Printing services
for Columbus, OH.

Printing for the way Columbus does business.

Columbus is a test-market city with a big university, a state government and a startup scene, and it hands out a lot of cards.

Columbus is the state capital, home to Ohio State, headquarters for major retail and insurance companies, and a fast-growing tech and logistics sector. National brands test products here because the city looks like the country. The Short North carries the galleries, bars and studios; the Arena District and downtown carry the offices; German Village and Clintonville carry the neighbourhood businesses.

Print in Columbus has to work for a broad audience. Clear cards, clear offers, nothing that only makes sense to insiders. Because the city is so spread out, postcards and door hangers still do real work in the neighbourhoods, and a rack card at a counter in the Short North reaches a crowd that came from all over.

Where print earns its keep in Columbus.

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

The Short North. Galleries, restaurants and shops. Postcards and rack cards with design that holds up next to the art.

Downtown and the Arena District. Corporate, government and the venues. Cards that feel established and a banner for the event.

Ohio State and the University District. Students, staff and the businesses around campus. Flyers and door hangers by the thousand.

The Greater Columbus Convention Center. Conferences all year. A retractable banner and a sales sheet.

One clear purpose. The right piece of paper.

What Columbus tends to order. Columbus's inland port and intermodal freight hub southeast of the city gives its distribution trade reason to favour a sales sheet or trifold brochure with real capacity numbers over a designed pitch. A cluster of animal health and veterinary medicine companies, supported by Ohio State's veterinary programme, keeps trifold brochures and sales sheets stocked with real specifications for a different buyer than the university crowd. Around the city's art and design school, small studios and young designers print postcards and rack cards to promote their own work.

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 Columbus note. Columbus branding tends clean and friendly. A gloss or matte card with strong contrast reads well across a wide audience. If you are selling to the university crowd, make the offer the biggest thing on the flyer and the QR code the second biggest.

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 Columbus. Columbus sits inside a beltway, I-270, and rush-hour traffic can turn a short-looking trip between the Arena District and the inland port area into a much longer one, so build in room around peak commuting periods. State office buildings around the Statehouse downtown generally require a security check-in for any delivery, so a name and department help a package move faster. Ohio winters bring genuine snow and cold, and stock left in an unheated vehicle or on an exposed dock can arrive stiff or curled at the corners.

Mailing in Columbus. For postcards by route, Clintonville, German Village, Grandview Heights and Bexley are established neighbourhoods where a mailer lands with 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.