Welcome to the place to learn a little bit about the secrets to printing smarter.

My company, CCS Printing, has earned our reputation by helping our clients make better print decisions. We call ourselves guides, in the same sense that you need an expert to help you achieve any important task.

Lets face it. Printing is not as easy as sending an email, creating a word doc or even posting up web pages. In that sense it is an industry in decline. But the very forces causing sweeping change to this industry are also creating opportunities to make a more lasting impression on your audience. The Web has become a crowded place. Email in-boxes are stuffed with spam. Filters sometimes move valid email straight to the trash.

The great thing about a printed piece is that it is tactile. You can feel the love that went into creating it. Good design, layout, paper and finishing leaves an impression on the intended audience that the Web just cannot come close to.

But there are secrets to designing and engineering great printed pieces. When you are working with a pro you get the results you intended. Unfortunately, the industry is populated by fewer experts. The decline of print in general and more lately the overall global economic decline has led struggling printers to close their doors. Mom and Pop shops have had to cut back on expert staff and the big national companies just don't have the passion it takes to craft great print.

Online and offshore printers provide new options but they also have their drawbacks. Online printers can be cold to work with. They are only as good as the Web tools they've put up for you to use. Customer service can be limited. Offshore printers are certainly cheap, if you are buying enough print, but it's hard to wait for product to be shipped from overseas and even then, you get what they produce and it's often inferior to work done here in the U.S.

We'll attempt to demystify print for you. We'll help you print smarter, for less cost, and we'll even help you to print green. Best of all, you don't even need to print with us. We're just here to educate. Well, to be honest we'd like to do your printing too. But we'll settle for being friends.

Visit our website www.ccsprinting.net to learn more about CCS.

Kevin Sullivan, President, CCS Printing