We are in it for the long haul…

Kingston recently celebrated it’s 30th anniversary as a premiere, independent commercial printer. Kingston Printing BuildingSince it’s inception in 1987, the company has grown from a two-color duplicator shop to a cutting edge, full-service commercial printing and graphics provider. Kingston’s success is due in large part to recruiting and hiring talented associates who understand the company’s commitment to excellence through consistency, quality and customer service. Kingston currently employs about 40 associates headquartered in our Eudora, KS based 40,000 square foot facility.

drawing-boardOur foremost priority at Kingston Printing is to provide our customers with high-quality product and the best service possible. We serve our clients as a trusted ally, providing them with the loyalty of a business partner and the economics of an outside vendor. This allows us to provide our employees with fair compensation, a safe and secure work environment and return a reasonable profit for our investors.

There’s No Magic To Commitment…

Kingston provides an extensive array of printing solutions including UV, six-color, sheet-fed presses, Kodak Nexpress digital printing and flatbed wide format digital printing.

Offset Printing
At the heart of our ink on paper department we have highly skilled craftsmen that produce award winning work every day. We have two 28×40 6 color Komori presses with aqueous coating units and extended deliveries. One press is dedicated to UV printing, ensuring customers have access to best in print enhancements and exotic substrates. We also have a fully automated conventional press for traditional work.

Digitial Printing
Our digital print capability accommodates sheet size up to 14×20. We are a Kodak business partner and utilize NexPress digital technologies to offer our customers the latests in digital enhancements including, gold ink, textures, match colors, spot varnish and more.

Wide Format Printing
Wide format digital printing is the perfect solution for short to mid run graphics, signage, and banners. Our wide format print capability utilizes UV inks ideal for indoor and outdoor applications at photorealistic quality. We produce pieces direct to board stock to 96 x 120 single piece and direct to roll stocks at up to 86 wide. Our wide format print devices are G7 profiled to ensure best color match and consistency. Single sided, double sided, profile cutting, to virtually any substrate (roll or rigid) this technology opens the creative window for all your large format graphic & print projects.

Bindery & Finishing
This is where everything comes together and there’s not much we can’t do. We have four MBO folders that can fold most any configuration, including map folds, and take a sheet as large as 28 X 40. We have a folder dedicated to direct mailing, with inline gluing and inkjet addressing. Which gets your piece in the mail faster and for less money.
Our collating and stitching abilities consist of an eight pocket saddle stitcher/trimmer with a cover feeder and an unbelievably huge 60 station flat sheet collater/stitcher as well as sprial and wire-o binding. We do our own in house die-cutting, perforating and scoring as well high speed envelope insertion, padding and many more services.

Mailing and List Management
We handle list management and mailing services for our clients in a way that allows us to secure the best possible mailing rates. Our automatic ink jet addressing machine will handle all mailing requirements and as an added feature this piece of equipment has a special drying unit which allows us to address over varnished or aqueous coated pieces without fear of smearing.

Project Fulfillment
Because of our location and years of experience, we are not only very price competitive but very good at handling the simplest to the most intricate fulfillment projects. We can produce one time projects in any quantity. We also prepare drop shipments of product via UPS, FedEx or USPS. In addition to individual projects, we also handle on-going inventory and distribution of product for our customers. Regardless of the number of items and number of recipients, we ensure your materials arrive on time and we track your inventory for you.

Graphic Excellence Awards

Our commitment to quality for our customers has been consistently rewarded at the Graphic Excellence Competition. This annual competition includes printers from across the Midwest. It is sponsored and conducted by the Printing and Imaging Association of Mid-America.  Through the years Kingston has been awarded many honors for excellence in printing but none more gratifying than the two certificates for Best of Category and the Gold Certificate for The Best of Kansas City. In giving these awards, the quality of the printed piece is the only criteria considered. As such, these awards are a testament to the ability of our employees and their daily commitment to quality.

International Gallery of Superb Printing

The International Gallery has become one of the premier printing events in the world. Perhaps resulting from graphic professionals embracing the global nature of the industry today, as well as intense interest in the Best of the Best Awards. It is sponsored and conducted by the International Gallery of Superb Printing based in Minneapolis.

Entries are judged on the quality and difficulty of the graphic arts processes used; i.e. ink coverage, intensity of solids, registration, dot structure, paper usage, binding, finishing, degree of difficulty, overall visual appearance and effective communication.

We are proud to have won four gold, three silver and one bronze, over the past several years. Kingston’s success in this international competition is a great source of pride and motivation for us and once again shows Kingston’s total commitment to quality for our customers.

Kingston is a G7 Certified Master Printer.

All of our presses and digital print equipment are profiled to G7 standards. This ensures best color reproduction & match across multiple medias, devices, and production runs. The GRACoL 7 specification and G7 process is today’s best method of proofing and calibration of printing presses and digital print equipment. G7 provides three important benefits:

  1. A much better match from proof to press.
  2. A much better match from one press to another press
  3. A shared appearance for all CMYK printing devices.

In the past, printing standards were defined by purely mechanical means. Patches were read with a densitometer and plates were adjusted, if necessary, to ensure that the dot gain for each color was within an acceptable range. Assuming these criteria were met, a press was considered to be “in spec” regardless of the visual appearance of the press sheet. Unfortunately, the appearance of any given job could vary quite dramatically between different presses that were “in spec.” With the creation of the G7 specification, we now use a spectrophotometer on press. This device sees color the same way the human eye does and gives it an absolute numerical value. Today, the color of the sheet takes precedence over the mechanics.

In the past, proofs were created using a profile of the press. Printers would run a set of colored patches on their press and create a profile to teach the proofer how that specific press printed on that particular day. While this method was useful for creating a proof that matched a given press it has a number of shortcomings. Firstly, no two presses print exactly alike. In fact the difference in visual appearance between two presses could be quite large, even if both press were printing “within spec.” So if you sent the same art to two different printers, the proofs might match each individual press, but they would not match each other! And of course the press would drift over time reducing the accuracy of the proof and necessitating a new profile. This often made matching color on rerun jobs difficult.

Today, we profile each press, individually, to match the GRACoL and G7 specifications. Similarly, we profile the proofer to match G7. Because G7 defines the visual appearance of color, if all our devices match the G7 specification, then all of our devices match each other! Because we monitor our presses over time, to ensure they still match the specification, we can also match color on your rerun work as well. But the benefits don’t end between press and proof. We also profile our digital devices, to match G7. This means you will see a much better match between your offset and digital jobs too