“Low Cost”
When I was in high school, my graphic arts teacher, Mr. Steinmetz, told us the following: When frozen dinners were first introduced, one of the ways companies could make their dinners less expensive was to cut back on printing expenditures. Shoppers found selection based on price an easy prospect. If the Salisbury steak was gray, the macaroni a cartoony orange, shoppers knew they were saving some money. However, if the gravy was an unctuous brown, the vegetables vibrant green, the shoppers knew they’d spend a little more and maybe get higher quality food.
As printing became cheaper, the manufacturers of less expensive dinners were able to afford better packaging while still keeping their costs low. Suddenly, their Salisbury steak looked more like food, less like coal, and their macaroni didn’t look like circus peanuts. They also saw sales plummet. People no longer had an easy visual cue to determine the cost of meals, and since the more expensive meals weren’t that much more expensive, only the most cautious shoppers bothered to sort good printing versus good printing. To salvage sales, the manufacturers returned to cheap printing (even cheaper than before), baked potatoes that looked like moon rocks, and simple visual cues for shoppers who could once again find their inexpensive meals quickly and easily.
If I needed something printed on the cheap, I might inquire with these fine people. Dance lessons? Not so much.
