Are you really offering printer-friendly docs?

January 9th, 2008 by Carolyn Gardner

We’re all very conscious about saving trees these days. Doing the green thing is no longer optional. In fact, it’s expected and it’s a big reason why email is such a hero. That reminds me…have you heard the latest? According to our good friends at JupiterResearch, email marketing spends will grow to $2.1 billion in 2012 from $1.2 billion in 2007!!! Meow!

Anyhow…back to my point about trees…Yes email helps reduce paper waste, but it will never be a paperless society. There are always going to be things we need to print. We’re set up for it - i.e. long docs are politely PDF’d for printing; coupons are set up with compelling reasons to print and redeem in-store…etc.

To top it all off, we often see nice little messages in our emails or on web pages implying we can get the “printer-friendly” version. Printer-friendly, my ___! All too often these so-called printer-friendly things are anything but! They are toner crazy and that makes me crazy!

It’s at this point that I point back to the designers who get all hung up in “the look” vs. “the tone(r)”…

Too many designers say bring on more toner! Well they don’t quite say it, but they demand it because they’re so consumed by making these PDFs and coupons all dramatic and fancy. I’m cool with professionally designed stuff, but when the efforts for drama and beauty take a lot of toner, it’s over. The toner waste makes me lose all the pre-printing desires I had!

So for all my marketing friends - please remind your designers of what makes something truly “printer-friendly”. It’s pretty simple - don’t use dark backgrounds with light fonts.

God it feels good to get that off my chest…

Posted in Carolyn Gardner, Email marketing |

One Response

Colin Says:

January 9th, 2008 at 6:31 pm

When it comes to websites, you can create a ‘print-ready’ page that will work automatically with the browser’s print button.

For the site developers — all you need to do is create a second stylesheet that hides your menu and layout images, makes your backgrounds white and your text black. Include this HTML stylesheet like any other but add media=”print” to your element. Your browser will now automatically use this stylesheet when you print a page — you don’t even need a seperate page.

This is a great usability feature for an e-commerce store, since you can print product information without all the ads and shopping cart features wasting ink or toner on a printed page. (You just need to let your users know you have it.)