How important is a reliable print shop for us designers? You know it: it’s essential! How terrible is it to create a top-notch design and your printing house messes it up.

As a full-service design agency, we can’t limit ourselves to delivering comps and then wander off. We rely on dependable vendors for just about anything. I’m sure you’ll agree with me. Even if you don’t do print and you’re specialized in web design, you want to recommend quality when it comes to web hosting.

The quality our suppliers deliver reflects on us as valuable designers. That’s why you should always be on the lookout for the best quality and the best price - because, in addition to providing quality material to your client, you also don’t want to ruin your margin.

So, on a quick note for design studios, let me share this with you.

I just came across BuildASign.com, a printing house specialized in signs, flags and banners. They have a great deal of pre-designed layouts you can customize - but I wasn’t really interested in that, as you might guess.

What I find really interesting about this site is that you can upload your own designs - in TIFF and EPS format, among others, for every product. That’s not only signs, flags and banners, but also stickers, boards and even neon signs. They have a delivery time between three and ten days - but what struck me most was their pricing! Go to the site, pick a 10 x 3 ft sized vinyl banner, upload your 4c EPS file, and then look at the price they charge: it’s $ 80.71.

Now, considering conventional market prices between 3 and 6 times as much for a banner of that size, I went overboard about the site pretty quickly. It drove me to dig a bit deeper, and while I have to say that the only drawback I could find is the maximum file size for uploads (6 MB), I’d also say that considering the price, that’s not too bad. It might not be the best choice for complicated or overly sophisticated designs that are a lot larger than 6 Megs, but they seem to deliver very good quality. And where else do you get a price like this one?

I’d like to know if anyone has come across BuildASign.com already. Did you purchase one of their products? If so, please share that information with us! It does look like a pretty good alternative to me.