Printing services
for Minneapolis, MN.

Printing for the way Minneapolis does business.

Minneapolis is a headquarters city with a design sensibility, a medical device industry and a summer that everyone prints for in advance.

Minneapolis and Saint Paul are home to more Fortune 500 headquarters per capita than almost anywhere, a world-leading medical device cluster, a large agency and design community, and a food and music scene that punches above its weight. The North Loop and downtown carry the offices, restaurants and studios; Uptown and Northeast carry the breweries and makers; the lakes and the suburbs carry the households.

Print in Minneapolis is expected to be well designed. Agencies and brand teams here notice stock and typography, and a card that is set up correctly reads as competence. Postcards and flyers move through the neighbourhoods, and the summer festival season and the state fair fill the calendar with banners and rack cards.

Where print earns its keep in Minneapolis.

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

The North Loop and downtown. Corporate, agencies and restaurants. Cards with craft and a sales sheet for the pitch.

Northeast and Uptown. Breweries, studios and shops. Postcards, flyers and rack cards with character.

The medical device corridor and the university. Devices, research and vendors. Sales sheets with real specifications.

The Minneapolis Convention Center and the State Fairgrounds. Conferences and the Great Minnesota Get-Together. A retractable banner and rack cards.

One clear purpose. The right piece of paper.

What Minneapolis tends to order. Medical device teams lean on the 8.5 by 11 sales sheet and a plain business card, since device conferences run on specification detail rather than atmosphere. Agencies and brand studios notice a card's stock and typeface immediately, so a matte or soft touch finish carries real weight here. Restaurants and breweries in Northeast and Uptown work postcards and rack cards, and the state fair and festival season put banners and rack cards in front of a crowd.

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 Minneapolis note. Minneapolis design is Scandinavian-clean: white space, a strong grid, one colour, a matte card. A soft touch finish suits the agencies and the professional practices. Winter is long; a card that survives a parka pocket earns its place.

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 Minneapolis. The Twin Cities are really two downtowns with separate event calendars, so a Minneapolis stop and a Saint Paul stop are worth treating as two deliveries. A hotel or convention centre desk wants a name, room block or booth number attached to anything arriving ahead of a conference. Winters run long, and salt and slush get tracked indoors, so a heavier or laminated card outlasts a plain uncoated one at a counter. Anything going up outdoors at the fairgrounds should be weighed against the wind.

Mailing in Minneapolis. For postcards by route, Linden Hills, Longfellow, Northeast and Saint Paul’s Mac-Groveland are neighbourhoods where 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.