Printing for the way Kansas City does business.
Kansas City is engineering, agriculture, animal health and a food and jazz culture, and its businesses like print with some warmth in it.
Kansas City is home to major engineering and architecture firms, a large animal health and agricultural technology corridor, telecom and financial services, and a barbecue, jazz and arts culture that shapes its brands. The Crossroads and downtown carry the studios, restaurants and offices; Westport and the Plaza carry the nightlife and boutiques; Brookside and Waldo carry the neighbourhood businesses; Overland Park across the line carries a lot of the offices and households.
Print in Kansas City should feel friendly and well made. A matte card with warm colour, a postcard with a real photo, a flyer for a First Friday. Design here is good and unpretentious, and the trade shows at the convention center keep banners and sales sheets in rotation.
Where print earns its keep in Kansas City.
Print works differently in different parts of a city. These are the places in Kansas City where a printed piece tends to do the most work, and the piece that usually suits each one.
The Crossroads Arts District. Studios, galleries and restaurants. Postcards and flyers for First Fridays.
Downtown and the Power and Light District. Offices, venues and nightlife. Cards for the meetings and a banner for the event.
Brookside, Waldo and Westport. Neighbourhood businesses, bars and practices. Rack cards, flyers and door hangers.
The Kansas City Convention Center and Bartle Hall. Conferences and consumer shows. A retractable banner and a sales sheet.
One clear purpose. The right piece of paper.
What Kansas City tends to order. Engineering, architecture and animal health firms order sales sheets and plain business cards sized for a technical meeting, since a proposal or product review runs on specification tables rather than atmosphere. Restaurants and barbecue counters lean on a matte postcard built around a real photograph, since a warm image sells food better than a clever layout. The Crossroads Arts District moves postcards and flyers timed to a gallery walk, and the convention centre keeps a banner busy for shows downtown.
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.
Compare business card finishes| The moment | What usually works |
|---|---|
| First Fridays in the Crossroads | Postcards and flyers with the art front and centre |
| A conference at Bartle Hall | A retractable banner, booth cards and a sales sheet |
| A barbecue or restaurant opening | Rack cards and postcards from the first service |
| A practice in Brookside or Overland Park | Rack cards and a neighbourhood postcard drop |
Make the whole set feel like your business.
A Kansas City note. Kansas City carries warm palettes and a little texture well: a matte card, a real photo, type with some personality. For the engineering and animal health crowd, switch to a clean sans-serif and a sales sheet that gets the numbers right.
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.
See what design costsPlan 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 Kansas City. Kansas City sits across a state line, and an office in Overland Park is a separate stop from one downtown or in the Crossroads, worth mapping rather than assumed. The convention centre and downtown hotels want a name and an event or booth number attached to anything arriving ahead of a show at Bartle Hall. Summers run hot and humid enough to soften a card left in a hot vehicle, and winter ice storms add to road congestion more than they change the stock.
Mailing in Kansas City. For postcards by route, Brookside, Waldo, Prairie Village and Overland Park are neighbourhoods where a mailer reaches households.
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.
See the artwork guide on a product