Services Of A Stationery Print Shop

By Author: Itamar David
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Stationery stores have been around for several hundred years, providing customers with all sorts of personal and commercial paper products and services. A person could find almost anything that they needed to make scrapbooks, personal letterheads and envelopes, invitations, postcards, business cards and much more. Today's stationery stores also stock a variety of other products such as pencils, pens, calculators, staplers, crayons, markers, tape, stamps and all types of computer paper and accessories like printer cartridges, floppy disks and CDs. But the specialty operations known as stationery print shops are slightly different and may not carry computer-related gear at all.

They may be happy to remain old-fashioned paper experts and small-scale printers, specializing in stationery.There is personal stationery and business stationery. Although today the rules, such as they are, are not so hard and fast. In other words in the old days, personal stationery was always smaller, in the 6 x 9 inch range, rather than what we now call letter size which is 8.5 x 11 inches. There was a time, and not that long ago as some of your ...
... parents or grandparents (or you!) may recall, that ladies and gentlemen of good breeding would have personally imprinted stationery.

The paper was always very nice and the printing was in a nice, classy typeface. People would actually sit down and take half an hour or an hour to handwrite a letter on this beautiful material, and then address a matching envelope. When you got a letter like that, it made you feel quite special, and it was special! It can still be special today, as you can still get the services of a stationery shop in most parts of the country.

Email is not Personal
Computers are great and we all are glad we have them to do the work we do. But for communicating with friends and family, emails can seem a little impersonal. In addition, unless some time and attention is given to them, they aren't very colorful or stylish either. There are ways, though, that you can use your computer to help you create your own custom stationery, for the office or yourself. If you create a certain type of layout file on your computer, with a word processor or a design program (like Photoshop or QuarkXPress), you can take either the computer file or a printout of it (in high resolution, not from your inkjet printer) and have a specialty stationery print shop produce your design on your choice of paper.

Choosing paper is one of the most important services that the stationery print shop provides, as many people today are ignorant of what good paper is, what it looks like and how it feels. In fact, the crafts-type people that run these sorts of operations have to be very knowledgeable about paper (as well as ink, color theory, envelopes, printing methods and so on) and the different ways paper is made, colored and used. There are classic laid papers that have a gentle ribbing along their surface. There are vellum papers originally made from animal skins. There are all kinds of papers, from the laid types to various versions of cotton, linen, translucent and cardstock. A stationery expert can tell you all about the weight of paper, the colors available and how each type of paper reacts to different kinds of printing technology, including home/office printers.

Printing Styles
You can buy the paper and envelopes without having them pre-printed and use your laser or inkjet printer to create your own office or personal stationery. However, the stationery pros can show you many different ways of printing that have very dramatic and attractive effects. Letterpress printing, which many stationery print shops do, is when individual sheets have the type pressed into them, a very old and classy way of printing stationery. This is usually done for personal stationery and important invitations, like weddings. For business use, a standard offset printing method is usually sufficient.

For printing on glossy paper and doing photo-realistic color printing, a web press is usually needed. These are too large though to be in a small stationery shop and four-color printing (which is what web presses do) is not called for very often with stationery.The other services you will find in a good stationery print shop are design and production of invitations, flyers, business cards, certificates and diplomas.

For anything that needs that extra touch of class and a sophisticated appeal, you can't go wrong with people who have become experts at design, color, typography, paper, ink and printing. It is very fascinating how some of the best stationery print shops combine the technology of today -the computers and the design software- with the letterpress and paper-making skills of a bygone era. Staffed with true crafts professionals, these kinds of stationery print shops offer a great mix of the antique and the newfangled with something to please every taste.
About Author:
StationeryPrintShop.com is here to provide you with the finest selection of personalized stationery, both high-end and affordable invitations, birth announcements and moving announcements. Tired of hand writing out your address on envelopes? Try custom stampers, embossers or address labels with a design to make it extra special. Visit us online today!