Print Buying Direct

Printing – 20 years of Printing – Part 16 – 7th March 2009

Another groundbreaking press to appear in the early part of the 1990s was the Speedmaster SM 74. It represented an unbelievable advance on what was currently in terms of productivity, but in addition, Heidelberg incorporated many innovative features in the way it was to be built. This ensured a purchaser got a great many more bangs for his buck, but also Heidelberg had created a press platform that was capable of absorbing new research and development ideas as they became available. Software bugs caused difficulties with these early computer managed presses; the early Roland 700 had proprietary software, making each press distinctly individual and this want without its problems, but standardisation around Siemens controllers running on Windows NT soon ironed these out. The SM74 faced broadly similar issues, but Heidelberg’s QM package was quickly rolled out and the Speedmaster SM 74 has gone on to be probably the biggest selling individual press model of all time.

Komori in some ways evolved throughout the two decades a little like its car industry; early models like the B2 Komori Sprints were difficult, somewhat temperamental beasts to run, but in time the new Lithrone models came out and the Lithrone 40 established itself as the Toyota of the printing industry. It pioneered the development of semi-automatic plate changing, and then fully automated changing, but at no point was any one manufacturer ahead in developments in a decisive way. Early automated plate changing was such that you wondered why a manufacturer bothered and yet today, a point has been reached where all plates on a B1 press regardless of the number of units can be changed in around two minutes. In the particular instance, manroland had the pioneering faith with its Platedrive technology but such a good idea ceases to be the domain of one manufacturer. Another characteristics of the past two decades has been how manufacturers in the top G7 countries have continued to move their axis of manufacturing to products at the upper end of the scale, by way of example Ryobi, once a stalwart at the entry level B3 sector now competes in the top of the range seven o’clock cylinder arrangement presses in the B1 sector.

To be continued…

See Part one to fifteen of this blog – Printing – 20 years of change

School Prospectus Made Easy and Print Buying Direct are trading names of The Printing House Ltd. The Print Buying Direct brand was originally set up to protect the quality name of The Printing House of Crewe and Nantwich, Cheshire, Uk – recognised throught the North of England as a quality printers. Now Print Buying Direct has established itself over the last two years and has become a quality brand in its own right with very competitive prices nationally. We hope that School Prospectus Made Easy will follow in the same fashion and become a popular brand in its own right.

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s leading suppliers of graphic design and print, based in the Crewe and Nantwich area of Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland. See our websites for more information on graphic design, brochures, business cards, appointment cards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, posters etc

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites – especially our Printing Glossary – Printing A to Z – this makes a really useful guide for designers, printers, print buyers, college students etc.

Don’t forget The Printing House also specialise in Printing for Schools, especially School Prospectus, Secondary School Prospectus, College Prospectus, Primary School Prospectus & Sixth Form Prospectus. We have a vast range of experience design and print of primary, secondary, 6th form, college and universtity prospectus. Visit our School Prospectus Made Easy website to see examples of our work and more about our products. Our customer testimonials webpage is constantly being added to – please stop by and see our reviews.

Please note that we are currently seeking a highly motivated Print Sales Representative based in the North West of England, preferably in Cheshire, to help us expand and develop our business. Please call for more information. This is a fantastic opportunity to join a print high quality B2 and digital print company that have state of the art technology and pride themselves on impeccable customer service.

Printing – 20 years of Printing – Part 2 – 30th March 2009

Memorable events
The year 1989 doesn’t sit readily in most people’s memories, ye it was a year that was beholden to some pretty momentous events. The anger of Lockerbie which occurred on December 21 1988 had carried over into 1989, and the sadness was still dominant and very fresh in all our minds when the New Year arrived. As it progressed, the standoff taking place in Tiananmen Square was about to run its bloody course on June 4. Thought this event caused considerable rage and consternation, the event that was to have probably the greatest impact on our lives in the years to come occurred on the night of November 9, when the Berlin wall came down.

To create a pen portrait of the printing industry in 1989 is a task a little akin to grabbing at nuances, catching daydreams and basking in memories. This survey of the past decade will tend to concentrate on the way we worked, rather than the specifics of individual pieces of equipment in use. People’s perceptions of what the industry was like in 1989 relate most readily to that captured by Richard Bradley, currently product marketing manager for B3 and B3 presses with Heidelberg. He remembers the industry replete with mechanically driven machinery with almost no automation and populated with people who were steeped in craft skills of quite distinctive kinds. He said, ‘A printing job of reasonable complexity generally speaking would take around a fortnight to run its course. Thought the printer was the person who faced the customer, it would be rare for the printer to be able to carry out all the tasks required to deliver the final job’.

(For clarity, the word ‘printer’ has been chosen for a person or business involved in producing print for sale; a ‘minder’ will be used to describe a person who operates the machinery used in production).

His print order would generally come from close at hand and though estimating systems were available, he would ‘guesstimate’ a price. The job, if it was four colour, would then go to the repro house (usually quite local) for platemaking or preparing final film. Printers and plate making houses were often located in close knit communities; a good example would be London’s Old Street Roundabout and Clerkenwell Road. On receiving the plates, the printer would then print the job then send it out for fold stitch and trimming. No wonder a fortnight was required.

See Part one one this blog – Printing – 20 years of change

See Part one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve and thirteen of – Pre-press – 20 years of change

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6 of our blogs on Direct Mail and Transactional Print

School Prospectus Made Easy and Print Buying Direct are trading names of The Printing House Ltd. The Print Buying Direct brand was originally set up to protect the quality name of The Printing House of Crewe and Nantwich, Cheshire, Uk – recognised throught the North of England as a quality printers. Now Print Buying Direct has established itself over the last two years and has become a quality brand in its own right with very competitive prices nationally. We hope that School Prospectus Made Easy will follow in the same fashion and become a popular brand in its own right.

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s leading suppliers of graphic design and print, based in the Crewe and Nantwich area of Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland. See our websites for more information on graphic design, brochures, business cards, appointment cards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, posters etc

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites – especially our Printing Glossary – Printing A to Z – this makes a really useful guide for designers, printers, print buyers, college students etc.

Don’t forget The Printing House also specialise in Printing for Schools, especially School Prospectus, Secondary School Prospectus, College Prospectus, Primary School Prospectus & Sixth Form Prospectus. We have a vast range of experience design and print of primary, secondary, 6th form, college and universtity prospectus. Visit our School Prospectus Made Easy website to see examples of our work and more about our products. Our customer testimonials webpage is constantly being added to – please stop by and see our reviews.

Pre-press – 20 years of change – part 7 – March 25th 2009

Heavy metal goes digital
In 1996, Steve Jobs returned to the helm when Apple brought NeXT, the company he had founded following his departure from Apple in 1985. That year was also marked by a subtle shift in printing industry, market perceptions, as people started to take digital printing and the data that would drive it much more seriously. Heidelberg moved into pre-press with its acquisitions of Linotype-Hell. The digital colour proofing market was also hosting up with the introduction of the 600 dpi HP Designket and CTP was coming of age with 8-up thermal CTP engines introduced at Imprinta and over 30 different device suppliers and 13-plate suppliers. There was a clear divide between those who belived in digital printing and those who did not, preferring to invest in the much less risky CTP and offset combination. At the time they were probably right, with the quality for digitally printed output still sub-standard and variable data software still too hit and miss to be taken seriously.

Two persistent problems plagued the industry and blocked its progress: the lack of sound database knowledge and experience in the graphic arts, and the lack of decent standards based workflow management. Two events however showed the way towards the industry’s future: publishers News International ordered a 1200 seat system from Unisys based on Sybase database technology and running under UNIX. This was the largest order of its kind ever, and gave true media independent database driven production a toehold within the publishing industry. And, Agfa introduced: Apogee, the world’s first PDF based workflow system. It didn’t have a database, but at least it was based on a de facto standard.

Within a few short months digital technology had hit the mainstream and people’s consciousness. Google, a named derived from googol, which is the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, is incorporated. The use of the term reflects the mission to organise a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web. The introduction of digital television to the UK market and continuing telecoms deregulation in 1998 encouraged a widespread digital awareness. Apart from gadgets and an explosion in mobile phone use, that awareness helped to drive a frenzy of media related software development. In the graphic arts there was a burgeoning of variable data software technologies, a rising market for digitising films for digital workflows using copydot scanners, and flatbed scanners reached maturity. But digital awareness also brought digital anxieties, with growing fears about the future of print and of the dreaded millennium bug.

To be continued…

See Part one, two, three and four of this blog – Pre-press – 20 years of change

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6 of our blogs on Direct Mail and Transactional Print

School Prospectus Made Easy and Print Buying Direct are trading names of The Printing House Ltd. The Print Buying Direct brand was originally set up to protect the quality name of The Printing House of Crewe and Nantwich, Cheshire, Uk – recognised throught the North of England as a quality printers. Now Print Buying Direct has established itself over the last two years and has become a quality brand in its own right with very competitive prices nationally. We hope that School Prospectus Made Easy will follow in the same fashion and become a popular brand in its own right.

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s leading suppliers of graphic design and print, based in the Crewe and Nantwich area of Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland. See our websites for more information on graphic design, brochures, business cards, appointment cards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, posters etc

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites – especially our Printing Glossary – Printing A to Z – this makes a really useful guide for designers, printers, print buyers, college students etc.

Don’t forget The Printing House also specialise in Printing for Schools, especially School Prospectus, Secondary School Prospectus, College Prospectus, Primary School Prospectus & Sixth Form Prospectus. We have a vast range of experience design and print of primary, secondary, 6th form, college and universtity prospectus. Visit our School Prospectus Made Easy website to see examples of our work and more about our products. Our customer testimonials webpage is constantly being added to – please stop by and see our reviews.

Pre-press – 20 years of change – part 6 – 24th March 2009

Digital dynamism

See Part one, two, three, four and five of this blog – Pre-press – 20 years of change

Unfortunately in 1994, the buzz and fuss surrounding multimedia and interactive online gaming drowned out the promise of digital printing, the on-demand model almost got lost in the noise. Multimedia was seen as a huge and durable market so it helped drive the explosion that year in the use of the worldwide web. The development of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) had made it possible to retrieve text from other documents in a distributed network via hypertext links. The text format for HTTP was HTML, the HyperTest Mark-up Language, which was based on the Standard Generalised Mark-up Language (SGML), an internationally recognised language for marking up text and widely used in publishing for complex document composition. The first mass market browser technology, Mosaic, was introduced and eventually became the foundation for Internet Explorer.

These developments brought for graphic pages to the internet and so to mass markets and consumers, and Google went public. In the wake of the web and multimedia came a profound horror that the end of print was nigh. Of course it wasn’t, but that didn’t stop herds of wannabee consultants and ersatz gurus claiming that print would soon be dead. This ridiculous distraction contributed to the loss of momentum in the variable data market, arrested our appreciation of databases for pre-press production and slowed our willingness to embrace network based systems architectures.

Things got worse in 1995, which was the year that Larry Page and Sergey Brin founders of Google, met at Stanford and Windows ’95 with built in Internet support and integrated colour management came out. The rise of Internet publishing and web use for such things as brochures and newsletters continued unabated, but the good news was that these applications spawned a mass of general purpose web authoring tool, accelerating developers and users along the web learning curve and fuelling applications development for digital media production. Within the graphic arts, the development community continued to innovate to make print production more efficient.

The first 8-up drum imagesetter, the Scitex Dolev came onto the market, closely followed by devices from Afga, Dupont Crosfield and Scangraphic, along with RIPS with the capacity to drive them efficiently. Even Xerox, which had a substantial future in digital print, continued to work on technologies for the traditional pre-press market. By 1995, its Verde chemical free film was supposed to have been widely available, but manufacturing problems prevented this happening and Xerox has to abandon the project. Other key developments were the introduction of large format colour engines and output servers capable of providing the kinds of processing speeds that the industry was starting to require.

to be continued…

School Prospectus Made Easy and Print Buying Direct are trading names of The Printing House Ltd. The Print Buying Direct brand was originally set up to protect the quality name of The Printing House of Crewe and Nantwich, Cheshire, Uk – recognised throught the North of England as a quality printers. Now Print Buying Direct has established itself over the last two years and has become a quality brand in its own right with very competitive prices nationally. We hope that School Prospectus Made Easy will follow in the same fashion and become a popular brand in its own right.

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s leading suppliers of graphic design and print, based in the Crewe and Nantwich area of Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland. See our websites for more information on graphic design, brochures, business cards, appointment cards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, posters etc

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites – especially our Printing Glossary – Printing A to Z – this makes a really useful guide for designers, printers, print buyers, college students etc.

Don’t forget The Printing House also specialise in Printing for Schools, especially School Prospectus, Secondary School Prospectus, College Prospectus, Primary School Prospectus & Sixth Form Prospectus. We have a vast range of experience design and print of primary, secondary, 6th form, college and universtity prospectus. Visit our School Prospectus Made Easy website to see examples of our work and more about our products. Our customer testimonials webpage is constantly being added to – please stop by and see our reviews.

Pre-press – 20 years of change – part 5 – 24th March 2009

Acrobat and PDF

Acrobat was designed to provide tools for sharing documents, independent of a computer’s operating system, and of the applications an fonts installed on that system. It was a revolutionary concept that used a new data format, the Portable Document Format (PDF), to provide system independence for electronic document delivery. Although it wasn’t originally designed for graphic arts applications, the pre-press industry was quick to see the potentials of PDF as a universal output format, combined with standard computing platforms and software.

Leading developers, printers, publishers and service providers had their eyes on standard platforms. People were intrigued by what a common approach to colour management based on Apple’s ColorSync technology, might bring. The possibilities were especially intriguing in view of the new digital output devices demonstrated for on-demand print. Groundbreaking presses from Indigo and Xeikon first shown publicly in 1993 put digital printing into new focus, and gave use a glimpse at what might be possible with digital pre-press and presses.

The development community was quick to see the potential of variable data. Several understood that the digital front ends would need to be more than press servers rastering and rendering data, handing image streaming and controlling output. The need for digital colour management was obvious and in 1993 the International Colour Consortium (ICC) started developing standard technologies for managing colour data in pre-press workflows. Objectif Lune started to provide software for on-demand print in that year, introducing PlanetPress in 1994. This transactional and output management solution was one of the first to eliminate printing on pre-printed forms, by managing output to print complex personalised transactional documents at high speed.

See Part one, two, three and four of this blog – Pre-press – 20 years of change

See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 of our blogs on Direct Mail and Transactional Print

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s leading suppliers of graphic design and print, based in the Crewe and Nantwich area of Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland. See our websites for more information on graphic design, brochures, business cards, appointment cards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, posters etc

Print Buying Direct is a trading name of The Printing House Ltd. This brand was originally set up to protect the quality name of The Printing House of Crewe and Nantwich, Cheshire, Uk – recognised throught the North of England as a quality printers. Now Print Buying Direct has established itself over the last two years and has become a quality brand in its own right with very competitive prices nationally. Take a look at both websites and learn more about us.

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites – especially our Printing Glossary – Printing A to Z – this makes a really useful guide for designers, printers, print buyers, college students etc.

Don’t forget The Printing House also specialise in Printing for Schools, especially School Prospectus, Secondary School Prospectus, College Prospectus, Primary School Prospectus & Sixth Form Prospectus. We have a vast range of experience design and print of primary, secondary, 6th form, college and universtity prospectus. Visit our School Prospectus Made Easy website to see examples of our work and more about our products. Our customer testimonials webpage is constantly being added to – please stop by and see our reviews.

Transactional and Direct Mail – Part 2 – 18th March 2009

Going direct
The direct mail market is vast. According to DMIS, in Quarter 4 of 2007, some 1147 million direct mail items were sent from a range of sectors with the financial institutions (29%) by far the biggest sender of direct mail. Other sectors include home shopping/mail order (12%), charity (14%), utilities (6%), retail (10%) and travel and tourism (5%). Over the last ten years, the overall volume of direct mail has increased by 62%, with expenditure up by 68% over the same period.

The response rates for campaigns to consumers are generally higher than for business to business with an average response rate of 8.8%. Business to business campaigns usually generates around 8.4%, with events and exhibitions being the best performing sectors.

Currently, direct mail is the dominating element within most marketing budgets, accounting for over s quarter (26.1%) of expenditure – however, increasingly marketers are specifying a printed direct mail/Internet mix for their promotions.

Back in 2006, InfoTrends released a report, The Future of Direct mail, Transaction Documents, and ‘Transpromotional’ Documents, which looked at the market for direct mail. According to the organisation, ‘Direct mail will continue to grow at a faster pace than the overall market, while transaction documents will see a slight decline. Nevertheless, transaction documents are coming from a large base and those that contain promotional information have significant opportunities for growth.

‘So called transpromo documents represent one of the newest opportunities for direct mail and transaction documents.
‘Companies can utilise the white space on transactional documents as selling space to target recipients with specific messages relevant to their buying patterns and preferences.’

In previous research, a high preference was indicated for personalised direct mail. Furthermore, 69% of respondents preferred mail to e-mail or telemarketing.

According to the Direct marketing Association, the overall value of the direct marketing sector is worth £43.7 billion to the UK economy, with direct mail accounting for £ 8.6 billion of this.

Along with good design and print, the most important part of a direct mail campaign is getting the message to the right people meaning data management is becoming increasingly important. According to DMIS, ‘Databases are central to direct marketing and are increasingly being used to support broader business strategies, such as customer relationship management (CRM). On average, companies have held a database for seven years and spend a mean of £424 000 per year to support it’. The database that are longest established come from sectors such as financial services, publishing, home shopping and charities, whilst the largest databases are held in sectors such as tourism and travel, FMCG and the financial services.

These databases are primarily built from customer accounts; with corporates who hold databases. 90% hold customer contact details and 59% customer account data.

See some of of useful recent blog articles

• The Top Questions Creative Agencies and Print Buyers Ask of Potential Print Providers

• Marketing Postcards – 4000 only £259

• Award Winning Graphic Design – From Print Buying Direct

• 10 Tips for Creatives in a Digital World

• New Website – specialising in School Prospectus Design & Print

• Improving Your Response Rate to Leaflets, Flyers and Brochures

• Transactional and Variable data printing

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s leading suppliers of graphic design and print, based in the Crewe and Nantwich area of Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland. See our websites for more information on graphic design, brochures, business cards, appointment cards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, posters etc

Print Buying Direct is a trading name of The Printing House Ltd. This brand was originally set up to protect the quality name of The Printing House of Crewe and Nantwich, Cheshire, Uk – recognised throught the North of England as a quality printers. Now Print Buying Direct has established itself over the last two years and has become a quality brand in its own right with very competitive prices nationally. Take a look at both websites and learn more about us.

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites – especially our Printing Glossary – Printing A to Z – this makes a really useful guide for designers, printers, print buyers, college students etc.

Don’t forget The Printing House also specialise in Printing for Schools, especially School Prospectus, Secondary School Prospectus, College Prospectus, Primary School Prospectus & Sixth Form Prospectus. We have a vast range of experience design and print of primary, secondary, 6th form, college and universtity prospectus. Visit our School Prospectus Made Easy website to see examples of our work and more about our products. Our customer testimonials webpage is constantly being added to – please stop by and see our reviews.

Transactional and Direct Mail – Part 1 – 18th March 2009

Transactional documents are a necessary evil, direct mail is a typical occurrence in everyday life- often dubbed in the negative as junk mail, third class post or nuisance mail. None of us likes receiving bills, we tend to chuck the direct mail into the bin, we tenuously scan the loyalty card statement- but we soon get our communal dander up if anyone should dare suggest that we go online in future to look at our bills rather than have a printed statement. Why? Because a printed document is comfortable and safe, it is tactile, it is flexible, it can be easily stored, it is quick to locate, it can be kept for future reference, it can be notated upon. It is a good safe of reference and solid verification if things should go wrong.

Although transactional printing is a mature market- and for many has bottomed out, there are interesting activities going on just below the surface. A new route to market is emerging today that is opening up opportunities for transactional printers and the marketers that they work with, and that is transpromo printing- a conventional transactional document that bears a proactive promotional message. Meaning that those bills, statements and policy documents we all receive, now become a revenue boosting communication. It is only through recent advances with digital technology, that the full value of transpromo- personalisation and variable data in runs of one- can blossom. This type of messaging could never have been achieved before, nor could it be carried out with any other technology. And, with environmental claims that direct mail is harmful to the environment, and even hints about possible legislation being bandied about to stop unrequested mail being delivered, the time may come when the only way to get your direct marketing message across will be in the form of transpromo documents- after all, there are many people who will keep asking for these printed bills and statements. It wont be until the new generation of the ‘screenagers’ of today have grown up and themselves become bearers of credit cards, monthly bills, and mortgages that things may really change- and even then, many will still want a printed document for all the reasons already stated.

Marketing is not just about increasing sales, but also about spreading millions of cheques, invoices, and statements that are printed, it is the ideal mix for marketers wanting to spend as little as they can to get the most return as possible.

According to studies from the Direct Mail Information Service (DMIS), on average a customer will spend 42.5 seconds looking at a bill- better than direct mail where most is simply confined to the waste. In fact, two out of three customers rarely or never read the direct mail leaflets included with their bills.

Transpromo means less waste, less paper use, reduced, cost of time in production, reduced storage, improved effectiveness, and the flexibility for the advertisers to change the message whenever he wants to, as well as to up sell and cross sell his services.

Transpromo, as the new form of transactional printing, does however pose questions of its own that will need answering, to add to those inherent in transactional mailings- security, integrity of data (there is nothing worse than receiving a Saga holiday brochure if you are only 30!), getting designers, creative and advertising agencies to understand the benefits, competitive media, relevance and creating the right image- I doubt that your M&S credit card statement would look good with a Jo’s Pizza advert on the top! However, if used intelligently, relevant information will enhance the end customers experience, whilst gaining more sales for the printers’ customer- a Tesco loyalty card statement, for instance, with information and special offers/vouchers for the companies it has working co-operations with-each statement personalised to a specific individual carrying offers on things that he buys regularly, rather than a blanket coverall where offers received may be on things you never but. Transpromo is already here, and it looks like a market that is certainly set to grow.

To provide insight into this substantial market, InfoTrends has recently completed a study- Trans Meets Promo… Is It More Than Market Hype? – In the United States. The research builds on two previous Future of Mail studies conducted in 2003 and 2006. It focuses on direct marketing, billing, statements and notifications. According to the report, ‘While the North American market for transpromo communications printed in full digital colour stood at 1.7 billion impressions in 2007, InfoTrends projects this number to reach an astounding 12.8 billion by 2012. Also compelling is the fact that 63% of document owners surveyed stated that they currently add marketing messages to statements or are planning to within the next 36 months’.

Advertising through transpromo will rise to become a serious force, with predictions of its value reaching around £0.5 billion in the UK alone.

See some of of useful recent blog articles

• 7 Guidelines For Good Newsletter Printing

• Presentation Folders – Just £227 for 100 Folders

• Award Winning Graphic Design – From Print Buying Direct

• Print departments – Graphic Design – part 1

• New Website – specialising in School Prospectus Design & Print

• Improving Your Response Rate to Leaflets, Flyers and Brochures

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s leading suppliers of graphic design and print, based in the Crewe and Nantwich area of Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland. See our websites for more information on graphic design, brochures, business cards, appointment cards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, posters etc

Print Buying Direct is a trading name of The Printing House Ltd. This brand was originally set up to protect the quality name of The Printing House of Crewe and Nantwich, Cheshire, Uk – recognised throught the North of England as a quality printers. Now Print Buying Direct has established itself over the last two years and has become a quality brand in its own right with very competitive prices nationally. Take a look at both websites and learn more about us.

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites – especially our Printing Glossary – Printing A to Z – this makes a really useful guide for designers, printers, print buyers, college students etc.

Don’t forget The Printing House also specialise in Printing for Schools, especially School Prospectus, Secondary School Prospectus, College Prospectus, Primary School Prospectus & Sixth Form Prospectus. We have a vast range of experience design and print of primary, secondary, 6th form, college and universtity prospectus. Visit our School Prospectus Made Easy website to see examples of our work and more about our products. Our customer testimonials webpage is constantly being added to – please stop by and see our reviews.

Print departments – Graphic Design – part 7 – 16th March 2009

Going digital
Digital printing is one of those areas that every designer knows exists but are largely unclear about how and when this printing process should be used in preference to litho printing.

The first thing to clarify is that digital print is not a new process but has been in existence since 1938 when the early Xerography machines were invented by a small company in New York called Haloid, who eventually went on to become the world famous Xerox company.

This process of printing from an electrostatically charged cylinder using magnetic toner powder to transfer the dry image to the paper still forms the basis of many of today’s digital printing machines.

Not all of today’s digital printers are based on this technology of course; inkjet printers are now commonplace and produce much improved quality colour printing. In fact, I would go so far as to say that inkjet printers are at the quality end of the commercial digital print spectrum, a far cry from its origin in the 70s as a personalised mailing system used almost exclusively for labelling.

It was introduction of the Iris Inkjet Printer as late as the 90s that really propelled this system into the quality print market. At that time there was little else available with this level of print quality and colour accuracy, so much so that it became possible the first digital colour proofing system readily accepted by the printing trade.

Inkjet of course is now restricted to one process but three, based on the way in which the nozzles direct ink onto the substrate (continuous, thermal and Piezo). The continuous directs a constant stream of ink, which is either directed onto the image or returned to the ink reservoir by a deflector. The thermal or Bubble jet as it is also known produces rapidly heated bubbles of gas that propel the ink onto the various substrates. The third system applies a voltage across the Piezo crystal at the printhead forcing ink out in the form of a variable sized dot.

All three of these systems have benefits and drawbacks and consequently have found themselves used in a variety of different applications. Continuous is possibly the fastest being able to apply a large amount of ink in a short space of time, lending itself to wide format printers. The thermal system has little or no moving parts so is extremely reliable and can print with either water or solvent based inks making it suitable to a wide variety of substrates. The Piezo system has the advantage of producing a variable dot, which makes it better for emulating litho printing and as such is widely utilised in digital proofing systems.

The main benefit of digital print over litho is that, as there are no printing plates to produce, it is very cost effective for short print runs. The nature of the print process also allows for the printing of variable data, which means that not only can the text and graphics be varied through the run but even the colour images can be changed, in theory with each printed page having a different picture. In reality of course this would mean a greatly increased expense for producing the artwork in the first place so variable data is used more sparingly.

From a designer’s perspective, the restriction of using digital print more widely than at present is partly one of the costs. Because of its history and the fact that this technology has emerged from the office machine and copier market there still appears to be a policy of charging for print on a unit charge basis (the so called click charge). This means that once we go beyond a relatively short print run, there is no reduction in unit cost in the way that there is in litho printing with the usual run on charge being made up of additional paper and machine time.

However, the benefits of using digital print now extends to printing onto a wide selection of materials ranging from paper to plastics, fabric, glass and even ceramic tiles which gives the designer greatly improved possibilities for creativity.

To Be Continued…

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s most prominent suppliers of graphic design and print, based in the Crewe and Nantwich area of Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland. See our websites for more information on graphic design, brochures, business cards, appointment cards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, posters etc

Print Buying Direct is a trading name of The Printing House Ltd. This brand was originally set up to protect the quality name of The Printing House of Crewe and Nantwich, Cheshire, Uk – recognised throught the North of England as a quality printers. Now Print Buying Direct has established itself over the last two years and has become a quality brand in its own right with very competitive prices nationally. Take a look at both websites and learn more about us.

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites – especially our Printing Glossary – Printing A to Z – this makes a really useful guide for designers, printers, print buyers, college students etc.

Don’t forget The Printing House also specialise in Printing for Schools, especially School Prospectus. We have a vast range of experience design and print of primary, secondary, 6th form, college and universtity prospectus. Visit our School Prospectus Made Easy website to see examples of our work and more about our products.

Printing – Where in the world are we? The Environmental Issues – Part 6 – 10th March 2009

The future of printing?
It is fair to say that the last 20 years has seen a vast leap forward in greening up the industry, but the work is ongoing, and many printers are just starting on their way on being environmentally friendly. This forward momentum is rapidly going to intensify.
However, a word of warning. Envirowise says that many companies can be swept away in a frenzy of ‘green wash’ and look to make sweeping changes when lesser measures would do. For example, switching cars to low carbon vehicles of offsetting carbon emissions, when simple no cost measures could have an equally effective impact on environmental performance.
Marketing director Mary Leonard stated, ‘While making green statements is commendable, too many companies are ignoring the basics and forming their environmental policies on ‘green spin’- initiatives that will make them look good publicly but, in isolation, wont help the company achieve the greatest possible impact on their day to day green performance.
‘The increasing costs of utilities and materials have a dramatic effect on the UK’s corporate and industrial landscape. While it is extremely important for businesses to take steps and show how committed they are to improving environmental performance, this need not to be linked to making grand gestures.
‘By simply reviewing how the use of resources can be reduced and where waste can be reused and recycled, both financial and environmental benefits can be achieved’.
In areas such as waste control, energy saving, and moving to more environmentally friendly printing such as vegetable based inks, CTP and alcohol free running, there will be a continued upward trend. For instance, according to Heidelberg, there are presently 70 to 80 printers who successfully run its presses alcohol free in Europe. Many other printers have already reduced their consumption.
The company states that ten years ago the average printer ran with 12 to 13% alcohol; today the figure is 8 to 10%. On a modern press like a Speedmaster XL 105 the situation is different. For example, in Germany only 37% of XL 105 printers are running with 7 to 15% alcohol (compared to 85% on average over all other presses), 42% with 5 to 8% and 20% with 0 to 4%.
Cages of empty tins, still with a rime of ink inside, overloaded skips, discarded pallets, and plastic chemicals solution containers will still have to be disposed of, but sending massive amounts of waste to landfills will no longer be an option. The Landfill Directive (the directive is applied under the landfill (England and Wales) Regulations 2002) will come fully into play by July 2009. This means we will all have to drastically minimise our waste. On the positive side, waste collection is up, with many companies now employing the services of waste collection agencies who will responsibly remove, sort and recycled a whole range of products- from used plates to paper, and on into office machinery and chemicals.
‘Landfill should be the last report for waste that we cant recover or recycle, as it is not sustainable to keep spending it to landfill’, according to martin Brocklehurst, head of External Programmes at the Environment Agency. ‘Also land filling waste is set to become more expensive as the landfill tax goes up and has to travel greater distances for disposal as the number of sites reduces further’.
The introduction of more equipment to minimise waste, energy consumption and water usage will need to be brought into play. With exorbitant costs for electricity and water set to continue, minimising the use of these resources is paramount, not just for the survival of the earth, but for the economic survival of your company.
The future will see many more printers changing to greener forms of energy, either by sourcing their supplies from companies who are offering alternative methods of energy generation such as wind power, to print companies who will install their own sources such as solar panels.
Whilst no on is proposing that there won’t be cost and time, implications with going green, it is also true that any investment is soon recouped in new business, savings on waste and a better corporate image, perhaps in the future we should stop looking at the issue as a means to save the planet, but rather as a choice to answer the ongoing demands of customers, and a sure way of cutting costs within business. It is not about being green, but about providing sensible business options.
The industry has made a good start, but for the next 20 years more definitely needs to be done. That is the most important point for the future.

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s most prominent suppliers of graphic design and print, based in the Crewe and Nantwich area of Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland. See our websites for more information on graphic design, brochures, business cards, appointment cards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, posters etc

Print Buying Direct is a trading name of The Printing House Ltd. This brand was originally set up to protect the quality name of The Printing House – recognised throught the North of England as a quality printers. Now Print Buying Direct has established itself over the last two years and has become a quality brand in its own right with very competitive prices nationally. Take a look at both websites and learn more about us.

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites – especially our Printing Glossary – Printing A to Z – this makes a really useful guide for designers, printers, print buyers, college students etc.

Don’t forget The Printing House also specialise in Printing for Schools, especially School Prospectus. We have a vast range of experience design and print of primary, secondary, 6th form, college and universtity prospectus. Visit our School Prospectus Made Easy website to see examples of our work and more about our products.

Printing – Where in the world are we? The Environmental Issues – Part 3 – 6th March 2009

Certification and credibility
Certification is a very credible way of showing your customers that you truly is environmentally responsible. Because companies are independently audited and expected to continue to develop their processes to be increasingly environmentally friendly, accreditation facts as an assurance that what you say is really true. There are several certification bodies and standards that are widely recognised, the most popular three are:

• ISO 14001: The International Organisation for Standardisation’s (ISO) series of environmental accreditations. The standard outlines how companies can work towards implementing an EMS (Environmental Management System). ISO 14001 dos not lay down specific criteria, as every business is different and has its own needs and issues, but rather provides a ‘framework’ for the implementation, maintenance and improvement of an EMS. To become accredited requires third party auditing.

• FSC: The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is a non-governmental organisation that promotes responsible forestry and provides stringent guidelines to which those accredited to the standard must adhere. It provides an assurance that forests are managed in a sustainable manner in keeping and harmony with the local flora, fauna and indigenous peoples. The FSC accredited now extends further than the forest floor, and printers can become accredited to chain of custody standards if they can meet the strict environmental criteria. To become accredited also requires third party auditing.

• PEFC: The Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) is an umbrella framework for a number of country based forest management schemes. It promotes sustainable forest management- environmentally, socially and economically. Currently, it has 25 member countries from as far a field as the UK, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Finland, Germany, Portugal and the United States. There are also several more countries’ scheme that are awaiting full accreditation. Printers wishing to qualify the PEFC chain of custody accreditation require third party auditing.

There are also a number of other widely recognised accreditation schemes, as well as more localised ones, that are accepted as evidence and assurance of good environmental practices. These include the Green Dragon in Wales, the German Blue Angel, the Nordic Swan, the Ecolable and the NAPM Recycled Mark.
Current estimates suggest that of the approximately 12 000 print companies in the UK, only between 400 and 500 have chain of custody certification (to either PEFC or FSC standards, or both), whilst only a similar number, or maybe slightly less, have ISO 14001 environmental certification.

A recent survey carried out by leading magazine showed that printers are starting to take environment even more seriously now, and our sample survey showed that of those print companies that considered themselves to be ‘green’, 52% were accredited to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) standards, whilst 38% are ISO 14001 accredited for environmental management, with 31% accredited by the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

The FSC was founded in 1993, with the PEFC in 1999. At the time of their foundation, certification of forests was almost unheard of. Since that time, both organisations have done a sterling job to protect the world’s forestry lands and make the management of them more sustainable. From a standing start in 1993 and 1999 respectively, the current volume of acreage now certified has gone up significantly, in a relatively short period of time, and the latest figures for chain of custody forestry are: FSC 102.79 million hectares and 10 472 chain of custody certificates, PEFC more than 206 million hectares, 4325 chain of custody certificates and 22 566 logo users.

Although becoming certified costs money, and means putting in some extra work, the payback in terms of being able to win new customers, and to add value for those you already have, is well worth the effort. Within such as short a time as the next five to ten years, certification will become a ‘must have’ for all print companies.

Print Buying Direct is one of the Uk’s leading suppliers of design and print, based in the Crewe and Nantwich area of Cheshire (UK) but supplying all of the UK & Ireland. See our website for more information on graphic design, brochures, business cards, appointment cards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, posters etc

Print Buying Direct is a trading name of The Printing House Ltd. This brand was originally set up to protect the quality name of The Printing House – recognised throught the North of England as a quality printers. Now Print Buying Direct has established itself over the last two years and has become a quality brand with very competitive prices nationally. Feel free to take a look at both websites and learn more about us.

Please feel free to browse our print buying website and use it as a useful tool – we are adding new pages and offers every week. So keep popping back, subscribe to our printing blog, email info@printbuyingdirect.co.uk or call call 0870 950 8444.

For more information please see our websites – especially our Printing Glossary – Printing A to Z – this makes a really useful guide for designers, printers, print buyers, college students etc.

Don’t forget The Printing House also specialise in Printing for Schools, especially School Prospectus. We have a vast range of experience design and print of primary, secondary, 6th form, college and universtity prospectus. Visit our School Prospectus Made Easy website to see examples of our work and more about our products.