Plans to create a huge House of Print at Ipex were exciting, but at least nine months too late.

I have to admire the chutzpah of Gielissen in attempting to get the thing off the ground, and fair play too to show owner IIR for the effort it put in to make it happen. But a project of this scale, complexity and - most significantly - cost needed far more time to get the funding in place. Either that or a Euromillions win.

This year of all years, exhibitors have examined their marketing budgets in minute detail, and outlay has no doubt been calculated down to the last Mint Imperial and Sparkbrook Balti for the sales team. The financial foundations for House of Print needed to be laid last year.

I noticed that one of PrintWeek's always-astute readers commented that the House of Print would have been better constructed at some sort of marketing exhibition, as opposed to a show that's already print-based. It's a fair point, although I don't know of a marketing event that is on a par with Ipex or Drupa in terms of having enough scale, space and length of tenure to make it both feasible and worthwhile.

The vision for House of Print was (and remains) that such a structure would in itself be a draw for people working in related sectors such as designers and agencies, as well as exciting the imagination of the general public.  

It could have been a Brum-based Skylon for print, but for now it's back to the drawing board for this "monumental tribute to graphic communications".

Perhaps a more accurate headline for this blog would be "House of Print hits brick wall made of pound notes".