Need 50 slick-looking sheets of letterhead [OT]

Have a look at

Surname Rockford?

A commercial printer should do any volume, but the costs per ream will be prohibitive, especially for four- or six-colour work.

Colour laser is (pretty much) colour laser.

Depending on exactly what you need on first and continuation pages, it might be possible (and a lot cheaper) to get pages colour printed with the logo, which will do for both first and continuation pages, then overprint the sender's address on the first pages using a template set up in the word processor. This technique is used by quite a lot of large organisations, councils etc.

Otherwise there are the generic printed papers from Papers Direct etc, that you overprint with your own address.

Owain

No, very off-topic

Yes You could try using Dreamweaver which can be downloaded free... Cash

HTH, HAND, HORSE.

Since you don't provide a reply email address it's difficult to respond to you without spamming the newsgroup. My company does undertake small design and print jobs in high quality colour output. I'd consider the work that you mention.

You aren't completely clear about what sort of job you want, i.e. do you want someone to design the logo layout the pages etc or just to print off something that you have designed yourself? Also are you likely to want more in the future or is this it, 150 pages total?

If you want to talk about it, try contacting me at sales(at)malloc(dot)co(dot)uk. Don't respond directly to this post because all replies go straight into the bin. Be aware, that it doesn't really matter how few pages you have done, the labour cost remains about the same for the work and *that* is the most important cost in the process. That, and VAT which can be more than the profit element of doing the job for such small jobs.

Err Dreamweaver isn't appropriate at all. It's a web design package.

I'm surprised you think this is too short a run for a commercial printer, because generally speaking commercial printers use Laserjet and Inkjet printers for short runs. But the difference is being a commercial printer having the advantage of bulk buying and wholesale prices on ink cartridges, unlike the average home user will tend to use proper inks and be geared up to produce the best quality results.

You could do this on a domestic printer but generally in my experience anything apart from branded ink cartridges will simply not produce adequate quality and is it really worth spending 50+ on either a new printer or a full set of cartridges simply to print 50 letterheads?

There is no reason why you couldn't do this design on your own computer. If you have nothing else available Microsoft Word has enough basic layout and vector drawing facilities to design and produce a professional looking letterhead. In fact at a push MS Word can be used as a DTP program because if you use the Text boxes and graphic alignment and text wrap settings and know how to alter the default borders it puts on things one can produce very professional results. The other thing is MSWord has letter head Wizards which can help you put something together which looks reasonably professional without needing a degree in Graphic Design. And of course most commercial printers can read MS Word files.

Saying that there can be pitfalls using MS Word particularly if you do anything non standard such as use unusual fonts or special effects since not all versions of MS Word are the same. E.g Apple Macs have a version which is nothing like the PC version.

I do a bit of graphic design myself mainly adverts for Glossy Magazines and night club flyers and generally tend to output artwork to be sent to the publisher or printer as a 300 ppi 24bit bitmap in Adobe Acrobat PDF format, or even in some cases as a large JPEG, because a bitmap format is only 100% reliable way of ensuring all the fonts and any special effects used such as drop shadows can be interpreted as intended on any computer with any platform.

Why? That's a Web design Package :) Actually he'd probably be better off with MS Office Word for designing a letterhead, in fact it even has Wizards for this job, so even someone totally inexperienced with design could create a professional looking letterhead :)

BTW bearing in mind one or two other people are touting for business in this thread LOL if you can find a suitable local printer I could knock up the design for you including a logo supplied in Adobe Acrobat PDF or any suitable format ready to be taken to your printer for 30 and I accept Paypal :)

Have you tried VistaPrint? They normally do free short runs of stationery as a marketing ploy....I know they'll do you 250 business cards for free, so they might do letterheads too.....

How on earth would that help?....Did you read the OP's question at all?

DIY - Word, Publisher, Quark, Indesign etc etc whatever programme you have. Lotsa people do it, who needs a local printer nowadays when you have one on your desktop? If your desktop printer isn't very good a new one would be cheaper than employing a live one. It'd pay for itself in one job.

cheers

Jacob

You could design the letterhead on your PC and put it on a CDRom...Take that CDRom to your local branch of Staples, and they'll do however many full colour prints of it as you require using an extremely high quality colour laser printer......

I've used this service on a number of occasions, and it's very good and affordable too.....

And I'd say that's very reasonable and I wouldn't set finger to mouse for that little.

Indeed, who needs a local printer when they have access to a packet of crayons and a ream of paper.

It may, but experience shows that mostly it won't.

I wouldn't denigrate the skills of the OP they may be perfectly capable of creating a brilliant professional job, but somehow I get the feeling they wouldn't be asking across a slew of newsgroups for assistance if they were capable of doing the job by themselves.

Of the offers so far Amanda's seems very reasonable.

They'll spam your mailbox for years afterwards...

Why on earth would a commercial printer use an inkjet?