We often hear how the modern 21st century printing company needs to be more pro-active in its client relationships, and act in a more consultative manner to ensure customers are making the most efficient use of their printed materials. Obvious examples include printing on-demand to save waste, and adjusting formats to maximise paper yield and reduce mailing costs.
Well, here's a personal plea to whoever does the printing for the London Borough of Hounslow: please, please, please stop them sending out thousands of stupid pamphlets that give printed matter a bad name. As you may have guessed, I live in this particular borough, and many years of painful double-digit percentage increases in council tax have rather sharpened my attention on precisely what the council is doing with all this cash.
It being October, I have just received through my letterbox a copy of "Building Pride Borough Wide - The Hounslow Plan June 2008". This is a full-colour, 16pp A4 stitched product with self cover and I can only assume that the rest of the 87,000-plus domestic residences in the borough were sent a copy too.
A quick glance at this communication and I was soon reaching for the beta-blockers. Of the 16pp, four are blank. Of course it is perfectly possible, nay likely, that producing this as a 16pp product was the most cost-effective option, but couldn't someone have told the council that they look like complete Muppets for sending something like this out with blank page after blank page? Perhaps the document could have been re-jigged and condensed to 8pp - the content seems flimsy enough. Alternatively whoever designed it could have filled those jarring blank pages by sticking in a few more pictures of gurgling toddlers, smiling PCSOs, or jolly multi-ethnic pensioners sitting on a bench. Or, to connect with those of us living in the real world some pictures of feral, hoodie-wearing youths on those annoying little bikes, or pramface teens gargling alcopops. A Sudoku or two, or a crossword? A drawing for the kids to colour in? Even that phrase so beloved of technical manuals: "this page is intentionally blank" would have been better than nothing.
I repeat my plea: if we as an industry want people to continue to appreciate print's many strengths, then we need to do our utmost to stop clients from making it appear weak and wasteful.
