at work worldwide

Understandable, because even our Free Edition works at the speed of light compared to pencil and paper.

Some years ago I discovered a well-preserved copy of R.T. Porte's "Estimating Hints for Printing" in a second-hand bookstore. Here is what the acknowledged father of systemized print estimating shared in the opening chapter:

"Ask any ten printers the cost or the selling price of any piece of printing and you will secure ten answers, no two of which are apt to be alike. The reason for this is that the average printer has in some way hit upon a certain sum - or has a peculiar method of his own - by which he arrives at a price, and applying that method reaches a result wholly different from that of most other printers. The cost system was at first hailed as the corrector of all such evils, but it was soon discovered that results from cost systems varied twenty-five percent on the same work when reproduced at intervals in the same office."

Porte published his little book in 1923. The sad part is, it could have been published yesterday. Except for the inconsistencies with work reproduced at intervals, it's hard to see where the embedding of computers has led to noticeable progress in the nearly one hundred years since. Prices quoted, for offset in particular, are still all over the map. With that in mind I thought it only fitting that we should open our workshop with making price adjustments.