Printing services
for Portland, OR.

Printing for the way Portland does business.

Portland is a maker city with an athletic apparel industry, a food scene and a design culture that notices paper stock from across the room.

Portland’s economy is athletic and outdoor apparel headquartered here and nearby, semiconductors in the suburbs, a food, coffee and beer scene that became an export, and a creative industry of agencies, studios and makers. The Pearl District and downtown carry the offices and galleries; Alberta, Hawthorne, Division and Mississippi carry the independents; the east side carries most of the households.

Portland print should look crafted. Uncoated stock, a painted edge, a letterpress feel even when it is offset. Postcards and flyers are a real channel here; a poster on a coffee shop board or a flyer at a bike shop reaches exactly the right people. Rack cards work for the food carts and the shops that visitors seek out.

Where print earns its keep in Portland.

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

The Pearl District and downtown. Agencies, galleries and offices. Cards with craft and a sales sheet for the pitch.

Alberta, Mississippi and Hawthorne. Shops, restaurants, studios and venues. Flyers and postcards that look like posters.

Division and Sellwood. Neighbourhood businesses and practices. Rack cards, postcards and door hangers.

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

One clear purpose. The right piece of paper.

What Portland tends to order. Portland's print should look made, not printed. Rack cards suit the food cart pods, tap rooms and record shops where a customer picks one up at a counter. Sales sheets help apparel and gear brands pitch wholesale buyers at a trade show. Business cards in 32pt uncoated painted edge fit the agencies and studios around the Pearl, where a tactile card gets remarked on. Postcards double as small posters pinned to a board in Alberta or Hawthorne, and rarely need a design that shouts.

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 Portland note. Portland is the city for the 32pt uncoated painted edge card: a soft, thick, tactile object with one colour on the side. Keep the front spare. For flyers, treat them as small posters, one image and the facts, and they will get pinned up.

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 Portland. The Willamette's drawbridges lift for river traffic on their own schedule, so a crossing at the wrong moment sits a little longer than expected. The wet season runs long, so anything left on a porch or a cart pod counter can dampen quickly, and uncoated stock feels that more than a coated one. The close-in east side is walkable, but the suburbs toward the chip plants are a real drive, so one plan rarely fits both, and older Pearl buildings sometimes load through a narrow freight lift, not a dock.

Mailing in Portland. For postcards by route, Sellwood, Alberta, Hawthorne and Irvington are walkable neighbourhoods where a designed mailer gets kept.

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.