Printing services
for Cincinnati, OH.

Printing for the way Cincinnati does business.

Cincinnati is a headquarters town with a neighbourhood heart, and it likes print that looks like it will still be around next year.

Cincinnati is home to some of the biggest consumer brands in the country and the agencies, packaging firms and suppliers that serve them, plus a large healthcare sector and a university that feeds all of it. Over-the-Rhine carries the restaurants, breweries and studios; downtown and the riverfront carry the corporate offices; and the hills around them carry fifty-two distinct neighbourhoods that behave like small towns.

That makes Cincinnati a good print city. Brand people here notice stock, alignment and finish. A card that is set up correctly, with bleed handled and type sitting where it should, reads as competence. Postcards and flyers still move through the neighbourhoods because each one has a business district of its own.

Where print earns its keep in Cincinnati.

Print works differently in different parts of a city. These are the places in Cincinnati where a printed piece tends to do the most work, and the piece that usually suits each one.

Over-the-Rhine and Findlay Market. Breweries, restaurants, shops and makers. Postcards, rack cards and flyers with real design behind them.

Downtown and the Banks. Corporate offices and the places they entertain. Cards that feel established.

Hyde Park, Oakley and Mount Adams. Neighbourhood squares full of independent businesses. Flyers, door hangers and postcards for the block.

The Duke Energy Convention Center and the riverfront venues. Conferences and festivals. A retractable banner and a sales sheet for each one.

One clear purpose. The right piece of paper.

What Cincinnati tends to order. Cincinnati's long-established opera and symphony institutions support a modest trade in postcards and rack cards for subscription seasons and one-off shows. The city's position on the Ohio River and its rail lines still supports a logistics and distribution trade that prints a plain, sturdy business card and a sales sheet for a shipper comparing options. Because the metro spreads across Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, EDDM postcards suit a business that wants one neighbourhood on one side of a state line without three separate campaigns.

Put a readable name first, then one line about what you do, then the one contact route you want people to use. A finish should support that, never make it harder to read.

Make the whole set feel like your business.

A Cincinnati note. Cincinnati has a strong eye for craft. A matte card with careful type, or a soft touch finish for a professional practice, will be noticed. Leave generous margins; nothing looks worse to a packaging town than type crowding an edge.

A brand does not need every piece to look identical, only a consistent voice, a deliberate palette and type that works at several sizes. Bring your logo, or start from nothing: print product design is $97 and logo design is $250, set up for the product and finish you picked.

Plan around the day you need it in hand.

Work backward from the day the materials have to be ready, and leave room for artwork, the proof, production and shipping. Each product page states its own time on press: two to three business days for most cards and postcards once you approve your proof, three to four for soft touch and door hangers, seven to twelve for the XL banner. Shipping sits on top of that. Give us the delivery address and your date when you order, with a receiving name if it is going to a venue, a hotel or a shared office. If the date is fixed, say so and we will tell you whether it is possible before you pay.

Getting print into Cincinnati. Crossing the Ohio River into Northern Kentucky means a bridge, and bridge traffic at rush hour is worth building around for anything time-sensitive on either side of the river. The river valley can hold a thick morning fog for part of the year, which can slow the first deliveries of the day without affecting anything later, so it rarely matters past mid-morning. Winters bring real cold, and cardstock left too long in an unheated garage or a cold vehicle can turn brittle at the edges.

Mailing in Cincinnati. For postcards by route, Hyde Park, Oakley, Clifton and Northside are dense enough that a mailer reaches households and gets read.

Give the file your full attention.

Use the artwork guide on the product you picked, because the finished size, the bleed and the safe area are not the same for every format. Upload a PDF, PNG or JPG and the size, bleed and resolution are checked in your browser, then your proof arrives by email and nothing goes to press until you approve it. Read your own details out loud when it lands: names, numbers, web addresses, dates, spelling and which side is which. If there is a QR code, scan it yourself.