This blog comes to you from something of a “print nest”.

I am surrounded by printed items of one form or another. A teetering pile of Christmas catalogues to one side. Christmas cards (blank ones that don’t need posting and are still to be written) to another. More Christmas cards (received, thank-you very much) over there on the sideboard.

Gift bags, wrapping paper, oh and the Christmas double issue of the Radio Times. And Private Eye. And Good Housekeeping. The list goes on.

Aside from such items of seasonal print paraphernalia, it seems to me there’s going to be more personalised print than ever under the nation’s Christmas trees this year.

I watched Precision Printing's video of their “peak season”, handling a whopping 60,000 orders a day, with delight.

And I’ve seen loads of activity around personalised books, such as those from Lost My Name and Penwizard.

Then there are all those personalised photo gifts: cushions, mugs, calendars etc etc.

Meanwhile, sites such as Notonthehighstreet and Etsy are full of gifts that involve print in one way or another.

This interesting blog from The Economist, about the resurgence in letterpress printing (something we’ve mentioned here previously on numerous occasions) states that there are more than 33,000 people on the site selling letterpress cards, prints and posters. Wow!

Another trend that’s apparent aside from things that are beautifully printed, is the increasingly last minute nature of Christmas shopping. Printers able to react to the demands of clients who only recently noticed that, oops, it’s almost Christmas will surely have cashed in.

At PrintWeek Towers we never tire of finding examples of the power of print, and this season is a time when the tactile, the beautifully packaged, and the tangible are very much to the fore.

So, for my final official day at work of the year I’d like to give a seasonal shout out to all those printers who have been, or still are, hard at work producing printed things that will result in Christmas Day delight in one way or another.

And I look forward to picking up on the power of print theme again come 2015.