Offset Printing vs. Digital Printing

The first question we can ask here is, what exactly is offset printing and what is digital printing? How can we choose between the two? There are a plethora of articles and blog posts regarding this very issue. And we wanted to be able to share with you a few of these in order to help you decide what works best for you.

ABCOtoGO summarizes offset and digital printing as follows: “Generally speaking, offset printing works by transferring ink from a plate to a rubber sheet, which then rolls the ink onto paper, vinyl or other surfaces. This is in contrast to digital printing, which does not use plates to transfer ink to paper.” Natalie Wiley, in her post “The Difference Between Offset and Digital Printing” states that “For prospective print customers, the difference between offset printing and digital printing is that digital printing is better suited for short-run printing (i.e. starting at 1 single copy) and offset printing is better suited for higher volume printing (i.e. starts being economical 2,000+ identical copies).” Karla Lant has written a great post in order to help you decide what method to print (and why) in her blog post “Digital vs. offset printing: choosing the right technique”. Kineticaprint explores the pros and cons of both here. AA Global Print further discusses the cost element in detail here. Finally, print goes into some more technical aspects of these two methods of printing here.

What methods do you use? Had you heard of these different methods before? What are your recommendations? Please write your views in the comments section below.