Printing for the way Memphis does business.
Memphis moves the world’s freight and keeps its own business personal, which is a good combination for print that gets handed to a person.
Memphis is a logistics capital, with the world’s largest cargo hub and the distribution trade that grew around it, alongside medicine, a growing medical device sector, and a culture of independent restaurants, barbecue and music that draws visitors year round. Downtown and Midtown carry the offices, studios and venues; the suburbs and DeSoto County across the state line carry a lot of the households.
Business in Memphis is relationship-driven and practical. A card should be readable at a glance and tough enough for a warehouse floor. Flyers and door hangers still work in the neighbourhoods, and rack cards at a barbecue joint or a Beale Street shop reach visitors who take them home.
Where print earns its keep in Memphis.
Print works differently in different parts of a city. These are the places in Memphis where a printed piece tends to do the most work, and the piece that usually suits each one.
Downtown and Beale Street. Restaurants, venues and the visitors passing through. Rack cards and postcards for the take-home crowd.
Midtown, Cooper-Young and Overton Square. Independent shops, bars and studios. Flyers and cards with personality.
The Memphis Medical District. Hospitals, research and the vendors calling on them. Sales sheets and clean cards.
The distribution corridors off I-240 and near the airport. Logistics, trucking and the trades. Cards that survive a pocket and a sales sheet with real numbers.
One clear purpose. The right piece of paper.
What Memphis tends to order. Memphis grew up as a cotton and agricultural trading centre, and that legacy shows up today in a farm-supply and agribusiness trade further out that still favours a straightforward sales sheet over anything designed to impress. The city's recording studios and music publishing houses, a quieter counterpart to the tourist-facing blues clubs downtown, print modest business cards and the occasional postcard for a release. Memphis barbecue and catering outfits competing for weekend business lean on a rack card with a menu and a phone number, left at a counter rather than emailed.
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 |
|---|---|
| Memphis in May and Beale Street Music Festival | Flyers, postcards and a banner for a vendor or a venue |
| A new clinic in the Medical District | Rack cards for the desk and cards for the staff |
| A logistics or trucking outfit staffing up | Cards for the recruiters and a flyer for the job fair |
| A restaurant opening in Cooper-Young | Postcards, rack cards and a door hanger route |
Make the whole set feel like your business.
A Memphis note. Memphis style is warm and direct. Strong type, one bold colour, nothing fussy. For the trades, a gloss card holds up better than uncoated. Put the thing people actually call you for in the largest type on the card.
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 Memphis. Crossing the Mississippi River between Memphis and the DeSoto County suburbs means using one of a small number of bridges, and rush-hour traffic on them can make a delivery just across the state line take longer than the map suggests. Beale Street gets busy enough with pedestrians on weekend nights that a delivery vehicle can struggle to get close, so weekend-event deliveries are safer arriving earlier. Summer humidity off the river can soften uncoated stock left sitting on an open loading dock, so a coated finish travels better.
Mailing in Memphis. For postcards by route, Cooper-Young, Central Gardens, East Memphis and Germantown are established neighbourhoods where a mailer 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.
See the artwork guide on a product