at the last firm i worked, had problems with alphagraphics in the past. so much so that we decided to go elsewhere despite them being located on the first floor of our building. but it wasn't for something like a portfolio, it was more mass reproduction logistics that they were screwing up. their presentation work has the ability to be nice though.

but everyone i know has had great results from lulu.com , but you may be restricted in case you want to print odd sizes and on different types of paper. still, very professional.

i too know many many many, many, many people who have had good results with lulu

i also know many many many, many, many people who have been dissapointed with alpha graphics

oh... by many i mean 1 of each by the way

the paper at lulu is too thin...and i'd rather go local because of the shipping time.

letdown - do you know what this person's beef was with alpha?

so can i actually just do this ast kinkos? will it look fine, assuming i stay there and make sure they dont' screw up? i don't even know if they have decent printers and paper etc...but it would be so convinenet, it's like 2 blocks away

I wouldn't print at Kinko's.

I recently had folders printed there. I thought 'damn, how hard can these be? One color, white folders, etc.'. They sucked. They outsourced them and agreed to reprint. The reprinted ones were so far off from the color it made me laugh.

So now i have $500 worth of folders that are so so. Their ok, but I would have spent another $200 to get them done well, had I known.

All the 'don't get things printed at Kinko's' you hear is legit. Don't do it, unless you care nothing for quality.

Oh, FYI, their prices aren't any cheaper than other printers (most stuff they outsource anyway). Call around, you'll find better deals with better quality.

anyone heard of this chain minuteman press?

i did a test print of my portfolio at lulu and ... good price. but the paper was pretty thin, and the quality inconsistent. the pictures were way darker than they should have been and they it left a white stripe at the top even though i formatted it correctly for full bleed. i think i'm gonna look local.

what is the turn around time at lulu.com?

it really depends. i think some of my stuff got extra delayed because of thanksgiving. they also don't guarantee a ship date when you order (unless you pay $25-50 extra for extra fast printing). without the extra fast, they seem to be able to print and send it within 5 days of uploading your files. there is no choice of paper and noone to talk to to make sure they're doing it right. they've messed up a few things of mine a bit and the only way to contact them about it is through email - and they are apparently pretty unresponsive to email.

there aren't really "choices" of paper... but if you print color you should be getting 80#. just look for their printing specifications.

if that's not good enough, you are right to look local so you can sit down face to face with someone. i thought that was why you were looking at alphagraphics. and kinko's just has very limited capabilities (options and staff intelligence)

in case i was misleading, our interaction with alphagraphics was not anything like a book or portfolio. sit down with some locals (i'm assuming you've been to a place) and tell 'em you're shopping around a portfolio book that you need a bunch of printings of, and let them sell to you. have them show examples of their work, etc. then select a winner and let your buddies know how it turned out.

so I just got a proof made at Alphagraphics...and well, I assume they printed it at their full quality...and it didn't look very good. The text was way heavier than the Lulu version, the images were noticably pixely (they were fine on the lulu version) and the colors were pretty yellowy. Even though Lulu is definitely not on my good list, it might be the best.