Printing your magazine ultimately comes down to budget. We all want the best printing finished on the best paper stocks, but unless you happen to be an oil tycoon or vaguely related to someone in the Fortune 500 then you have to cut your printing cloth accordingly.
When it comes to colour in your magazine make the most of all your budgets don’t just think in full colour or black only. It is possible to have full colour sections married next to more economical black only print. Depending on what type of magazine you run you can get away with charging more for colour advertising. It is still commonplace to use the text heavy sections and classified advertising as black only sections this will reduce our printing bill and not debase your magazines weight or kudos.
There sadly is no direct comparison between pricing as all printers are different between printing full colour or black only but there is a significant setup difference between the two on a litho machine and the click rate will be cheaper on most digital machines so as a guide you would be looking at saving between 15-30% on the completed printed page. There are lots of variables including run length, paper stocks and most importantly incumbent machinery.
Printing black only you must remember that there are 100% gradients to black which can make the pages more interesting and your solid block colour areas more professional in their design, just remember that grey text is harder to read for all people and mass amount of solid ink on one page can cause some ‘show through’ on the reverse of that page.
If we can help with any more magazine setup advice then please feel free to get in contact.