Pittsburgh Printing Resources

While I was an undergraduate at SMS, on-campus printing resources were pretty mediocre. As a result, the design students spent a lot of energy ferreting out the best off-campus printers. Typecenter, Lithostat, Springfield Blueprint--we knew where to go to get the best prints, the cheapest service or the quickest turnaround time.

Now I'm in Pittsburgh. Surprisingly, the printing resources at CMU aren't much better than SMS circa 1998. Since I'm separated from the resources I knew then by 700 miles and five years, I've had to start from scratch. I spent this week getting up to speed on the state of the industry. After visiting more than a dozen service bureaus, I compiled this list of Pittsburgh Printing Resources for the rest of the design grads, ordered by print quality.

As an aside--during the past five years, most printers have moved to a filmless workflow. Consequently, finding a Linotronic imagesetter has been unexpectedly tough. The best I've been able to come up with is a 12" wide Linotronic for paper positives. The sales rep I talked to seemed surprised to discover they still had it at all.

Posted September 13, 2003

Post a Comment

URL (or E-mail Address)

Your name

Comments