let’s talk printers

Once you begin designing your own invitations, stationery, artwork, you kinda want to be able to print it. There are times when having items printed professionally is ideal, but sometimes, you don’t really want to drive to the closest printer to have six invitations to your son’s party made. You just want to print from home.

And so, as a designer – whether professional or not – a printer is a good thing to have.

I am often asked what printer I use and where I keep it so today we’ll chat about such things.

Here’s the thing about my printer: it is huge. I don’t want it on my desk taking up space. It’s fine looking, but I don’t particularly want to look at it while working. But, I use it often (printing proofs to check color, small batches of stationery and invitations, blank sheet music for my little musician and doc mcstuffins coloring pages to keep tiny hands occupied) and so it needs to be accessible.

Therefore, the printer lives on the floor (big no-no, I’m sure) under my desk. It gets dusty. It’s probably not the ideal location for a nice printer, but it works for me.

So let’s talk about this printer.

When choosing a printer there were a few features that were very important to me. First, it needed to take heavy card stock without issue. I like to print on at least 100lb paper for most projects and this printer does that well.  Second, it needed to print colors as true as possible and since this printer takes 8 ink cartridges, the color output is really nice. Third, I liked the option for larger than standard prints and this one can go up to 13 x 19 inches (although, truth be told, I’ve never printed this large so maybe that feature isn’t really that important after all).

This particular printer is on the pricier side at $375 for just regular at-home-printer use, but if you are looking for high quality and one that will hold up for years, it is a great fit. Similar photo printers run as high as $900, so this one doesn’t seem quite so steep when comparing.

There are a million different options for good printers and choosing one just depends on what you are looking for and what price point you want to stay within. Here is a helpful list of the top five photo inkjet printers, and another great list of best sellers on Amazon.

(In case you’re wondering, all of the art prints sold in my shop are professionally printed with a laser printer. We use a small local company who does excellent work and quick turnaround.)