It was proof, should it be needed, that print still has value, and valuable connotations, for these ‘digital natives’. The feeling was effectively summed up by student Louis Casely who states: “Print tells you that time and money has been invested in the idea.”

THE PARTICIPANTS

Students 

Louis Casely, Viv Chan, Michael Driver, Rebekah Findlay, Sophie Hall, Izzie Lundie, Lizzie Lomax, Tom Quinton, Jodie Smith, Harriet Staniforth and Reece Wykes

Course director

Geoff Grandfield

Printing and design professionals

Richard Davey, sales director at Leycol, London. The firm is one of just a handful of high-end printing businesses in the capital. Leycol works with a raft of prominent clients including design agencies, galleries and luxury brands. 

Alistair Hall, director at We Made This in London. Alistair’s graphic design company specialises in “rather tasty print work” including book designs, brand identity and lots of interesting printed items including the members’ handbook for the Wynkyn de Worde society.

Jack Lindop, account director at Taylor Bloxham. Taylor Bloxham is a diverse printing group with its main production facilities located in Leicester, spanning everything from high-definition litho printing to large-format POS.

THE DISCUSSION

At one point, you would create an illustration and it would always be in a magazine or newspaper. Now, it could be on the side of a bus, or on a button badge, or of course online. It’s so diverse. How much do you need to know about different print techniques to inform your work?

Geoff Grandfield There’ve been a number of incidents where the quality of print really influences the communication. It can change the way the image looks. 

Michael Driver A lot of my understanding of print comes from traditional printmaking. I did find that digital stuff can get a bit confusing. If you were doing something on a bus you wouldn’t necessarily be working on a document that is bus-sized… I actually own a Riso that I bought off eBay, but it’s not working properly at the moment. I need to pump some money into it to get it working. The idea is that I can do an image and a run of prints, to send out to clients as a promotion.

Alistair Hall But if you could create a short-run magazine and sell that for a fiver a copy, you could wash your face in no time at all. That might be a good thing to do. And presumably you’ve got a degree show coming up.

Do you think of illustrations as flat, one-off illustrations, or do you also think about how they might animate? Thinking of something like Wired magazine, which balances print and online.

Reece Wykes The good thing about this course, is it’s taking into account the animation side as well. How things might move. For this project, I thought it would be quite interesting to make the image move as well. 

Geoff Grandfield Illustration is an amazingly popular subject nationally. It’s a kind of bridge between the fine arts and the private arts. Effectively you can use any media, you can use hybrids of different things, from print through to film, objects and the spatial environment. We encourage that breadth of thinking on the course. The mechanical knowledge of print is something that’s still quite esoteric. It’s quite hard to get to grips with what is currently available. This project was a great open door to some of the opportunities.

What about things like varnishes, embossing – techniques beyond straightforward printing, that really lend themselves to illustrations and give them an extra dimension?

Richard Davey There’s been a huge change in the way people use print in the past four or five years. Certainly, where it’s winning and distinguishing against digital solutions, is where you can build in those tactile properties. People, through their designs and illustrations are looking to use different materials, different finishes like varnishes and foilings – specialist processes like that, to make it stand out. When you pick up an item like that, it communicates with you in a different way to looking at it on a computer screen, on your smartphone or tablet. That’s really where print is finding its strength in a different way.

Louis Casely It’s really interesting to think about what you can do with it. A couple of us are designing the branding for our degree shows, the invitations. Because of cost we haven’t gone crazy with things like embossing. But we have really thought about how the concept can inform the way we hope to print it. It’s got a fold in it that’s a big part of the concept, it’s a sort of reveal. 

Are you still making tangible portfolios?

All Yes, as well as online portfolios.

Rebekah Findlay I’ve just done a project called ‘design dialogues’ for which it was suggested we go and research the type of industry we might want to go into, and make a piece of work to try and build up our contact base. We need to start getting out there. 

Viv Chan Reaching out to the sort of people who are most relevant to your type of work as well. Be it through agencies, freelance – being very specific about where you want to end up. 

Alistair Hall It’s gold dust that you have access to production while you’re here. When you’re out of college you’re going to have to pay for it. Whenever I see a portfolio that is handmade, or the person has actually been involved in production, I always think ‘wow look at that’. While you may not have the budget for all these special effects, there’re ways to create something that’s truly beautiful. You could, for example, decide to sell the catalogue. And you can also work with lovely printers that will give you great prices when they know you’re going to create something incredible! I’m still working with the printer I worked with at our degree show – that all came from that initial contact. 

Jo Francis When I was getting ready for today I had the business cards for Alistair, Richard and Jack on my desk, and each in their own way have some stand-out. There’s foiling, embossing, and Richard’s is so thick it’s like some sort of ninja weapon!

Richard Davey It just shows, even a simple business card – if you’re doing something differently, you can still make it feel really, really special. Often, with marketing communications people aren’t handing out that many pieces. But a business card is one piece that says something about you. If it says something and makes a statement, it’s fulfilled its task. 

Do you collect inspirational bits of print? Perhaps examples of the techniques that you might like to use in the future?

Michael Driver I’m a real book nerd. It’s quite an unhealthy obsession. 

Alistair Hall Once you’re doing your first real work, get in contact with some of the paper companies and get them to bring around their print samples. I regularly meet up with them to see their latest stuff. It’s fantastic. You think ‘I can start using that’ the different materials, some are great for foil blocking some for letterpress. And it’s always interesting to see other people’s work. 

Jack Lindop Last week I was at a paper workshop on foiling and finishes. It’s definitely worth keeping in the loop on those things. Paper specialists are in the middle of the graphics industry. They’re not stale. It really is quite cutting edge. And they hand out some great samples!

Alistair Hall You have to have a dialogue with your printer. If you don’t, you can end up with things that shouldn’t be done, or won’t work, and these guys really know their stuff. So it’s useful to sit down with them, and perhaps the paper guys as well, it’s an amazing pool of knowledge that can only make your job stronger. 

Jack Lindop Quite often, you’ll find particularly luxurious stocks are specified, then the commercial pressures might dictate that a more standard grade is used. 

Alistair Hall Budgetary pressures are a huge thing, that’s a very real part of your job, knowing what budget your client has to spend and how you can create the best piece based on the available budget. 

Reece Wykes We are finding that at the moment, we are printing our portfolios and trying to find the best price, the right sort of paper, things like that. 

Geoff Grandfield The physical portfolio is still important.

Alistair Hall I keep coming across this in book design. From experiencing a book as a physical object in a bookshop, now you see a tiny JPEG online and are supposed to make a decision based on that. Which ignores the fact that a book is a physical object and a lot of decisions are based around that. Hopefully what will happen is, people will start to integrate full photography of the object. You as illustrators and designers, have got to cross that part where you’re emphasising the importance of ‘the thing’, when you’re doing print work. You’ve got to know what the possibilities are.

Harriet Staniforth We did a lot of book cover design this year, and I’ve recently printed them off full size to put them onto other books, to photograph them. As soon as you put them onto the physical object, they look so much better. 

Alistair Hall I agree, as soon as you print it out, it just feels different. For example, which bits are going to fall into the gutter when you open a spread? I remember early on in my career, not understanding creep in a stitched magazine. You can talk to your printer about things like that. 

Richard Davey If you take one little tip away from today it should be this: when you’re doing a project always ask the printer for a proper hard proof. A lot of people say ‘just give me a PDF proof because we’ve got to get this done quickly’. But you see things very differently when you run things out. A lot of those little issues don’t seem like problems until the book is printed and bound. If you do a proper proof, you can see what’s going to happen. It’s amazing, how many of those little issues come out. It could be two or three tiny little things, but that’s enough to elevate something from an average project to something you’re really happy with. 

Jack Lindop On that point, if you’re producing a multi-page document it’s sometimes quite useful to send over an advance page. Then we can highlight any issues right at the beginning. 

Richard Davey One really important thing to focus on, is that old-fashioned relationship. Giving a brief and making sure that it’s passed over correctly. Sometimes, we could be printing 50,000 of something based on an email link to a document! Better to sit down and understand all the issues – for example if the job has borders around the edge, they all need to be even. Or perhaps all the skintones need to match up. Sometimes, half an hour sitting down to discuss a project can be time well spent. 

What can the printing industry do to make print easier or more attractive for you? 

Harriet Staniforth I just wanted to know what you think about the future of print concerning environmental issues. Digital is obviously more eco-friendly. 

Jo Francis There’s a serious point here. Paper is a genuinely renewable and recyclable substance. It’s a fallacy to say it’s not environmentally friendly. Whereas all this e-waste is a nightmare. And there’s a big environmental impact in the server farms that power the internet.

Richard Davey Also, from a pure manufacturing point of view, print is a very clean industry now. All our offcuts go to be recycled, all the chemicals and inks we use are very eco-friendly. Clients have demanded it, and we’ve pushed hard in that direction. 

Jack Lindop It is telling that 10 or 15 years ago there was quite a lot about accreditation on paper. That’s matured and there’s an assumption now that all the paper is going to come from good sources. It’s come a long way and that’s an indicator.

Geoff Grandfield I’d love the opportunity to have a sort of laboratory of print, to try things out. A short project where every student gets to see what that technique will do to his or her work. Foil, for example, used to show that something has a particularly significance. It has a different quality. The ability to be able to play with this stuff and explore it – five different exotic print techniques, something like that. How the narrative and the print technique fit together. Alistair, you’re doing this at Hoxton Street Monster Supplies. 

Alistair Hall [displays sample box] It’s a shop that sells goods for monsters, based on a project set up by Dave Eggers. It funds a children’s literacy project. For example, I see this tin as a book cover. When we set it up, the reason we did this was because tins were cheap and we could fill up the shop for not much money. We then did a single colour label we could put on ourselves, and we could fill the tin ourselves. And this is an invitation we did for a major retailer. They had been doing all their invitations online, but they decided to go back to print. 

Richard Davey Yes, if you go to a really special event, you keep that invitation. It goes in your drawer, or your desk. It becomes a solid memento of the whole experience.

Alistair Hall It’s a promise, isn’t it? If you spend some money on the invitations, you’re spending some money on the event. That’s why it works. Tactile communications work in a very specific way. We first learn about the world through our hands, before language and before reading and writing. It just feels right. It’s a really powerful tool in your arsenal as a designer. 

Viv Chan For me, when I buy print, I research it for months. I really want to invest in it. Whereas digital is just there. Something like Instagram is a constant feed of images. Even with a magazine, I want to know as much as I can about it. When I have it, it’s precious and I spend a lot of time going through it. 

Louis Casely Print tells you that time and money has been invested in the idea. You know that it’s going that extra mile. 

Rebekah Findlay I feel like if you have something tangible then I will spend more time. I don’t particularly like reading on the internet, I’d much rather have a book. I prefer the tangible object. 

Michael Driver I was listening to a podcast by the guy who runs Stack magazine. I think I’m going to sign up for a subscription to that. It was interesting to hear him talk about a second golden age of print, and artisan magazines. 

Alistair Hall Print is really important because it has this promise of something, and because it has tactility and because it suggests value and permanence. All those qualities are something you can play with as designers. 

Richard Davey You only have to look on eBay to see the value of back catalogues. Rankin books are changing hands for serious money. As time goes on, there will be fewer of them around and they will become more collectable. So if you see a specialist item, put it in a box and keep it in your attic! 

Design competition winner: Michael Driver

Driver used ‘the daily commute’ as the theme for his striking illustration. “I wanted to demonstrate print and digital media displaying their functions side by side, rather than as opposing forces,” he explained.

“I was really pleased to see my work get picked out as the winning entry for this year’s PrintWeek Power of Print competition. All of the entries were very strong and I’m very thankful to all the readers who got involved and voted. The importance of digital media and print working together particularly in the industry that I’m about to be catapulted into is a hot topic and it is really great to be able to be part of that discussion through PrintWeek. I’d like to thank PrintWeek especially for running the brief with Kingston University – it’s not often that magazines come in and are prepared to work with university students.

“Being able to say that I’ve been on the front of a magazine before I’ve even left university is a real portfolio booster and for that I am thankful.”