Established in North Staffordshire in 1988, PDQ Typesetting is a small family business. From the start our aim has been to provide a typesetting and proofreading service that is reliable, accurate and competitive.

Our customers are the best judge of whether we are living up to the high standards we set ourselves. Click here to view some testimonials.

Who are PDQ Typesetting?

Pete - BSc (Hons)
Has worked as a translator (German & French) and technical editor in various areas, including print research, economics and chemistry. As a typesetter has worked on a wide range of projects for printers, publishers, museums and universities.

Marian - BA (Hons)
Main area of interests are book setting, copy-editing skills and proofreading services.

Jeff - BA (Hons), MA
Postgraduate research skills, proofreading, experienced in layout and typesetting of security passes and associated form design.

Our experience ranges from setting specialist academic textbooks and journals (education, history, linguistics, ceramics, archaeology) to general printing and form design.

Examples of work produced:
Books (fiction, non-fiction), catalogues, journals, forms, business cards, invoices, letterheads, monographs, compliment slips, receipts, tickets, timetables, posters, fixture lists, invitations, leaflets, menus, visitor passes, contractor passes, security passes, cash receipt systems.

Software:
Our typesetting is PC-based, with 3B2 Total Publishing at its core, together with support software such as Adobe Acrobat Pro and Photoshop. Occasionally we also use other packages, e.g CorelDraw is a useful tool for extracting/converting image files in various formats.

Fonts available:
Too many to list!

Customer files:

Text:
These are normally submitted as a mainstream word-processed document (Word, Open Office, Wordperfect, etc) on CD or via email. We prefer files that are as simple as possible, with minimal formatting, but understand that this is not always possible. 

Graphics:
Customers are requested to supply separate, same-size image files, but we can extract images from documents if necessary. We can edit images in Photoshop if any tidying, resizing or manipulation is called for.

Output:
Clients are supplied with proofs in the form of PDF files. Mono laser printouts can also be supplied. Final output is a high-resolution PDF, with or without crop marks.

Spot colours can be separated if required. CMYK is supplied as single PDF files ready for imagesetting or CTP.