Shipping Giclee Prints on Paper Flat

One of the areas of shipping we have looked carefully at is how we ship paper prints. As you may or may know giclee prints on paper are usually printed on rolls of the paper which are fed through our printers. While having the paper on rolls is great for both storage and handling when loading the printer it does lead to prints which want to have a tendency to curl.

This is something I have always disliked about the paper prints and I quickly discovered a lot of artists and photographers do not like getting their prints rolled in a tube. Shipping rolled is not a problem for unmounted canvas but paper is different due to it’s density and memory. Imagine you have a print you ordered from us and have a client who needs the print now. The print arrives, the client rushes over to your studio or place of business to approve the print and you find that you have to struggle with keeping the edges down since the paper wants to have a tendency to curl. Based on that sort of scenario and feedback from our customers we implemented a new policy early in 2011 by allowing the option for shipping paper prints flat with the exception of very large prints (usually 36×24 or larger).

Usually what we do now is after the print comes off the printer and has been cut we package it in Kraft paper and tape the wrapped print to a corrugated backing. We then box it in a suitable box and fill the void with additional Kraft paper if needed. The results are that when the customer receives the print, by the time it has reached them the print has had time to flatten itself out. A lot of customers seem to prefer there print being shipped in this manner versus when we shipped all paper prints rolled. While the cost is greater the overall satisfaction of our customers makes it worthwhile.