Page 17 - Print 21 Magazine Sep-Oct 2020

Trade Printing
for all levels of need. The Basic $199-a-month package is designed for small businesses that only need an occasional design job or art fix. That $199 gets you 20 allocated hours a month, with up to 20 orders per month, all of which come with unlimited revisions, until print ready PDF is ready for download.
The Standard package comes
in at $399 a month and is for medium-sized businesses that needs additional resources for overflow work or low-cost design capacity.
Using the Standard package will get you 40 allocated hours a month, 40 orders a month with unlimited revisions, up to three active
orders in progress at any one time, turnaround for first draft in less than a day – 22 hours.
For printers looking to cater for more work without employing additional staff, the Professional subscription level at $1199 a month will get you
up to 120 hours of monthly allocated hours, with up to 120 separate orders with unlimited revisions. There can be five active orders going through at any one time, and first draft will be ready within 22 hours.
Design Desk is also available as Print Ready package, which is for businesses that do not need a graphic design service, but do want their files to be guaranteed ready for print with all bleed, resizing, trim marks, colour conversion and the like taken care of.
This $499 a month package provides up to 20 allocated hours, up to 100 orders a month, and turnaround in less than three hours to fix a file to print ready.
Whatever level of service is taken, the files are not exclusive to print
at CMYKhub, they can be printed
by the company, but equally the PDFs can be downloaded and can be printed by the subscriber itself, or be sent elsewhere for printing.
Francis says, “Design Desk has been created to take a potential headache away from printers. They have access to on-demand design, from designers who are totally versed in print. The team works exclusively for Design Desk and has been thoroughly trained by CMYKhub management. There is no risk of your artwork being re- used or re-generated elsewhere; the same trade-only trust you have for CMYKhub the printer, carries over to this service.
“Files that have gone through the Print Ready package, for instance, will never be rejected or come back to the printer for corrections.
“Subscribers to the Beginner, Standard or Professional packages have peace of mind knowing that whatever does or does not come their way they will be able to handle it. Peaks and troughs will no longer be problematic.”
Under any of the three packages revisions are unlimited. Francis says, “A customer would typically upload the design elements – text, logos, images – and a brief. When the designer comes back with the design the customer can annotate it, and establish a connection with the designer, until the customer is satisfied with the layout.”
The drive to create Design Desk came as CMYKhub noticed skill sets in preparing files for print were declining, and also saw that some printers were struggling to manage designers with workload.
Francis says, “As far as creating print ready files is concerned, I knew from my own experience that design colleges were not putting such an emphasis on it, as they focused on digital design. The skills are dipping. We guarantee the files will be print ready, all colours converted to CMYK with bleeds, trims, crops and sizing all correct.”
“Subscribers to the Beginner, Standard or Professional packages have peace of mind knowing that whatever does
or does not come their way they will be able to handle it. Peaks and troughs will no longer be problematic.” Glen Francis, CMYKhub
The three levels of Design Desk are aimed at creating products in the more mainstream: business cards, flyers, brochures, posters, pull-up banners and the like.
Francis says, “We will add more esoteric products as we go along, but on launch we are looking at the 80/20 rule, which will cater for the vast majority of any printer’s jobs, and in most cases all of them.”
CMYKhub has print manufacturing sites in each state, with offset, digital and wide format print solutions. Francis says, “We are manufacturers. We want to make life as easy as possible for our trade partners. We know the pressures they are under. Design Desk will
be a great new addition to printers around the country, enabling them to focus on the business of servicing their clients.” 21
Design Desk
What is Design Desk?
Design Desk is a subscription prepress and graphic design service exclusively for the print trade of Australia.
How does it work?
Create your order by selecting the print product you wish to design, eg business card, flyer, banner, or the prepress service you require, eg bleed, dieline, re-size. Brief the Design Desk team using the supplied form and provide any relevant files they’ll require to produce the print ready artwork. Publish the order and you’ll see it appear on your own workflow board. You’ll receive notifications as your order progresses through each stage of creation including once it is available to review a proof. The Design Desk platform allows you to view and annotate your proof online, so you can clearly communicate and collaborate with your allocated designer. Once the proof has been approved, a print
ready PDF will be available to download and you can confidently submit your print order
to any reputable printer for production. Each subscription package provides several GB of storage so your artwork can securely be kept on the platform for months to come.
Why Design Desk?
A full-time designer or qualified prepress operator is a luxury in that few print businesses can afford at the moment. Even with JobKeeper supporting Australian businesses for an extended period now, it is rare that these staff members will be able to work a 40-hour week. It is common to hear from business owners who urgently need client supplied artwork fixed, but their designer isn’t due back into the office until the following day. CMYKhub Design Desk provides access to a whole team of university-qualified designers and CMYKhub-trained prepress staff for 11 hours a day, five days a week. Even businesses with a team of designers will find the Design Desk resource beneficial; outsourcing some of the time-consuming or menial tasks is a great way to increase productivity without having to invest further in staff or software licenses.
How much does it cost?
With four levels of subscription, there are packages to suit every business. No lock-in contracts with the ability to adjust or cancel your subscription any time to proportionately meet your workload. The Beginner subscription starts at $199 per month, which provides a 14-day trial period where you
can cancel and receive a refund if you decide it’s not for you. $399 gets you the Standard subscription and $1199 for the Professional package. For those that just require prepress services like adding bleed or resizing artwork there is the option for the fast turnaround Print Ready package for $499 per month.
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