Print Buying Direct

New Look Website for The Printing House Website – 15th July 2009

We’ve been working in the background to create a new look and some new content for The Printing House Website. Please take a look and let us have some feedback. Some of the new content includes A Guide to Preparing Print Ready Artwork and information about our Large Format and banner printing service.

We’re a bit sad and are so excited by our new site that we’re now rebranding Print Buying Direct, Golf Club Centenary Books and School Prospectus Made Easy.

Keep watching all our sites as we are continually adding new content.

To be continued…

See part one of this blog on digital printing here. Also – what does the future hold for printing – part 1

Order your Appointment Cards online at Print Buying Direct – prices from £13.50 for 100 cards printed in full colour. At print buying direct we are market leaders in the printing of appointment cards and can produce them for doctors, hairdressers, dentists, physio, beauty salons, nail technicians, garages, massage therapists – for anything really. Just visit our Appointment Cards web page for more information.

Our business cards are some of the best in the business – printed in full colour on our £200,000 state of the art digital press – you’ll be proud to hand out business cards that we produce for you. Our business card prices are also very cost effective – 100 full colour business cards for only £10!

Don’t forget we’re still running our Letterheads promotion – 2000 full colour letterheads (headed paper) for £125 delivered! We’ve been producing letterheads since 1991 for hundreds of customs as diverse as Bentley and Royal Mail.

See Part 12 of this blog on Print finishing, See also our Blog on Spot UV Varnishing

Print Buying Direct and School Prospectus Made Easy are both brands of parent company – The Printing House Ltd of Crewe, Cheshire, UK. Keep visiting both websites for details of our latest offers and promotions. For more information School Prospectus including School Prospectus Design or School Prospectus Printing (we also specialise in college prospectus) see our www.schoolprospectus.info website

Have a look at our Newsletters webpage for help and assistance with writing and designing your newsletter. It deals with, company newsletters, college newsletters, school newsletters and employee newsletters in particluar. Our blog often focuses on newsletters and we have a page which specifically helps with newsletters as a marketing tool.

TOP TIP: Add that feel of quality to your company brochure by first applying Matt Lamination then a Spot UV Varnish. The UV Varnishing actually ‘lifts’ your pictures to give them a glossy impact.

Our Digital Brochures (turn page technology) are really taking off now – get your brochure put online from only £15 per page.

One of the mainstays at Print Buying Direct is Leaflets. We are experts at Leaflet Design & Leaflet Printing

Check out our Banner Stands (pull up banners) only £99. Design service available.

12647 and all that – Colour Management in Printing – Part 2 – 11th May 2009

Establishing a standard
In the offset print world, the BPIF has already recognised that this is making life difficult for its members and is working to take general quality assurance controls one step further.

The idea is to provide a certification procedure that accredits printing companies for compliance to ISO 12647. This is the international standard for Graphic Technology Process Control for the production of Half – tone Colour Separations, Proofs and Production Prints. You can tell it’s important because of all those capitals. It is divided into seven sections: one defines parameters and measuring methods and the rest are specific to different print processes (offset, newspapers, gravure, screen, flexo and proofing).

An eighth is under consideration, but there is so far no subsection for digital printing systems. These often have different print characteristics to any of the conventional processes. While it may be often desirable to match digital to something else sometimes that would artificially limit its quality potential. Another problem is that there are a lot of digital ‘marking engine’ technologies, each with their own characteristics, unlike say offset presses that all use broadly similar plates, blankets and have agreed standards for process ink colours.

Even so, elements of the ISO 12647 offset and proofing parts can apply o digital work. Paul Sherfield, principal consultant with the Missing Horse Consultancy group, explains: ‘ISO 12647-2 is the litho part of the standard, based on the colour gamuts available from litho presses, inks and papers. Digital printing devices, though still mainly CMYK, have differing, often bigger gamuts. The question is what standard or gamut to use? This must be dependent upon the purpose of the piece. In a mixed printing process campaign, the litho colour gamut will be the smallest, so the other processes used have to colour manage their output to ISO 12647-2. if only one form of digital printing is being used, say wide format inkjet, the maximum gamut of the device can be used to produces great results, but only if it starts from a good RGB image’.

To be continued…

See Part one of – The magic circle – print, paper and recycling

Also part one of in Flight, preflight and post flight – & Part one of this blog -

Print Buying Direct is the online facility for buying print of The Printing House Ltd of Crewe, Cheshire, UK

The Printing House are specialists and experts in Prospectus of all kinds – see our dedicated prospectus Website www.schoolprospectus.info – New on our Schools site – have a look at our new turn page technology (also known as digital editions)- have your prospectus or brochure online (digital prospectus or digital brochure) – but turn the pages as if it was paper.

Don’t forget to see our new offer – Budget Black and white leaflets – 10,000 Leaflets designed, printed and delivered for only £199

Best of all – don’t forget that our Banner Stands (pull up banners) are still only £99 plus delivery!

Business Cards (Business Card Printing) – £10 for 100 Full Colour Business Cards.

We’re still running our very popular Lettterheads Campaign. 2000 letterheads for only £125 in full colour, printed onto a quality 100gsm laser guaranteed paper. see our letterheads webpage for more info.

At The Printing House (Print Buying Direct) we are experts at helping you with the production of your newsletter, whether it be for your employees, customers or fellow club members. See our Newsletters web page for help and advice.

Keep an eye out for our new website for The Printing House Ltd, due for relaunch in May.

Our superb Wallet Folders are still on offer – see http://www.printbuyingdirect.co.uk/wallet-folders.html

Banner Stands – for only £99 – 7th May 2009

Take advantage of our £99 Banner stand offer before it goes forever. Our suppliers prices are going up from the start of June and so we will be putting up the price of our from 1st June 2009 – so order your banner stands (pull up banners) today and take advantage of current pricing

• Ideal for exhibitions, point of sale & displays
• 800mm wide x 2000mm tall
• Graphic Rolls away into foot
• Foot folds away for easy storage and transport
• Supplied with Carry Bag
• Tried and tested reliability

If you don’t have artwork – leave it with us – our skilled and experienced graphic design team is on hand to help. See our Banner Stand Webpage for more information.

Offset Lithography – Printing to you and me! – Part 11 – 22nd April 2009

Bottleneck reduction

The new pre-press revolution, once all the copious teething problems were out of the way, suddenly freed up the human and analogue bottlenecks, allowing for the industry emphasis to be placed on the presses themselves. The late 80s and early 90s saw a huge increase in the amount of multi-colour installations, but more importantly than that we began seeing presses that were sporting ingenious solutions for automation.

By way of example, it was around this time that Heidelberg and Komori both introduced their first automatic/ semi-automatic plate changing models on the Speedmaster and Lithrone respectively. The early 90s also saw more and more presses with remote format and register adjustment from the machine’s CPC units at this time.

Another key area where massive progress has been made is on press colour management which is linked directly to pre-press. This allowed for colour profiles to be sent over with the job, even before the plates reach the machine.

This one area of closing the colour loop has probably been responsible for the most dramatic reduction in make ready times. At first manual densitometers, and now online spectrophotometers, calibrated to large format proofing systems and fingerprinted presses, have together turned printing from a black art, into a measurable science, and have all but taken the last remaining skill away from the machine minder.

To be continued…

See parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten of this blog – Offset Lithography - Printing to you and me!

See our design and print testimonials page to see what our customers say about us.

See our recent Design of the Times Blog Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5

Print Buying Direct is the online facility for buying print of The Printing House Ltd of Crewe, Cheshire, UK

The Printing House are specialists and experts in Prospectus of all kinds – see our dedicated prospectus Website www.schoolprospectus.info – New on our Schools site – have a look at our new turn page technology – have your prospectus or brochure online (digital prospectus or digital brochure) – but turn the pages as if it was paper.

Don’t forget to see our new offer – Budget Black and white leafets – 10,000 Leaflets designed, printed and delivered for only £199

Best of all – don’t forget that our Banner Stands (pull up banners) are still only £99 plus delivery!

Business Cards (Business Card Printing) – £10 for 100 Full Colour Business Cards

Offset Lithography – Printing to you and me! – Part 8 – 21st April 2009

The advent of DTP though, can be considered as firing the opening salvo of the new era of print. Apple Macintoshes completely changed the pre-press department of a busy commercial printing company and were instrumental in the transition from primitive analogue, to high tech digital workflows. Just one look at the payroll of the pre-press department of a busy printing company two decades ago tells the story of how digital workflows have transformed scanning and plate making from a very expensive labour orientated profession to a highly, very high tech, IT orientated occupation.

This transformation also began to close the loop on the relationship between the tow departments of pre-press and the print machine room. Before the advent of all this new technology, there was often intense rivalry between the two departments who had their own completely separate skill sets, which often battled for prominence. Manual scanning of colour photographs and film planning was a separate industry of its own, and often commercial printing companies would out source to repro houses, which have now all but disappeared. Where a company did have an in-house repro department, it was delight that a machine minder would fill out ‘waiting for plates’ on his time sheet, as the pressure was transferred from manually trying to fit an impossible colour set back to pre-press due to a badly laid down set of films.

Enter film to plate (FTP) and computer to plate (CTP), which has been the bedrock of the new era of printing, and the fundamental change to both the machine minder’s day to day existence and the machine manufacturer’s designs for the future. These two developments, along with DTP, have been responsible for the new language of printing, which has not only decimated the work force in pre-press departments, but which has made obsolete thousands of tonnes of what were high technology scanners and print down frames, worth a combined £100 million of printer’s hard earned cash. It has also paved the way for another new era of industry wide co-operation between suppliers of all equipment from the largest presses to the smallest piece of finishing kit.

To be continued…

See parts one, two, three, four, five, six and seven of this blog – Offset Lithography - Printing to you and me!

See our recent Design of the Times Blog Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5

Print Buying Direct is the online facility for buying print of The Printing House Ltd of Crewe, Cheshire, UK

The Printing House are specialists and experts in Prospectus of all kinds – see our dedicated prospectus Website www.schoolprospectus.info

Don’t forget to see our new offer – Budget Black and white leafets – 10,000 Leaflets designed, printed and delivered for only £199

Best of all – don’t forget that our Banner Stands (pull up banners) are still only £99 plus delivery!

Latest Print Promotions at www.printbuyingdirect.co.uk – part 2 – 11th March 2009

Banner Stands (Pull up or Roll Up Banners)

Our Ever Popular Banner Stands aren’t part of our 20% off sale. But they are still only £99 – call 0870 950 8444 for details.

• Ideal for exhibitions, point of sale & displays
• 800mm wide x 2000mm tall
• Silver anodised aluminium finish
• Graphic Rolls away into foot
• Foot folds away for easy storage and transport
• Supplied with Carry Bag
• Tried and tested reliability

If you don’t have your own print ready artwork then our creative team can create a design for you using your pictures and text, for an additional £50**

Carriage to UK mainland is an additional £9.95.

For more information call: 0870 950 8444

This item isn’t available to buy on this website so please call the number above for more information or to order.

Banner Stands – Specification

• Supplied ready to use
• Printing: Full colour single sided
• Paper/Board: White Stop Light
• Finishing: Non-reflective Sand Grain lamination for protection.
• Banner Mechanism: Lightweight Aluminium Cassette, with collapsable arm and protective carry case
• Standard Size: 800mm x 2000mm (Collapses to an easy to carry tube)

We don’t just produce Banner Stands – we can print pretty much anything!
Price is plus VAT & carriage and is based on print ready artwork being supplied.

** Design price is for one basic design with all copy and pictures supplied and is subject to sight of copy. Authors corrections charged at our standard rate of £45 per hour.

See Our other websites

The Printing House

School Prospectus Made Easy

Output falls in the sector in the UK

The printing, paper and publishing sector has incurred a greater than average fall in the 3 months to November – compared with the previous 3 month period (source: UK Government Statistics).

Print, paper and publishing output fell 4.9% (UK average manufacturing decline of 3.3%). Paper, print and publishing make up 13% of the total UK manufacturing. Print wasn’t the worst sector affected, Transport equipment fell by nearly 6%, as did metal and metal products.

With this gloomy figure in mind, cheer yourself up and have a look at some of our great value credit crunch offers.

2000 A4 full colour letterheads (headed paper) – Only £125 (plus VAT)

Pull Up Banners (Banner Stands) only £99 (plus VAT & Carriage)

500 Full Colour Wallet Folders (Presentation Folders) – Only £273

See Print Buying Direct at The Printing House, Cheshire for more offers and information about printing.

The type of stock used for printing (whether digital or offset litho) has a significant effect on
colour reproduction. Paper reflects unabsorbed light back to the eye of the viewer, so the more reflective the paper’s surface, such as coated paper, the wider the range of colors perceived that can be produced.

Choosing the right paper calls for a strong knowledge of paper characteristics and how they relate to the specific print technology. Digital Presses use dry ink, which is a very fine powder. Litho presses use liquid ink. The following stock properties interact with the dry ink to determine the quality of colour images. At The Printing House (Print Buying Direct) we have 3 offset litho presses, all manufactured by Sakurai (ideal for high quality colour printing of annual reports, brochures, leaflets, flyers and newsletters. One large format inkjet (ideal for large posters, pull up banners etc) and a Xerox Digital Press (ideal for short run printing, business cards, appointment cards, postcards, posters etc).

BRIGHTNESS

Brightness is the measure of blue light at 457 nm. Brighter papers produce images with higher contrast.

Be aware that some artificial brighteners can affect colour reproduction by reflecting colors unevenly. A bright blue-white paper may reflect more blue and less red and green, affecting how the eye perceives the paper color.

Blue-white papers contain ultraviolet (UV) brighteners that break down over time when exposed to UV light. As UV brighteners break down, the paper shade may change from bright white to a warm white (yellow cast). UV light exists naturally indoors and outdoors.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR BRIGHTNESS

As a general rule, use brighter papers when printing documents with photographs, halftone images, or complex graphics. Ideal for brochures, annual reports, postcards, leaflets and flyers.

FINISH/ SMOOTHNESS

Finish is the smoothness or roughness of a paper’s surface. Paper is processed to have a specific type of finish, ranging from very smooth to highly textured. Finish can significantly impact image quality on the printed sheet. If paper is too rough, light patches and graininess appear in solid areas. Halftone images also
appear grainy. Dry ink may not fuse properly to extremely rough paper, which may cause deletions where the ink rubs or flakes off. Wet ink suffers from muted colours and drying issues, always allow longer for uncoated papers to dry.

Smooth and coated papers produce sharp images because they reflect light more directly than
rougher papers.

Sheffield is a test that is used to measure the smoothness of paper. It measures the rate of air flow over the surface of a sheet. The lower the Sheffield smoothness number, the smoother the sheet.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FINISH/ SMOOTHNESS

Use smooth or coated papers for proper dry ink transfer to ensure the best colour density and image detail, and to increase the appearance of glossiness. Using a very smooth paper is especially important when printing fine lines and detailed images.

SHADE

Shade is the color of the paper. Paper shade may change the colors of printed images because ink is transparent and also is applied in dot patterns that allow the paper shade to show through. Lighter images reveal more of the paper color than darker images.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR SHADE

• Select a true white for the truest colors and natural looking skin tones.
• Be aware that shaded paper will affect image colors and overall hues.
• Remember that paper shades can vary significantly among brands and lots.

FORMATION

Formation is the distribution of fibers and fillers in paper. Fibers and fillers should be distributed evenly throughout the sheet. Although formation is not included in the manufacturer’s specifications, you can check it by holding a sheet up to a light. If the sheet looks even throughout, it has good formation. If
you see uneven light and dark areas, formation is poor. Good formation is especially important when documents include halftone images of photographs or high ink coverage. Halftone images appear sharper
on paper with good formation. Solid images can appear uneven or spotty when printed on paper with poor formation.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FORMATION

• Choose paper with good formation to ensure uniformity of color images.

IMPURITIES
Impurities in the paper-making process can leave tiny specks in some stocks. The specks can appear as marks or spots in printed images, especially in high resolution images, fine type and fine lines.

Impurities in recycled papers consist of inks and adhesives (from window envelopes, stick-on notes, labels, etc.), which are difficult to remove during the recycling process.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR IMPURITIES

Use high quality non- recycled papers when the best image quality is required.

OPACITY
Opacity impacts the ability of a printed image to show through from the opposite side of a sheet or from another sheet below it. To increase a paper’s opacity, filler may be added to increase thickness or be applied as a coating.

Opacity is measured according to how much light a sheet blocks and is expressed as a percentage between 0 and 100. Most papers fall within the 80% to 90% range. However, an opacity of 98% will prevent a printed image from showing through on the opposite side of the sheet (show through).

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR OPACITY

• Choose paper with high opacity when printing on both sides of the paper or when heavy dry ink coverage will be applied.

For More information of assistance please visit either of our websites – The Printing House Ltd – Print Buying Direct – or call us on UK number 0870 950 8444.

Are you the person in your organisation who has drawn the ‘short straw’ and has to buy the printing for your company and are not quite sure what to do or what to ask for?

NO WORRIES! Speak to one of our print professionals here at The Printing House (Print Buying Direct) and we’ll guide you through some of the issues, giving you all the help and guidance you need to make drawing that ‘short straw’ a positive experience. All advice is given with no obligation, and our prices are among the most competitive in the printing industry. If you prefer to read then browse other articles on our printing blog, some recent articles include, paper thickness, VAT on Print, digital print vs Litho, Loop Stitching, Parish Plan Production, about Paper and Direct marketing with Leaflets & Flyers.

So if you need leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, design and artwork, point of sale, stationery, pull up banners or not even sure what you want, give us a call today and let The Printing House start making your life a little easier. We can also help with you graphic design needs, look after your brand and give you print a design edge over your competitors. For help and advice just call us on 0870 950 8444.

There’s never been a better time to buy print, with the recession starting to bite many companies are cutting down on their marketing and print spend, which may in the short term see a saving on company expenses but will undoubtedly cost more in the long run, especially if your competitors aren’t cutting back.

Here at The Printing House (Print Buying Direct) we’ve always offered great value and great quality, combining this with the recent reduction in the rate of VAT, there’s never been a better time to spend on print.

So whether your requirement is for a flyer, leaflet, stationery (letterheads, business cards, compliment slips etc), design and artwork production, brochure, point of sale or pull up banners, give one of our print professionals a call on 0870 950 8444 and let us show you how you can improve your sales by spending your print budget with The Printing House.

We’re finishing on the 23rd of December for our Christmas Break, but we’re back on 5th January, re-invigorated and ready to go.

Keep an eye out in January as we will be launching our Big Wallet Folder (Presentation Folder) Sale, with some great prices on Wallet folders.