working design, it is time to hunt for an affordable printer. One of the biggest mistakes people on a budget make is to not look extensively for an affordable and quality booklet printing service. Most of the expensive printing services are the ones that are easily found on the top page of search engines or the yellow pages. If you look long enough and closely enough, you should discover a few printers out there that are cheaper but still maintain good quality products. Also look for printing deals that have discounts for bulk orders. Ask some of your colleagues for advice on where to find such printers. Hopefully you'll find one that is the best for your budget and for your color booklet printing. Another option of course is to print it yourself but then catalogs are more tedious since you have to print, collate and bind them unlike postcards and business cards.

After that, it is just a matter of printing the color booklets. You should probably save around 30-40% of your normal booklet printing costs when you follow these steps. That should be enough to keep your budget in line. Good luck!