Check your lease, cause you’re living in Print City!
Grand Rapids is often called “Furniture City,” and it once was. But in the last 20 years, a couple of things have taken over - most notably, beer and print. These days, you can find a printshop on every other block, but it’s not as competitive as you might think. Most of us have got our own little niches carved out. I’ve found that it’s worked best for me (and my customers) if I aim to stay in my own lane. I print what I print, and I’m good at it.
That said, here are a few services that I do not offer at Brownlee. I have suggestions for a lot of them, but a couple are specialized or antiquated skills that really doesn’t exist commercially… not locally anyway. Good luck.
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Design Work
I’ve just gotten too busy to offer this anymore. I hear it so often, “but, I just need ___.” Listen, if ____ was easy, you wouldn’t be asking a stranger to do it. I’m mostly a “commercial” printer. I work directly with designers, and they’re able to provide me with print-ready files.
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Super small runs
Every job has some setup that comes with it. For all the time that it takes to get a job ready to print, it’s not worth it for me do just make 1 or 2 copies.
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Screenprinting
This is a different animal; it requires different equipment, different ink, and a set of skills that I know almost nothing about.
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CDs / Records
Certain places specialize in this kind of thing. It’s tough to beat their quality, and almost impossible to beat their price.
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Letterpress
Much like screenprinting, letterpress is a whole other thing. I know a couple of people with letterpresses, but they’re all former printers who have kept them around as a hobby. Most old printers are also hoarders, it’s hard to let go!
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Embossing / Die-Cutting / Foil Stamping
Nothing too fancy here. For most of these tasks, a die needs to be designed and constructed. Because of the time and cost involved with building that, most companies would want to do a minimum quantity, or charge a minimum amount. Also, you would be on the hook for the cost of the die.
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Books
Hard cover, paperback, and thing that you would call a “book” rather than a “booklet” is probably out of my league.
I don’t really have any recommendations for this, especially locally. Sorry.
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Customer-supplied paper
I get asked all the time to print on textured paper, super thick paper, magnets, clear sheets, paper with torn edges, wacky-sized stuff, or a bunch of other pieces that I just don’t feel comfortable running through my machine.
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Small Envelopes
The smallest envelope that I can print is A2. There is a size called “4 Bar” (4 barronial) that is common for RSVPs to be returned in… these are too small for my machine.
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White ink
I have a laser printer, it only takes blue, red, yellow, and black toner. If I were to print on a darker colored sheet of paper, it can only come out darker than that. Does that make sense? No white ink - you’ll need to look into screenprint, offset, letterpress, or something else.