Printing services
for Baltimore, MD.

Printing for the way Baltimore does business.

Baltimore is medicine, the port, federal work and a city of proud neighbourhoods, and its businesses print for the block they serve.

Baltimore’s economy is anchored by a world-famous hospital and university, a busy port, cybersecurity and federal contracting between the city and Washington, and a food and arts culture spread across distinct neighbourhoods. Harbor East and downtown carry the offices and hotels; Fells Point, Canton and Hampden carry the bars, shops and studios; the rowhouse neighbourhoods carry everything else.

Print in Baltimore is neighbourhood print with a professional core. Flyers, postcards and door hangers for the blocks; clean cards and sales sheets for the medical, federal and cyber sectors; rack cards at the harbor for the visitors. Design is unpretentious and a little bold.

Where print earns its keep in Baltimore.

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

Harbor East and the Inner Harbor. Offices, hotels and the visitor crowd. Cards for the meetings and rack cards for the lobbies.

Fells Point, Canton and Hampden. Bars, restaurants, shops and studios. Flyers, postcards and rack cards.

The medical campuses and the cyber corridor. Healthcare, research and contractors. Sales sheets and clean cards.

The Baltimore Convention Center. Conferences and consumer shows. A retractable banner and a sales sheet.

One clear purpose. The right piece of paper.

What Baltimore tends to order. Baltimore's port and federal contracting base want a card and a sales sheet that read as solid rather than showy, useful where credentials matter more than design flair. The medical and cyber corridor needs clean cards for people who move between a campus badge and a client site. Down in the rowhouse neighbourhoods, postcards and flyers introduce a new bar or shop, and a rack card left at the counter tends to outlast a flyer taped to a pole.

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 Baltimore note. Baltimore carries bold, honest design: strong type, a real colour, a gloss card for the trades and a matte card for the professions. Put the neighbourhood on the piece; here it is an identity people are loyal to.

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 Baltimore. Baltimore's rowhouse blocks mean most business addresses take a delivery at the door or a small vestibule rather than a loading dock, while the office towers around the harbor generally route through a building reception instead. Humid summers near the water are hard on stock left in a hot car before it is used. The city and the county are really two delivery patterns, dense rowhouse blocks against wider suburban roads, so one timeline rarely fits both halves of an order.

Mailing in Baltimore. For postcards by route, Hampden, Canton, Roland Park and Towson 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.