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Client Deliverables – The CD-ROM gets a makeover

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Back in October, I was at PhotoPlus Expo, and tucked away in a corner was a very small booth. So small that I didn’t notice it during my first pass-thru of the show floor. On a second walk-around, I noticed the printers spinning, showing off the CD’s, and I was pleasantly surprised at how nice they looked – they were printed on a DYMO CD/DVD Color Printer.

I grabbed a brochure, and asked when it would be available, and they said November, so I put it on my back burner until it popped into my mind on a flight back from LA last night, when an in-flight magazine had an ad for Dymo, and I thought to myself that I wanted to check to see if it was available now. And it is.

I plan on migrating from my silk-screen printed discs to a more customized output using this device. Far too often, I burn a disc that cost $1.50 (CD + silkscreening costs) and it fails, and I’d rather not print the CD until it’s been tested as good.

I use the following CD for client deliverables:
(Continued after the Jump)

I am looking forward to replicating that layout and design with my new Dymo. It expect it to look very very close to a silk-screened disk, and I am excited about that.

Quite often, after we deliver a CD, and encourage the client to make copies, they instead come back to us to burn a second disc, which we do for 50% of the original. So, if our CD output charge was $75, the second CD is $37.50. For the CD’s that are $175 to output (which is about 80% of what we do), our second CD charge is $87.50, plus shipping/couriers. The clients like that it looks professional, and consistent with the other CD they received.
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Originally published on Photo Business News & Forum on December 6, 2007. Comments are closed; this post is part of the archive.

12 thoughts on “Client Deliverables – The CD-ROM gets a makeover”

  2. It arrives Monday. I will let you know the comparison between my silk-screened CD’s and the ones output from this. What I saw at the show was comparable to mine, and the custom ability to input typed text, rather than hand-writing in client event information.

    It may be that PDN’s results were based upon how a photo looks, rather than graphics.

    John
  3. Perfect timing! I just put more lightscribe discs on my Christmas list and have been looking at custom silk-screened discs. The lightscribe is better than a hand-written disc but it’s slow and looks rather bland. It seems that some folks like the Epson R220/280 for inkjet disc printing but I don’t know much about it. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about the DYMO.
  4. Try Lightscribe. It creates labels that look fantastic– much, much nicer (and more professional) than your example in today’s post, John.

    All you need are Lightscribe CD’s– no ink or supplies. Works great with a laptop.

    The only downside is that it takes a LONG time to create a label on CD (20-25 minutes) so it’s not very good for bulk orders. Oh yeah, and I’m not sure if it works on a Mac, but that doesn’t bother me a bit!
  5. John: quite a while ago you posted something about a job you were trying to get and asked the readers to calculate how much they’d charge for it. you said you’d post another entry about how it ended so that we could comapre our calculations to the real world. either i missed it or that last part wasn’t posted here. are you planning on posting it someday?
  7. Lightscribe works ok on a mac, you just download the drivers and software from the web, but like Pete said, it takes a LONG time (unless you are just putting text in a ring around the centre of the disc. Optimizing your graphics layout for how the lightscribe burner works will get your discs burned faster, but it looks kinds cheesy.

    That said, I think I may take a hint from John’s example and lightscribe a batch of discs with my logo and copyright notice and just some blank spots to hand write the shoot specific info. That would make the best use of time. That way I can do batches of lightscribes when I’m not needing the burner to put data on discs for clients, and it still looks more like a finished product than a generic blank disc.
  8. John;

    I liked the idea of the silkscreened discs BUT hate handing a client a disc with handwriting on it. I’ve been using an Affex CD Artist to print directly on CD’s (from PS or AI) for about 7 years now – its fast and its 4 color. Does a great job-pricey but the cost is quickly recouped.

    Ed Berger
  9. Christopher —

    Remind me of the link, and, actually, stay tuned for a big announcement on that front about a new project I am working on !

    Shhhhhhh…….

    John
  10. Have you looked at Delkin Gold archival DVD (100yrs discs) which can be purchased at Amazon.

    While more expensive there are sometimes a need for this extra assurance of life span.

    Niels Herniksen
  11. We have been using the Epson R1800 and R260 for printing directly onto inkject-printable discs with great results. (Needed to get the R260 when we switched to Mac for the newer Print CD software).

    So these printers are definitely another viable option.
  12. I’ve been using EPSON Photo Stylus 900 for a long time – as long as they stopped supplying ink around here and switched to 1400 – while the print is not too good as water resistance, but You can print wonderful photos on Verbatim InkJet CD and DVD-R’s. I prefer DVD’s for they have almost their entire surface printable and the price is almost the same. The quality is wonderful and the print speed is ok. EPSON 1800 (1900) wil give You better water resistence and a very high quality photo look.
    I print a sample photo on the disk also.

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