What to Send a Printer for a Real Quote

Most print briefs are too short, and the cost of that shows up later as quotes that cannot be compared, or a delivery that is technically correct and practically wrong.

This is what a closed brief contains. It is not long, and writing it once for a job you repeat pays for itself immediately.

The eight things every brief needs

What the piece is. A folder, a carton, a banner, a booklet. Name it in trade terms if you can, and describe it plainly if you cannot.
Finished size. Flat and folded, if it folds. If you are matching something you already have, send the existing piece or its dimensions.
Quantity, and two others. Ask for the number you think you want plus one lower and one higher. Setup is fixed, so the curve often surprises people.
Stock. Weight, coating, and brand or grade if you have a preference. If you do not, say so and ask them to name what they quoted.
Colors and sides. Full color both sides, one color one side, or specific spot colors. Say whether a brand color has to match exactly.
Finishing. Lamination, foil, emboss, spot gloss, die cutting, folding, gluing, drilling, scoring. Anything that happens after the ink.
Where it goes. One address or several, and whether they are quoting delivered or collected.
When you need it in hand. Not when you want it shipped. Those are different dates and the gap between them is freight.

Say what you have not decided

The instinct is to leave the uncertain parts out, which quietly hands each shop permission to assume something different. Do the opposite. Write "stock not decided, please recommend and price two options" and you get comparable recommendations instead of incomparable guesses.

The same applies to artwork. "Artwork not started" is useful information. It tells the shop whether it is quoting a print job or a print job with a design dependency, and it lets them tell you what format they will need.

What to send with it

Artwork, if it exists, as a print ready PDF
A die line, if one exists from a previous run
A physical sample of anything you are matching
A photograph of the existing piece if you cannot post one

If a job has been run before, the single most useful thing you can send is the previous job number or a sample. It removes almost every ambiguity at once.

Three questions to ask back

A quote is not just a number, and these three tell you more about the risk than the price does.

Is the finishing done in house? A shop that subcontracts foil or die cutting is carrying a schedule dependency in another building. That is normal and often fine. It is also the most common reason a date slips, and it does not appear on a quote.

What tooling is included, and who owns it? Dies are made once and reused. Whether the cost is in this quote or the next one changes the comparison, and who owns it afterwards changes whether you can move the work.

What proof do I get? A PDF, a printed proof, or a press check are three different levels of certainty at three different costs. Color critical work and a black and white form do not need the same answer.

Artwork requirements worth knowing before you send anything

Two of these cause more reprints than everything else combined.

Bleed. Anything intended to run off the edge has to extend past the trim, conventionally by an eighth of an inch, because trimming has tolerance. Artwork built exactly to finished size will show a white sliver on some sheets.

Finishes need their own layer. Foil, emboss and spot gloss are not colors. Each wants a separate layer in the file, marked as solid black vector, showing exactly where the effect goes. A note in an email saying "foil the logo" is how the wrong thing gets foiled.

There is more on that in the piece on specialty finishes.

A brief you can reuse

For anything that repeats, write the brief once and keep it. Reorders then take a minute rather than a rediscovery, and consistency between runs stops being luck.

That reuse is the quiet part of the value. The first job in a category is slow because the decisions are being made properly. Every one after that is fast because they were.

If running that process is not a good use of your week, it is worth a conversation.