CafePress

Small businesses and promotional designers have long known CafePress.com as the go-to site for making (and also selling) customized goods, everything from logo coffee mugs to rock band baby t-shirts. Around the holidays, individuals might use CafePress to design custom holiday greeting cards, or make a photo wall calendar. But is it any better, faster, or cheaper than other sites that offer the same service, such as Snapfish, Zazzle, or Editors' Choice Mixbook?

In my experience, CafePress has a good and reliable service, that's even better if you have a designer on hand to create a final image with professional tools, like Photoshop or Illustrator. If all you need to do is drop a logo or pre-made image on a product and bulk order 50 of them for your employees or customers, the service is fast and efficient. But those of us who need a lot of guidance when laying out our own goods might find CafePress' designing and editing tools lacking.

For the purpose of this review, we chose not to evaluate CafePress on its marketplace capabilities, but readers should note that CafePress does allow users to sell their creations through the site.

Sizes, Styles, and Price
I'd been evaluating a variety of services for making photo wall calendars, when CafePress came to mind. Indeed, the site isn't limited to businesses buying customized products in bulk by any stretch. You can design and purchase a single wall calendar, or mug, t-shirt, sweatshirt, iPhone case, and dozens of other products, too.

The number of templates for custom calendars seems modest when compared with Mixbook's dozens of options. The editing tools for calendars and mug and glassware designing, likewise, didn't further my own creativity to any significant degree. T-shirts and other wearables get special treatment, though, with additional tools for adding text, changing the font, and dropping in shapes (graphic objects, like stars, hearts, and arrow). But even clothes design comes with a barrel of restrictions.? You can't change the dimensions or placement of images, as each product has its own specific placement and size for images. This also means you can't add more images, like a brand image and a company logo. Any creative work really needs to happen offline in a separate editing program. CafePress doesn't have the tools an amateur would need to actually create a design she had in mind.

For photo wall calendars, CafePress does include one "template" that's nothing more than a blank canvas, letting you set images that take up the entire 8.5 by 11-inch space. Unfortunately, calendars only come in the one size, although you can buy either a 12-month ($19.99 plus shipping) or 18-month ($24.99 plus shipping) version. Mixbook, our Editors' Choice for making calendars, offers a wider 11 by 14-inch landscape calendar option ($34.99) if you're looking to super-size it.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/gS8Z0TsPQaU/0,2817,2412597,00.asp

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