Is it more advantageous to have your own large format printer or to order prints online? We have the answer.

Historical Window

For many years, it was common practice for design studios to own a plotter and print all necessary documents internally. Employees generally wanted to have perfect control over the project. Using external printing options also hindered the difficult transmission of large volumes of data and the prices with external providers. However, this "in-house" approach was disadvantageous due to time loss during printing and assembling documents. In addition, employees needed to monitor supplies of paper, boards, and other consumables, which took additional time due to regular restocking.

Modern Approaches to Printing

In recent years, there has been a shift in the approach to printing project documentation. Among other things, this is due to:

• much easier and faster sending of print data to external providers,
• more friendly printing service prices
• and quick delivery of all necessary prints.

Many studios are also realizing that standing by a large-format printer is not an activity that their employees should spend their time on.

Advantages of Outsourcing Printing Services

You have surely heard a lot about the benefits of outsourcing various types of services. When an external provider can do the work faster, cheaper, and better for you, it is usually not reasonable to perform this activity internally or even have dedicated specialized employees for it. The main thing is to fully focus on your core business – you can easily leave the other work to others.

The advantages that outsourcing brings you include:

• Time savings: instead of employees spending hours printing and assembling documents, they can fully concentrate on design and project planning. If they send data for external processing, they will find completed, assembled, and stamped drawings ready for delivery to the client on their desks in the evening (or the external provider will deliver them directly to the client).
• Quality and reliability: external printing providers use the latest large-format printers that the studio often could not afford. Printing with an external provider thus yields much higher quality outputs than those prepared internally. Delivery of finished materials occurs very quickly today, even if you are located outside major cities. For example, at Copy General, delivery is possible to any location, just like with regular e-shops.
• Cost savings: due to technological advancement and quality large-format printers, you can now print color project documentation at prices that previously matched only black and white printing. This significantly reduces the cost of outsourcing while also giving you more engaging and clearer outputs.
• Flexibility: external printing services operate continuously. Even if you run out of cartridges or paper in the printer, or if a colleague who knows how to set the print correctly does not come to work. At Copy General, printing occurs 24/7, so if a client calls you in the evening wanting to see finished designs by morning, you don’t have to work overtime but simply send a printing request to the external provider who will process it overnight.

Ideal Model: Renting a Plotter and Outsourcing

To not blindly praise outsourcing, having your own large-format printer is certainly not a bad idea. In fact, it is the ideal solution if you have one printer in the studio on which you can create print previews. This way, you can check that the print data is prepared correctly, or you can calmly adjust the print file. You can also see from the preview whether everything meets your expectations and so on.

Then, you send this tested file for professional printing, which is sufficiently representative for you to hand it over to the client. And if you run out of paper rolls or print cartridges, nothing will happen, the client will still receive everything on time.

If you are reluctant to spend money on your own plotter – for instance, if you do not know how long you will need it or if you currently have no budget space – you can easily solve this through printer rental. And this even applies if outsourcing is not for you, but you want to handle all printing yourself. You can rent even the best available models on the market.

Practical Example

The architectural studio Jakub Cigler Architects Copy General helped with printing drawing documentation, which they could no longer keep up with as the number of projects increased. Their own large-format printer was also outdated. Professionals from Copy General helped them select a suitable plotter for preview prints and took over the management of all other printing processes. The designers also went through training to make collaboration as simple as possible and to better monitor their printing costs.

The studio can rely on receiving the necessary project printed in the agreed deadline and in perfect quality without exceeding the set costs.