Branding & design

What you actually print, and what nobody ever read

Most businesses print too many different pieces and too few copies of the right ones. How to take the inventory, and what to stop.

Published on 7 July 2026 — Algeria Agency

Almost every business that prints anything prints more different pieces than it needs, and too few copies of the ones that genuinely serve. This is not a budget question: it is that nobody has ever made the list.

The list is quick to draw up and unpleasant to read. It almost always contains a presentation brochure with four hundred copies left, a catalogue whose prices have been wrong for eighteen months, and a business card in an odd format ordered three per person.

This article is about that decision, which comes before the design and before the printer: what you print, what it really costs measured against use, what deserves to exist, what should be a message rather than a printed piece, how to count dead stock, and what rule triggers a reprint.

The article accompanying this one deals with the file and the object — bleed, colour as something manufactured, the proof, the substituted Arabic face. None of that is repeated here: it begins once the piece is decided, and this one stops before that.

Take the inventory, before anything else

The exercise takes an hour and requires nothing a business does not already own. Gather one copy of every printed thing you have had produced: cards, brochures, catalogues, flyers, posters, bags, labels, letterhead, pre-printed invoices, pads, calendars.

Put them all on one table, together. It is the only moment they are seen side by side, and that is what makes the exercise useful: three pieces that nearly resemble each other and say the same thing differently are never noticed while they live in three different drawers.

Note four things for each and nothing else: the date of the last order, the quantity ordered, the quantity remaining, and what it was used for the last time you can remember. The fourth column is the only difficult one, and it is the one that decides.

Most inventories produce the same verdict, and it helps to know it in advance so as not to be surprised: two or three pieces carry nearly all the real use, and the rest exists because somebody asked for it once, for an occasion that has not come back.

Keep that sheet. It is the reference document for everything that follows, and it is also the only thing that makes the next order arguable: without it, every print request is judged alone, and a request judged alone is always reasonable.

The cost of a printed piece is counted per use, not per unit

The price of a printed piece is presented per unit because that is how a quotation is written, and that presentation systematically misleads. A thousand brochures at forty dinars gives a brochure at forty dinars; if three hundred are handed out and seven hundred thrown away, the brochure that was handed out cost a hundred and thirty.

The correct calculation is therefore a division by the copies that actually reached somebody, and it should be done at least once in a business. It reorders priorities more reliably than any argument, because it works with the house’s own figures.

It also reveals a counter-intuitive fact: the piece that is most expensive per unit is often the cheapest per use. A business card on heavy board costs twice an ordinary one and is distributed in full, one per person, to somebody who asked for it. Nothing else on the list has that rate of use.

And it identifies the real question to ask before an order, which is not "what does a copy cost" but "how many copies will I genuinely hand to somebody this year". The answer is almost always far below the quantity the unit price pushes you towards.

Note finally that this reasoning permits spending more, not only less. A piece you know will be used in full deserves better paper, a finish, some care — because the extra is spread across copies that all serve, rather than diluted into stock that waits.

The three pieces that earn their place

After the inventory the question becomes: what deserves to exist? The test is simple and the same for every piece: did somebody ask for this thing, or did we decide they needed it?

Three pieces pass that test in almost every business. What you give somebody who asks how to reach you. What you give somebody who asks what it costs, when a written answer is expected. And what stays behind after you leave, at a client’s, on a site, in a shop.

Each answers a request that actually arrives, and that is what distinguishes them. The rest of the list generally answers an internal anxiety — "we need a brochure" — which is a sentence about us and not about the person receiving it.

That does not mean nothing else is legitimate. A sector may require more: a technical sheet in industry, a menu in catering, an instruction leaflet with a product. But each of those is justified by a named request, and if the request cannot be named, the piece is not justified.

The business card, and what it still does

Its disappearance has been announced for fifteen years and it remains the most effective printed piece on the list, for a reason that has nothing to do with the information it carries: it is handed over in person at a moment when somebody has asked for something.

What it still does is precise. It survives the end of a conversation, it ends up in a pocket or on a desk, and it carries a number without depending on a battery or a network. In a market where first contact very often continues as a message, it is what makes that message possible.

What it no longer does is equally precise: it presents nothing. Fitting a list of services, two addresses, a slogan and four logos onto it produces a card nobody reads and which poorly replaces the conversation that has just ended. A name, a role, a number, and enough to find you again, is sufficient.

One local point is worth stating: the number on it should be the one that receives messages, not the office landline. Many cards carry a number that rings in a room, while the person receiving it will write a message within the half hour. That is not a layout detail, it is what decides whether the card works.

The catalogue: the most expensive, and the fastest to become wrong

The catalogue is the piece everybody wants and the one that fails most often. It costs most to produce, takes longest to make, and becomes wrong faster than all the other printed pieces combined because it contains the two things that move: references and prices.

The question to settle before starting is its lifespan. A catalogue designed for three years cannot contain prices; a catalogue with a tariff is a seasonal document, and it should be produced and budgeted as one — fewer copies, cheaper per unit, replaced without regret.

The separation that resolves most cases is mechanical: the catalogue carries what does not move — the range, the uses, the specifications — and a separate sheet carries what does. The sheet is reprinted on its own for a fraction of the cost, and the catalogue survives.

It is also worth being honest about what replaces a catalogue today, here included: a conversation in which photographs and a price are sent. The printed catalogue keeps its place where that conversation cannot happen — a reseller who must show your range without you, a trade fair, an administration — and loses it everywhere else.

One last point that is expensive when ignored: date the catalogue. A discreet month and year avoids the situation where a client produces a two-year-old document and asks for the price printed in it, and it lets you say no without an argument.

What should be a message rather than a printed piece

Some pieces exist because print was once the only medium, and they have never been re-judged. The question to put to them is blunt: does this information need to be kept, or only transmitted once?

Information transmitted once does not need printing. A one-off tariff, a fortnight’s promotion, an invitation, a changed opening time, a delivery address: all of that arrives faster, costs less, and can be corrected when it is sent rather than printed.

Information that is kept deserves print, and that is a useful criterion because it has nothing to do with modernity. A leaflet that will be reread in six months, a technical sheet a technician keeps by the machine, instructions stored with the product: paper wins where it is consulted without intention, long afterwards.

There is an intermediate case worth naming because it is frequent here: the piece that has to be photographed. Many tariffs and menus are printed once, photographed, and circulated by message. If that is the real use, the piece must be designed to be read on a phone screen — large, high contrast, no fine text — rather than to look good on a table.

Dead stock, and why nobody knows the figure

In almost every business there is a box of printed matter nobody will hand out. It carries the old logo, the old address, a price that no longer exists, or it was simply ordered ten times over the rate of use. It is moved from office to office for years and ends in a skip.

What that represents is written down nowhere, and the absence is structural rather than accidental. What is thrown away produces no entry: the printer invoiced the whole order, the accounts booked the expense at purchase, no stock system tracks documents, and the box leaves as waste. The event is real, expensive, and recorded by no system at all.

That is why we quote no figure here even though this section argues about a quantity. There is no dated source on what Algerian businesses throw away in printed matter, and there cannot be one, because the fact is destroyed instead of being counted. A foreign average would be useless: it would describe another set of documents.

But your own figure exists, and it takes ten minutes to obtain. Open the cupboard, count the copies remaining of each piece, multiply by the unit price on the last quotation. The total is money already spent from which you will get nothing, and it is the only argument you will need the next time somebody proposes rounding a quantity up.

Do it once a year, at the same point. This is not management control, it is what stops the cupboard filling again: a known quantity gets discussed, an unknown one is always rounded in the same direction.

A printed price: the decision that expires everything

Putting a price on a printed piece turns a durable document into a dated one, and it is a decision that should be taken deliberately rather than by habit. The price is the only piece of information on a document that can become wrong overnight while nothing else changes.

The real cost of that decision shows up in the stock. A brochure without prices ordered at two thousand copies lives three years; the same one with a tariff lives until the next increase, and everything left on that day is lost. It is the same document and it is not the same purchase.

Three solutions exist and they are not equal. The best is to separate the price onto a sheet that reprints on its own. The second is not to print it at all and to give it another way, which suits many service businesses. The third — writing "indicative price" — protects nothing commercially and is seen through immediately.

One frequent case deserves separate treatment: the piece displayed in a shop. There the price must be visible and it changes often, which argues for a medium designed to be replaced — a frame and a sheet, not a printed panel. The expensive piece is the frame, the sheet is remade, and that separation is exactly the catalogue’s.

The trade fair, and the order placed in a panic

An event produces the worst print order of the year: decided three weeks before, in a quantity chosen at random, with a piece designed for the occasion that will never serve again. It is also the one nobody reviews afterwards.

The quantity is the first problem and yet it can be calculated. Ask the organiser for the previous edition’s attendance, estimate the share that will pass in front of you, and divide again by what you know of your own conversations. The figure obtained is always far below what enthusiasm suggests, and it is closer to reality.

The second mistake is designing a dedicated piece. An event lasts two days; a piece that serves only there has an enormous cost per use and leaves an unusable remainder. What works is the opposite: take the pieces that serve all year, in sufficient quantity, and add at most one specific, cheap thing.

Count what comes back. It is the only reliable measurement you will have from an event, it takes five minutes while packing up, and it beats a memory: "we gave out a lot" and "three hundred of five hundred are left" do not describe the same fair, and it is the second that decides next year.

The reprint trigger: a rule, not an anxiety

Reprints are almost always triggered the same way: somebody opens the cupboard, feels there are not many left, and places an order. The threshold is an impression, the quantity is last time’s, and both are wrong.

The rule that replaces this is one line per piece, written on the inventory sheet: reorder when this many remain, and order this many. The first figure comes from the production lead time multiplied by real consumption; the second from a year’s consumption plus a short margin.

The important point is that both figures are calculated from what the inventory has already measured, and not otherwise. A rule set without usage figures reproduces exactly the last order’s quantity, which is the quantity you have just established was too high.

Add a suspension condition, which is the part nobody writes: do not reprint a piece where information will change within three months. A known move, a number change, a range under revision suspends the rule — and it is precisely in those periods that automatic reprints produce the dead stock of section 7.

Who holds the files, and in what state

The last line of the inventory is administrative and it decides everything else: for each piece, where the source file is, and who can reopen it. A piece whose file is lost is not reprintable, it is to be remade.

The usual confusion is about what a source file is. The document sent to the printer is a final, flattened version, often without the fonts and without the layers; it allows an identical reprint and does not allow a telephone number to be changed. Both must be kept and they are not the same files.

Ask for them at the end of each project, while the relationship is good, and check that they open. A file received and never opened is one you discover corrupt or incomplete on the day you need it, which is the day you need to reprint quickly.

Store them with the inventory, not elsewhere. A sheet listing the pieces, their quantities, their reprint rules and where their files live is a one-page document that replaces the memory of the person who used to handle this and has since left — which is the situation in which half of these questions get asked.

What we do, and what we refuse

What we do is bounded. We run the inventory with you, we calculate each piece’s cost per real use, we write the reprint rules, and we design only the pieces that survive that exercise.

We refuse to design a piece whose existing stock has not been counted. That refusal has cost us engagements and it holds: in one case out of two the count shows there is enough for a year, and the right answer is to wait. An agency that agrees to design without looking in the cupboard is selling work the cupboard makes unnecessary.

We also refuse to print a price on a piece ordered in quantity. If the price must appear, it goes on a separate sheet that reprints on its own; otherwise the whole piece becomes perishable, and the stock lost at the next tariff change is a cost we would have created ourselves.

We do not promise that a printed piece will produce enquiries, because in most cases nothing allows that to be measured honestly. What we commit to is the list, the quantities and the files. And there is work that belongs to you and is worth half of all this: open the cupboard, count, and do it again in a year.

Frequently asked questions

Where do we start when we already print a lot of things?

With the inventory, and it takes an hour. Gather one copy of every piece on a table, and note for each the date of the last order, the quantity ordered, the quantity remaining, and what it was last used for. Seeing them side by side is what does the work: three documents saying the same thing differently are never noticed while they live in three drawers.

How do we know whether a piece deserves to exist?

Ask whether somebody requested it, or whether you decided they needed it. Three pieces pass that test in almost every business: what you give somebody who asks how to reach you, what you give somebody who asks for a price in writing, and what stays behind after you leave. The rest generally answers an internal anxiety.

Are business cards still necessary?

Yes, and measured per use it is often the cheapest piece on the list, because it is distributed in full to people who asked for it. On one condition: that it presents nothing. A name, a role, a number — the one that receives messages, not the office landline — and enough to find you again.

Should prices be printed in a catalogue?

Only if you accept that the catalogue becomes a seasonal document. Otherwise separate them: the catalogue carries what does not move — the range, the uses, the specifications — and a separate sheet carries the prices, reprintable on its own for a fraction of the cost. And date the catalogue, which lets you refuse a two-year-old price without an argument.

How many copies should we order for a trade fair?

Far fewer than enthusiasm suggests, and the figure can be calculated: the previous edition’s attendance, the share that will pass in front of you, divided by what you know of your own conversations. Take the pieces that serve all year rather than a dedicated one, and count what comes back — it is the only reliable measurement you will have.

What do we do with stock carrying the old address?

Count it and cost it before deciding: copies remaining multiplied by the unit price on the last quotation. Then three answers are defensible depending on the piece — use up what misleads nobody, correct with a stamp or a label where that is acceptable, destroy the rest. What is not defensible is moving it from office to office for two years.

Where we come in

The cupboard total is money already spent and you will not get it back. What is left to decide is which of those pieces deserves reordering at all.

We set a reorder point and a quantity for every piece you keep.
We strike off the list anything nobody remembers handing a single copy of.
We group what remains into one run a year instead of four.

An empty cupboard needs no inventory: print little, count what leaves by the end of the quarter, and come back with that number.

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