Printing services
for Cleveland, OH.

Printing for the way Cleveland does business.

Cleveland is a healthcare and manufacturing city with a serious arts scene and a loyalty to local businesses that print can earn.

Cleveland’s economy runs on world-class medicine, with the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals at the centre, a manufacturing base that never left, and a downtown that has filled back in with restaurants, sports and residents. Ohio City and Tremont carry the breweries and studios, University Circle carries the museums and the medical campus, and the east and west sides carry neighbourhoods with fierce local pride.

Clevelanders support local, and they notice when a business looks like it plans to stay. A well-made card, a postcard that respects their intelligence, a flyer for the block. Because the medical sector is so large, sales sheets and clean professional cards do a lot of work for the vendors and practices around it.

Where print earns its keep in Cleveland.

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

Ohio City and Tremont. Breweries, restaurants and makers. Postcards, rack cards and flyers with character.

University Circle and the medical campuses. Practices, research and vendors. Cards and sales sheets that read as professional.

Downtown, East Fourth and the Flats. Offices, venues and nightlife. Cards for the meetings, flyers for the nights.

The Huntington Convention Center and the I-X Center. Conventions and the big consumer shows. A retractable banner and a sales sheet.

One clear purpose. The right piece of paper.

What Cleveland tends to order. Downtown Cleveland's theatre district, a dense cluster of historic stages, keeps postcards and rack cards in steady rotation for shows and the restaurants around them. The manufacturing and advanced materials companies that never left the region still rely on a trifold brochure or a sales sheet with real specifications when courting a new industrial client. Cleveland's older ethnic neighbourhoods, from Slavic Village to AsiaTown, are dense and walkable enough that EDDM postcards can target a specific carrier route rather than guessing at a wider list.

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 Cleveland note. Cleveland responds to honest design: strong type, a real photo, no gimmicks. A matte card feels right for most of the city; a soft touch finish suits a practice or a law firm. Put the neighbourhood on the card if you serve one; it means something here.

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 Cleveland. Winters near Lake Erie bring lake-effect snow that can be heavier and more sudden than forecast, so a shipment arriving in late autumn or winter should have a plan for getting it inside rather than left on an exposed step or dock. The Cuyahoga River valley cuts the city in two, and crossing from one side to the other means one of a handful of bridges or viaducts, worth building into any cross-town plan. University Circle's hospital and museum campuses run their own security and receiving desks, needing a specific building and contact name.

Mailing in Cleveland. For postcards by route, Lakewood, Cleveland Heights, Tremont and Ohio City are dense, walkable and read their mail.

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.