Printers are bringing design services in-house to drive production through the press halls, with the advantage to customers that their creative work is underpinned by production, craft and cost.
How do you define ‘design’? Not easily, it turns out. American psychologist Herbert Simon came up with what is accepted as one of the better definitions: “everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” Changing existing situations into preferred ones sound like a call to arm for every printer toughing it out in today’s climate. Offering design services can help – they grow business in the corporate identity, branding and marketing arenas. While there will always be obstacles for a printer to win support as creative communications partner, some companies are scaling the barriers and using deign services to win a more profitable share of customer’s work.
Design is the creative fodder that fuels hungry presses; one of the obvious benefits for printers that push this added-value service is they can proactively drive more production through the press hall. “A lot of printers will design the majority of their activities toward feeding their machines,” says Marin Fawcett, deputy managing director of retail marketing agency Coutts Creative Shopper, part of the Bezier Group. “What we’ve seen in the past is that 10% of your business is used to support the other 90%. Added-value services are there to secure your core services,” adds Fawcett. Coutts also uses it’s deign service to develop a full-service agency approach that can add up to closer client relationships and larger portion of spend.
The benefits go both ways. As the recession bite, customers have more reason than ever to outsource non-core activities – such as design – to the most cost effective suppliers. As Williams Lea group category manager Christopher Rigg puts it: “Outsourcing is on the agenda again.” But just because non-core is out; that doesn’t mean design in general will be curtailed, according to recent research from the Design Council. More than half the 1,500 businesses that responded to its 2008 survey thought design would contribute to a great extent in helping maintain their competitive edge in the current economic climate.
To be continued…
Peter Harrison is Joint Managing Director of The Printing House Ltd of Crewe, Cheshire, UK.
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