Unusal print and design costs

gprovan

Member
In a moment of curiosity I decided to email a branch of Minuteman to see how much they'd charge for the design of a business card design. I asked for a logo to be designed, as well as the layout and printing.

For 250 double sided business cards with logo and full design - £25

I know there are some Minuteman people on here, so does this seem right, and what would be involved in the logo design?

:icon_confused:
 
Hi, I haven't heard of 'Minuteman' but your quote for £25 is ridiculously cheap, which is what you might end up getting.

From a business perspective how can £25 cover the cost of design for a logo, business card, printing, packaging and postage.

A logo is like a bread crumb within the loaf of branding. Logo design involves understanding your business: who you are, what you do, target market, competitors, values, etc. Your identity helps create personality and professionalism to your services and products. The most important part of any design project is research, this includes trends, colour, typeface and competitors.

I can see many clients going for this offer, which leads to an obvious question.
Do you understand the importance of branding within your business?
 
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I agree with all you say. We are a design and print company and wouldn't consider anything like this.

Minuteman is a franchised print company. However, I was curious as to their working ethics and practices to see how they could justify this paltry, albeit introductory, figure. Although 'introductory' might be the key point.
And they're in the UK not India, unless they outsource their design?
 
That's less than even Vistaprint. For a custom design, their prices start at about £82 (ex VAT). I imagine that was a misquote, or a loss leader, or they were outsourcing abroad. I know we have at least one Minuteman franchisee here (Peter) though I haven't seen him around in a while.

Being a franchise the quality can vary. I used a Minuteman branch a number of years ago to produce some small booklets and was pretty disappointed with the final results. The print quality was ok (it was digital) but the finished booklets were shoddily put together. The creep was off so there was white space in my gutters, and several of the covers had holes in where I imagine a second attempt at stapling had been applied.

Obviously that shouldn't be representative of all Minuteman branches, but it did make me think twice about using them again.
 
Thanks Paul,

I can understand the printing cost being cheap. However, I asked if this included the design of the logo and the card and they said it was all included.
They don't even know what kind of logo I was looking for, or what I want on the card. I feel like going undercover, being awkward and just paying the £25 to see what I get :icon_biggrin:
 
Yeh I know printers who do that sort of work as well.

Basically they gang run the business cards on a A2 or A1 sheet and cut them down.

A typical business card being 85mm x 55 mm you can get 90 up on a SRA1 or 42 on an sra2

Then for double/triple quantities you can put them 2/3/4 up on the sheet.


This way you can run 90 business cards or 42 business card types at the same time on 400-450gsm and just trim them down.

90*£25 =£2250
42*£25 = £1050


Machine time is usually about £250 makeready - plates about £100 - paper about £5- Laminate - Guillotine - Pack - Deliver


Say max £500 to run the cards

SRA1 you can quadruple your profit, SRA2 you can double your profit.
 
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