Everyone advertises rush printing. Fewer are specific about what that actually covers. Here is an honest breakdown.
Genuinely same-day
- Plotting: architectural and engineering sets from PDF, if files arrive in the morning.
- Short-run digital: flyers, sell sheets, programs, price lists, presentation copies.
- Basic mounted boards: exhibits and presentation boards on foam board.
- Simple posters on the wide format roll.
- Document reproduction, collating, binding and drilling.
Overnight or 24 hours
- Business cards on standard stock without special finishes.
- Pitch books and bound presentations, including tabs.
- Vinyl banners.
- Postcards and flyers on standard stocks.
- Palm cards and campaign literature on standard stocks.
Needs real time, no matter who promises otherwise
- Foil stamping, embossing and letterpress: dies have to be made.
- Die cutting to a custom shape: same reason.
- Painted edges: the paint has to cure.
- Custom packaging: structural samples come first, and skipping that is how a run gets scrapped.
- Screen printed apparel in volume: screens must be burned and ink must cure.
- Anything needing a physical color match against a supplied sample.
The honest version: a shop that promises foil-stamped cards by tomorrow morning is either not actually foil stamping them or not actually delivering tomorrow. Ask which.
How to help a rush job succeed
- Call rather than email. A five-minute conversation resolves what a thread will not.
- Give the real deadline, including where it has to physically be and by when.
- Send a print-ready PDF, not a working file. Chasing a missing font costs an hour you do not have.
- Decide the stock quickly, or accept our recommendation and move.
- Approve the proof immediately. Proof approval is the most common place rush jobs stall.
- Nominate one decision maker. Committee approval and rush schedules are incompatible.
Delivery is the part people forget
A job finished at 4pm in the Financial District that has to reach Midtown by 5pm is a traffic problem, not a printing problem. We deliver free anywhere in Manhattan and build the courier window into the schedule rather than treating it as an afterthought.
Call the shop with your deadline and we will tell you plainly whether it is achievable. An honest no is more useful than an optimistic yes.
Need this printed? We are at 40 Wall Street, and we deliver free anywhere in Manhattan.