Web Offset Printing – What is It?

If your idea of printing is simply clicking “Print” on your computer screen and waiting for a piece of paper to spit out, you have probably never heard of web offset printing.

Contrary to what it sounds like, web offset printing has absolutely nothing to do with the internet. Actually, web offset printing has a history that goes back decades. Remember those old movies, where a character suddenly shouted, “Stop the presses!”? They were actually referring to a web offset printing press.

A web press prints on paper from a roll, instead of individual sheets. This roll is the “web” in web offset. Normally, the paper used in web offset printing is anywhere from 11”-56” wide. One of the benefits of web offset printing is that you can print out a variety of different-sized documents. These rolls can put out massive amounts of product. In fact, some of the rolls weigh over 2,000 pounds and are several miles in length!

Those paper rolls make the web offset printing process the fastest out there. Large volumes of pages can be produced quickly. In fact, the paper runs through a web offset printing press at a rate of anywhere between 5 and 50 feet per second! That is one reason why web offset printing is the best choice for high volume, commercial printing jobs.

Who Uses Web Offset Printing?

Web offset printing is ideal for newspapers, magazines, catalogs, flyers, or virtually any print job you can imagine. Small paperback books are also popular printing jobs amount web offset printing. Web offset is best used for high volume, commercial printing jobs. It is the most cost effective and efficient way to print large amounts of any type of product.

This is because the printing plate only has to be made one time. This actually causes the price per page to go down as the amount of product you are printing goes up.

Efficiency, quality, affordability; for large printing jobs, web offset printing can’t be beat.