Aren't most newsletters black & white?

Probably not, since color printing is pretty ubiquitous.

Does color make a difference?

In printing costs, yes.

heh ... I once spent a good deal of time explaining to someone that two-color printing did not mean two colors AND black, that if they wanted black it counted as a color.

In printing costs, yes

Don't I know it. It took me a lot of research to find where to get color perfect bound books at a decent price. Actually two places. One that does on demand digital printing for runs from 25 - 500, and another where you can offset color reasonably in quantities of a 1,000 on up. (They do lower quantities too, but as you would expect, offset is more expensive than digital for short runs.) I don't expect to ever print this is anything but digital, but one cause of business failure is lack of contingency planning for how to handle unexpectedly large demand.

But it is news to me that there is no difference in layout costs between B&W and full color. Though now that I think about it, it makes sense. Same challenges. B&W still needs sizing, cropping, editing for stuff like contrast. Placement and drawing the eye where it is wanted is just as important as with color.

But it is news to me that there is no difference in layout costs between B&W and full color.

But layout is just layout. All layout really is, when you come down to it, is moving stuff around on a page. It doesn't matter if that stuff is 4C or B/W.

Yeah, now that it is pointed out it makes sense. But to someone not in the field, it was not intuitive until pointed out. It is not complicated, but also something that someone who is not an expert in the field can easily overlook. That is one of things about being an professional in the field. It is not just that you know obscure stuff, though you do. It is also that you know the field well enough not to overlook the obvious. Someone who is just trying to grasp a bunch of new stuff all at once can easily miss all sorts of obvious things. Which is another reason to hire a professional like you.

Years ago, it made more difference, because if you used the process colors to make things like headings, lines and boxes different colors, you had to supply separations and making four-color plates was a skilled job done by an actual person who spent most of his working life in the dark. Now a lot of that is done automagically by software.

Signed,

Has Proofed Lead Type Reading Backwards

ohgodseparations

Isn't technology wonderful?

I love the thing where someone comes out with a big nostalgic blog post and/or evil experiment of teaching the childrens about how journalism used to be done back in the days of typewriters and lightboxes [link] , and everyone who ever did it gets all "OMG that takes me back" for about 10 seconds before someone says "... yeah, and it really sucked."

(I'll also note that I only did real old-skool layout in HS, and then did the weird in-between phase in college where we had computers for typesetting columns which we then still had to cut out and paste up. IOW, I inhaled just enough rubber cement for nostalgia and bitching at the kids who have never worked in print at all, and not remotely enough for cred.)

I love the thing where someone comes out with a big nostalgic blog post and/or evil experiment of teaching the childrens about how journalism used to be done back in the days of typewriters and lightboxes, and everyone who ever did it gets all "OMG that takes me back" for about 10 seconds before someone says "... yeah, and it really sucked."

Add waxers and border tape to that and you would be talking about me.

Sheesh. Glad those days are gone.

eta: OH, and rub on type. Lord, we thought we were so kewl.