Author archives: Stuart Nimmo

Truly unique print…. That’s what we do.

14 October 2023 Stuart Nimmo No Comments

Bold statement, in an age of internet portals which deliver faceless, no support, and only transactional engagements. We exist to deliver customer service, and understanding with a blend of experience, values and pukka print.

We love working with people who have value sets similar to ours. Understand why a working relationship of understanding, and appreciation of the “craft” delivers not just a product, but something which will deliver above and beyond.

The Renaissance is just around the corner. Seriously we know this. No bullshit here. We talk to more and more people in marketing, and business, who are starting to question “the new norm”. The environment we have existed in, socially, politically and commercially has allowed “buzz fads” to lead and not be accountable. So, to some, it is just the bottom line, to the savvy it’s the return on investment.

Speed seems to have overtaken everything, instant gratification, quick fix and hit. However, can you remember, take in, and absorb important information in this environment? This has been echoed in two conversations recently

Chief Operating Executive and trustees at a board meeting (this was feedback to me by a trustee). “We are struggling to get engagement; we are getting less, and less event sign-ups. It takes more work to get people involved.” The trustee then asked the question around the “how” to the answer was “email shots, website portal entries, professional social media etc” The trustee then said, “Have you thought about targeted physical mail?” Yes, he’s a friend of ours and knows what we can do.

Another interesting conversation from a Marketing Executive who we know well “We’ve not been looking at the metrics, my manager/business isn’t bothered”

If you aren’t looking at the performance how do you know you are getting the results?

If you were in the Maclaren team, data, stats, and break-down analysis are key to tweak, change and develop. So, does this explain why this country’s growth is so stunted at the moment? Existing, rather than the desire to achieve? The definition of insanity is doing the same and expecting different results.

Thursday evening was a night out at Wilsons Republic (WR10 event), which is a creative community gathering in Huddersfield. The biggest learning from the event was the freedom of creativity. This freedom in creativity allows for the opportunity to “break the rules”, and to do something different, which is key to making an impact. Both the speakers; Dani Molyneux from Dotto and Tony Brook from Spin both ably demonstrated this break the rules and start the creativity. What was also very apparent, was that both them as skilled practitioners could transcribe this creativity into very reproducible work, or very print-savvy. Something which fresh, younger designers struggle to make happen.

Both of the above designers illustrated beautifully the impact which good design, which was considered for the mediums they were working with could truly deliver. This was backed up in conversation with Graphic Designers who knew about print, however, didn’t practise or promote print (we did talk to some who do print). The design process is all about creating an experience, helping marketers craft the journey, utilisation of different mediums is essential – both physical and digital.

We believe that the right piece of physical marketing or print can go a long way in moving on a customer journey. Everyday mundane, really doesn’t kick it now. Here are our headlines to making it work…

–           Be creative, challenge your audience, and thus be rememberable.
–           Structure and performance before making it look pretty – simple is sometimes best.
–           Be tactile and use different textures, paper has a huge range of textures.
–           Finishing and presentation, use folds in different ways, look to use different shapes of collateral.
–           Linked into the customer journey, what is the next action you want the customer/reader to do?
–           Make people talk about it.

So, if you want to be in the next wave of marketing, perhaps it’s time to revisit the “marketing mix” as we used to call it. Or the “marketing toolbox”, remember one tool doesn’t do every job.

The team at HAD-Print has over 70 years of experience between us. Ranging from magazine production, book production, commercial print, marketing agency and a lot of hands-on print experience. Harnessing digital print technologies with a wealth of experience brings a unique.

So, are you brave? Or are you mundane?

I’d hazard a guess you’re mundane, so don’t do any action after reading this.

If you’re ballsy, brave, an agent provocateur, leader in what you do – really simply talk to us.

No hiding… honesty is one of our values

6 August 2023 Stuart Nimmo

We often get asked to competitively pitch on projects. And occasionally we say no, we’re not going to quote when we see what we’re against. We don’t do race to the bottom. However recently we’ve had feedback from an end user who showed us what was advertised and what they got. The original specification sheet and the supplied polo shirt were nowhere near a match.

What we do…

Our garment proposal sheets, feature clear positionals and photos of the proposed garments.
We only specify garments we know and trust.
We provide honest advice on what will work in different print and embellishment methods – some are better than others at different things.
Honest charging and can suggest the right breakpoints to achieve cost performance points.
We provide options to enhance the end-user experience – tagging and bagging or packing.

So, with the case study above, we’d ensure that a heavier-weight garment was specified to match the end user’s environment. It also takes a detailed print better. The proposed garment had opportunities for further trimming or embellishment to add value to the merchandise proposition. We would offer an option for branded tagging, if you wanted an end-user experience to be delivered more “branded” we can recommend easily branded pain packaging to deliver within a cost budget. This packaging can also be nearly plastic-free for better environmental credentials.

If you are in a specific sector, we understand that your market audience has expectations. A good example of this is motorsport, where attention to detail, and specification of the performance vehicles is matched by the specification and detail of the apparel used. Whether two-tone garments, garments with colour panels, or piped trim, detail in print and embroidery is absolutely critical.

Part of our service is the fact we spend considerable time getting to know the products we use. Whether this is getting touchy-feely at trade shows and roadshows, getting samples in and putting them to the physical test.

Talking of physical tests… in the last year, we’ve rejected 2 items on our testing programme. These include workwear boots, which were inconsistently manufactured and the product support through wholesale and distribution didn’t match our expectations. The other was a Hoodie, which bobbled on after the second wash.

The crux is, if you value your brand, doing the right thing sometimes takes a bit of a bottle. If you are doing merchandise, think about the sales journey, reviews, product evaluations, and user-generated content is now major selling points. If you go on a race to the bottom and don’t have honest sales collateral you will get adverse responses from your valued customers, audience, followers or the better description for them – stakeholders.

The hidden difference in good print.

8 May 2023 Stuart Nimmo

So, you’re about to invest in some print-based marketing to help you achieve some physical touch points with your customers. However, you’re looking at the budget and thinking, well I can save some wedge here… Wrong! For anyone with an ounce of common sense, this article won’t be a shocker. It’s the old adage of what goes in adds up to the net result. It always surprises us, when people want absolute top-notch results, and provide artwork for print from the likes of Canva or Publisher. Ask any good professional, and the answer will come back as a resounding Adobe CS suite, in particular, for page layout Indesign and Illustrator. Let’s unpack why…

Downsides of Canva or Publisher…

• Dubious standards of PDF creation within these applications. Adobe invented PDF and when written to the right standards, no issues with fonts behaving differently, colour spaces (or ICC profiles) which reflect the end result are properly curated into the PDF
• Let’s touch on it, both of the two applications mentioned above, don’t have a fine pedigree with nicely finessed typography. The Adobe CS suite maximises the features within OTF (Open Type Fonts), which provides exceptional tracking information on the spacing between characters and utilises the ligatures properly within the additional characters that exist in OTF fonts. Also remember that Adobe was the creator of Postscript fonts in the first place, so the pedigree is there again.
• Colour management starts well before the creation of a PDF for print. How colour is handled whether it is RGB or CMYK (best for print) or other colour spaces. Adobe has influenced and set standards for colour management since the 1990s at the start of desktop publishing.
• The tools within PDF creation for print within these applications are very limited, again Adobe CS suite makes bleed and trim marks effortless, without any forethought.

So, the other downside of the tale is when someone has all the tools and doesn’t know how to use them. Yes, you can have Adobe CS suite, however, knowing how things work goes a long way.

• Image preparation – finessing the detail, and knowing how you make the right technical tweaks can go a long way from average to stunning. We’ve retouched images which needed detail carefully added back in, getting the tonal balance right, and understanding the limitations of the print process for highlights and shadows. Within recent history, it was known to have specialists for this job to maximise the results from scanned transparencies to produce results which were crisper than sharp and visually said wow on the page.
• Accept that certain items like logos should be vector-based artwork; such as .eps .ai .svg and certain types of .pdf – a vector graphic is a mathematical format which describes key points on the outline and tells where to fill with colour or what stroke width to apply. Why are these great; they scale and remain sharp at whatever size you use them. No raggy edges from bitmap raster-based formats which don’t scale.
• Without sounding old, the art of good typography is dead. Back when I was a junior in graphic design studios, senior designers would issue substantive scorn on poorly tracked, kerned characters in typeset copy. The text should flow and connect with good spacing which aids the reader to enjoy reading said textual copy. Again Adobe CS suite allows this to be handled with ease. (also add in Quark Xpress for anyone still using it!)

Design your page for how it is going to be produced, I was taught about designing for the medium of production. Unfortunately, these days aesthetics override considerations of the HOW. We use to have to consider when designing a brand of communications how they were going to be produced. Silk Screen print was still big in the 1990s for large format billboard advertising, limitations of entry-level small format litho printing were totally different from commercial colour litho, however, the entry cost points also reflected this. Designing to meet these criteria along with the client’s budget and also maximising the result.

We can instantly pull out a piece of artwork, which we know has been artworked up properly (or pukka as we say) – it stands out as effortless, it just works. We can always identify the artwork (even before we’ve looked at the metadata on the file which tells us how it originated) which just has small tell-tale giveaways. We know when we see a file from MS Publisher, colour space will be an issue, the colour will shift from corporate colours in RGB (Microsoft’s default colour space) to CMYK, fonts will look uncomfortable on the page, and yes, we’ve seen horrific things to type from Publisher, with additional strokes to embolden beyond Black or ExtraBold fonts.
Equally, we know that the definitions on PDF files from Canva are dubious, with it struggling to define the Art Box / Bleed Box / Trim Box / Media Box / Crop Box’s within the page description in the PDF file – sorry very technical there. PS Canva isn’t big on colour management either.

So as with anything fine in life, the result you get boils down to the quality of what you put in. I will accept over time perhaps the dreaded Canva might get better, however, initial impressions are very limited. So if you’re specifying for print with good results, think about the how, – how it is created, how it is going produced as a physical item, this will affect some thinking. Equally, don’t ask a web design agency to artwork your print… we don’t get involved in web online stuff, as we are professionals in print. Good artwork/design people for print, have decades of working in the environment and knowing how materials will handle different ink coverages. A good print designer / artworker will make very good suggestions when specifying what paper stocks and finishing processes to enhance the end result to maximise the result in line with the design and artwork.

So, why this blog now, we’ve seen some shockers over the past few weeks, call it therapy, if we don’t walk about it, we’ll just get grumpy. So, if you want stunning print, ask us at the beginning. It’s our trade, we’re not agency wallers pumping it to an internet shed, production is on-site, real live for us – real pukka print.