When fulfilling your order we ensure quality at every step, so you can rest assured that you will receive memorial cards, acknowledgement cards, wallet cards or bookmarks of supreme quality. We are proud that not only the design, but also printing process described below is done in Ireland.
Of course it is easy to write about quality to people without print industry background. It is easy to hide flaws. This is why in this article we tell you exactly what to look for. We expose the usual weak points so you can examine them on the cards you receive from us.
We just do not fear the scrutiny and are happy to show you what to look for. This knowledge may be useful not only when examining your memorial cards, but any type of print.
If you would like to see real life photos of our products please go to our memorial card photo gallery, acknowledgement cards gallery or wallet memorial cards gallery. If you prefer to watch videos, have a look here.
These are high resolution photographs and should give you a fairly good idea about quality of our cards.
Table of Contents
Artwork Quality Checks
When we receive your order first we check the quality of the photos. If they do not meet our quality requirements, we try to fix them (we have thousands of hours of experience working with photos) – if this is not possible we will not print and contact you to try and resolve this issue.
We do some kind of color correction or other minor tweaks on 99% of the photos.
If we feel that our intervention was significant, we will email you a quick proof so you can see the final card before we print.
When you upload your photo into our system it works to ensure that the best quality possible is obtained from the file you uploaded.
Proof Reading
We do not proof read the cards your personalise online. However we have a quick look before printing and if anything looks suspicious (unusual spelling of the name for example) – we contact you to clarify the matter. “Better safe than sorry” is our rule there.
It is impossible for us to check if the dates on the cards are correct. Please pay extra attention to them and make sure they are correct before approving your online proof.
We do run spell check on all custom verses you provide to us.
Raw Materials
Good raw materials give you good end product and we do not cut corners here, despite of paper price going up every year.
Paper
Our cards are digitally printed on heavy, digital certified card (300 or 350 gram per square metre). This material ensures best quality of print. The press your cards are printed on is Xerox DC1000 – and it is truly state of the art equipment in today’s digital printing world. What makes this press special is unparalleled quality matched with good speed. It is an industrial, professional printing press.
It is economical without sacrificing quality – thus we pass the savings to you.
Also – not all papers are made equal. We use colour profiles that are custom built for each paper type to ensure the best colour possible is printed. It means the press is aware of the type of paper used and adjusts itself to produce the best possible result.
The paper we use comes in small packs. This is to prevent moisture from the air form altering properties of the paper. Digital printing machines are sensitive to paper properties, moisture being probably the most important factor.
Ink (or, to be precise, toner)
Unless you are ordering many thousands of them, your memorial cards will be printed with toner rather than ink. Modern digital printing presses use toners rather than inks. Toner is made up of very tiny color plastic particles that electromagnetically attach to paper and then get fused to it using high temperature and pressure.
It would be very difficult if not completely impossible to use anything else than the toner supplied by the manufacturer of the printing press. Any potential savings would be eaten up by technical problems it would create.
Thus, the toner we use comes from Xerox just like the press. This would be common for all printing companies in Ireland.
Finishing: lamination
After printing memorial cards are gloss laminated using professional, industrial laminator. High pressure, digitally controlled temperature and quality film produce lamination that is even, clean looking, free from bubbles and other unwanted artifacts.
If you want to make sure your cards were laminated using professional equipment, look around crease line (little groove that allows you to fold your card easily). This is where cheap/office grade laminators fail.
Lamination: what to look for (common problems)
Delamination around crease – separation of plastic film from the printed card itself – is a clear sign of cheap equipment and film being used. Another easy quality check you can do yourself is looking around black text on white background. Poor lamination will result in air bubbles around the contour of the letters. There will be visible outline of air around bigger letters, very easy to spot.
Cheap, non digital-grade film (won’t stick to digital print) or poor quality laminator that cannot hold the heat at steady level will produce similar results to the described above.
Lamination gives the cards glossy finish as well as makes them very durable. They will survive spilled water, moist environment or prolonged exposure to sunlight. Even without lamination digital print is extremely resistant to UV so durability should not be your concern.
Finishing: Cutting to Size
At the next step your memorial cards are cut down to size using computerised guillotine – a machine with extremely high accuracy that produces clean, straight cuts. When you unpack your cards you will see that they form an even, clean stack – a clear sign of precision in cutting.
Cutting of your cards is not as straight forward task as it seems. It takes a good bit of experience and thinking on the part of the guillotine operator. A mistake at this stage means that your cards will have to be printed again.
Finishing: Creasing
The cards are then creased using professional, high-speed creaser machine. Automated creasing ensures accurate and clean crease that allows you to easily fold the memorial cards. It also eliminates handling of the cards (they are feed mechanically) – and the less you handle the paper the better.
You should see how easy the paper gets damaged and how careful and smart (real) printers are when handling paper. Probably the easiest way to tell a newbie in printing industry is to let him/her handle paper.
Packaging and Dispatch
At the last step the cards are shrink wrapped and packaged in strudy boxes. Free space in the boxes is filled with special paper or bubblewrap to prevent the content from moving and getting damaged on the way.
Do not be surprised if the box you receive seems too big for the job. We use slightly oversized boxes and bubblewrap to ensure a good bit of “crumple zone”. Prints can be easily damaged.
Also, if your order is large, we may decide to send you multiple parcels. This is because in our (learned the hard way) experience large, heavy parcels are easier to damage in transit.
So we do not take chances and split larger orders into smaller parcels – it works.
All our cards are dispatched by An Post or a courier. All deliveries are tracked. We use a mix of carriers to ensure as low as possible delivery cost.
Should you have any questions regarding quality of our memorial cards, please do not hesitate to contact us through contact section of our website or, for a quicker answer, through our live chat facility. Should you require pricing information, please visit our memorial cards pricing section.
If you would like to order memorial cards online now, please browse our designs.