The ups and downs throughout the year made for riveting reading as we tracked an industry under pressure, from tightening margins and forced closures, not to mention historic floods. But it was also a year in which print rose above these threats, claiming record contract wins and business improvements, while affirming its place as a dynamic and increasingly environmentally aware communication medium.

Here we present some of the year's most popular stories from printweek.com as we wish you a very merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

Matt, Steven and Tim

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Graphoprint calls in administrators
Readers hit the website in their droves on the news that Graphoprint, the North Wales magazine and catalogue printer, had gone into administration with 180 redundancies, making this the year's most-read story by far.

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PrintWeek Awards 2007
In October, 1,400 of the print industry's best and brightest threw on their glad rags for the PrintWeek Awards, where Inc Direct was crowned Printing Company of the Year and a further 23 firms took home one of the coveted 'Prism' trophies.

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Hundreds face job losses as CPI puts Bath Press into shutdown
In May, European book printing group CPI announced the closure of colour book specialist Bath Press in a decision that would affect nearly 250 staff across the firm's two sites.

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Administrators move in at Home Information Pack casualty FSP
The debacle of delays that was the Home Information Packs roll-out claimed a victim in the form of First Sellers Pack, which went into administration at the beginning of August.

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Workers to be entitled to extra eight days' holiday by 2008
On a more positive note, workers across the industry were upbeat after new regulations were announced to increase their minimum holiday entitlements over the next two years.

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Royal Mail strikes spell three weeks of chaos for DM firms

St Ives wins £40m print management deal with Royal Mail
Royal Mail was in the limelight throughout 2007. While postal strikes hit the direct mail industry in October, St Ives had a windfall in the same month, winning a £40m print management contract that would boost turnover to £465m.

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Inferno engulfs RR Donnelley Aylesbury
RR Donnelley's Kadocourt bookbinding site in Aylesbury was completely destroyed in what was described as the biggest fire in Buckinghamshire this year. This week, the print giant confirmed that the site would not reopen, leaving 60 jobs hanging in the balance.

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LG claims world first with colour e-paper display
In May, LG Philips claimed a world first with its 14.1-inch flexible e-paper display. The flexible panel uses E Ink colour technology, which can produce up to 4,096 colours and has a viewing angle of 180°.

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Kids' stationery recall shows problems of outsourcing print
The below-par standards of outsourced work came under fire following the recall of more than a quarter of a million SpongeBob SquarePants-branded stationery items.

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Williams Lea claims world first with '$1bn-plus' Reader's Digest deal
October was good to BPO behemoth Williams Lea, landing a print management contract with Reader's Digest's for a cool $1bn.

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Flash flooding across UK hits print firms
The English 'summer was marked by flash flooding up and down the country as torrential downpours wreaked havoc with the nation's printers.

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BPIF survey shows guarded optimism among printers following bumper autumn
The year ended with the positive news from the latest BPIF Directions survey, which found that the autumn quarter had delivered the industry's best trading results. Though, as ever, there remained a dark cloud behind the silver lining, as BPIF corporate affairs director Andrew Brown said that in 2008, "we can expect to see some print companies prosper while others collapse".