5 Theater Playbill Printing Ideas That Bring Your Show To Life
Staging a theater production is an exciting and creative process. From building the set to rehearsing and fundraising to watching the curtain go up on opening night, you have the freedom to follow wherever your inspiration leads you. This is also the case when it comes to your playbill printing.
Theater playbills are easy to print, and they add an extra level of showmanship to your performance. With the right planning, you can print cheap playbills that engage your audience. In this article, we’ll explain the top ideas behind printing great theater playbills.
Why Professional Playbill Printing Matters
Playbill printing is a simple and affordable way to bring your production up a notch. Professional printing companies can print on papers that are difficult or impossible to use in at-home or office printers. These papers for your custom playbill can be thicker than typical office printer paper and make your playbill look professional and sophisticated. They can also be glossy, which makes your playbill shine.
Professional printing also provides the certainty that your playbills will arrive on-time, and you don’t need to worry about the printing process itself. There’s no need to deal with buying paper and ink or figuring out printer repairs. Simply sit back, relax, and enjoy the process!
5 Playbill Printing Ideas
Here are ZoePrint’s top 5 ideas that lead to attractive and engaging playbills on opening night.
Your playbill design is a visualization of your production, and it’s how people will remember this performance years into the future. Therefore, create a playbill design that encapsulates what you want readers to remember.
It can be a good idea to incorporate many people’s ideas into the design process so that you can choose the best ideas that have been contributed. Feel free to ask actors and stage crew for design ideas. You can even ask a performer who does visual art to design the program’s cover.
When it comes to both your program’s cover design and its internal design, feel free to reach out to a professional playbill printing company such as ZoePrint, as they can help make your desired design look great in print. If you’re struggling to get ideas, your print partner can even create your entire design for you.
When printing your playbills, you can choose from a wide range of size options. Two of the most popular playbill sizes include 5.5x8.5 and 8.5x11. Both sizes offer unique advantages.
5.5x8.5 playbills are a common size and offer a range of benefits: they’re large enough to contain everything you’d like to include in your playbill, while still being small enough for audience members to hold while they watch the show. Because they’re smaller, they’re also cheaper to print.
8.5x11 playbills give you space to dive in and go into detail. You can include large images that bring the performers and the rehearsal space to life, and you can make some extra money by selling full-page ads to local businesses. These larger playbills include enough space to include pretty much anything you’d like.
Playbills for amateur theater such as school and community theaters often function as keepsakes. It’s a great idea to include photos from the rehearsal process and dress rehearsals, which give performers and their families the opportunity to look back at their playbills for years to come and remember the good times they had performing. Including photos transforms a simple playbill into a keepsake that recipients will treasure for decades.
To make your photos look great, print your custom playbill in color on a glossy paper. Glossy paper makes colors pop and increases the definition of the images. As well, be sure to include photos in the highest possible resolution so that they look crisp and clear in print.
Professional playbill printing includes finishing processes that take your product to the next level, such as binding, embossing, and rounding corners. These processes are difficult to create on your own but simple for a professional printing company to add, and they contribute an extra level of sophistication to your playbills. They don’t cost much but make your playbills feel luxurious.
Playbills aren’t the only print products your production will need. You’ll probably be printing posters and flyers advertising your performances, and including similar design choices for all of your materials, like using the same text font and color scheme, helps readers see that all of your products are advertising the same performance.
You can choose to use the same artwork on all of your products for a sense of consistency between your materials, so that viewers know that they’re all about the same show, or you can opt for different illustrations that give viewers a range of interesting visuals to look at and interest a wider range of potential audience members.
Partner With The Best Cheap Playbill Printing Company
Here at ZoePrint, we’re leaders in the playbill printing business. With decades of experience printing theater playbills for schools, community theaters, and other organizations, we can bring your playbill dream to life. We also print all the other products your production needs, including posters, flyers, and more.
Order online to get started with playbill printing, or ask ZoePrint for a custom quote!
