It's not grim up north

Greetings from Harrogate. For the avoidance of doubt, I am at the exhibition centre and North Print & Pack, having avoided the understandable temptation to install self in a nice window table at Bettys* cafe tea rooms. Early this morning there was a spectacular rainbow arcing across the town, and from my vantage point it appeared to come to earth at the exhibition centre. Will there be a pot of gold at the end of it for those exhibitors who've put their faith in the revamped show? Organisers Informa were delighted to have crossed the 4,000 pre-registration mark just prior to the show opening this morning. Let's hope a substantial number of them turn up. On first inspection it's worth the trip. I've seen a bunch of interesting stuff and many delightful people from the printiverse, and I've only been here for three hours. Highlights thus far include the Palamides Smartliner 240 lay-flat binder, featuring the clever cold gluing system from Ribler that I remember seeing in a formative stage at the last North Print. Go see it on the Perfect Bindery Solutions stand. Moll is showing a compact pocket folder producing a real brain-teaser of a piece. Go see that too. Autobond is running its nifty 52x74 spot UV coater and the machine is on its way to Falkland Press after the show. GMG is showing a new cloud-based colour management system along with OpenColor packaging proofing, also new. It really is all go! A big thank-you to all the lovely print folk here at the show who've already given us great feedback about the new-look PrintWeek. What's more, it's a delightful 'spring in Harrogate' type of day. At least it was at 7am. And there might even be time to nip into Bettys later.   *No apostrophe, according to the logo and website.