So PrintWeek chatted to printers and print managers about what they do to stand out from the crowd and discovered that adding value can come under a range of guises, be it design services, digital offerings or quite literally dazzling customers with specially developed inks or attention-grabbing foils. But one thing these printers do have in common is recognising the value of added-value…

APS
APS is a marketing and communications solution provider with offices in Cheshire and Edinburgh. The Scottish team have a DPPAS (Design, Print, Publishing and Assorted Services) contract meaning APS is the default print manager and designer for the Scottish government. For jobs from the government’s collaborative partners however, the team must add value to compete for contracts.

"It could be easy for us to slip into a reactive mode with the DPPAS contract, as all Scottish government jobs automatically come to us. But we still have to compete for jobs from the government’s collaborative partners so it’s important that we are as proactive as possible. We do this by adding extra creative input, even if the client has an idea of what they want or if their brief is fairly rigid.

For the Scottish Housing Regulator’s (SHR) annual review, for example, we produced several different illustration options. Some fitted their brief exactly, of having silhouettes of people throughout the review, but we were aware that quite a few documents had used this aesthetic recently.

So we produced a ‘wildcard’ option by sending these silhouette illustrations to our laser cutters and then photographing them as a diorama. The result had much more depth, vibrancy and originality, and so the client was really pleased with it.

This is an example of how, even when presented with a fairly restrictive brief like the SHR review where we couldn’t change the format or colours of the piece, it’s still important to inject creativity into a project. We’re acting like a design agency within APS Group because a lot of companies who are also competing for the collaborative partners’ work are design agencies.

Even where we’re already guaranteed a contract it pays to go the extra mile. For instance, when we were asked to produce a Commonwealth Games Legacy report in preparation for the Commonwealth Games coming to Glasgow in 2014, we could have just produced a straight PDF as requested.  But as well as creating this, we decided to produce an interactive version for the general public, including a click book.

This was a test bed for us as we hadn’t dipped into interactive PDFs before. But since then we have been trusted with producing dynamic PDFs for other clients. This is an example of how our ethos, where we’re not just turning jobs around as easily as possible, brings in new and repeat business."

Mike Lynch creative client services director, APS Group

Augustus Martin
Augustus Martin designs and produces printed promotional material for retailers including both the largest retail grocery names, as well as smaller retailer groups and brands throughout the high street. One of the ways the company adds value is through its special ink effects.

"For many, adding a varnish or finish to a piece of print post-press is the only feasible way to increase perceived value of POS. But we think that adding value at such a late stage in the process doesn’t create a prominent piece of print – quality needs to begin from the outset.

Instead we use special-effect inks: ‘disruptive’ inks to increase the impact and standout of a printed item, ‘sensory’ inks to increase the time spent interacting with it, and ‘luxury’ inks to increase its perceived value above a piece of paper.

Disruptive inks were successfully used to create a ‘twinkling’ effect on a Tesco Finest Christmas POS campaign, which helped the range stand out during a saturated promotional period and saw sales rocket 10% to a three-year high. We also used this sort of effect to enhance Dorothy’s infamous shoes for invites to the opening night of Wizard of Oz the musical.

The list of our ‘sensory’ inks is significant and includes ‘high build’ and ‘fizz’ varnishes which are raised above the surface of the print and feel like embossing or Braille. We can also produce rubberised and stone finishes, which accurately reproduce the feel of these materials.

Our ‘luxury’ inks can be used to replicate a range of special finishes, from a matt or gloss car wax finish through to a pumice stone finish. We also offer ‘liquid silver’ and ‘liquid gold’ highly reflective mirrored metallic inks, which can be used as a base that allows standard four-colour images to appear metallic. These metallic inks give a finish equivalent to foil which is not replicable with litho or standard screen silvers.

Many of these special effects can’t be created using foiling and embossing – some of our inks produce a piece of print that would be unachievable by post-press finishes. When advertisers choose our inks rather than a post-press finish it is because our special effects allow them to achieve the ultimate goal in retail communications – commanding consumer behaviour."

Daniel Pattison group sales director, Augustus Martin

Fulmar Colour
Fulmar Colour has been printing commercial and corporate print, point-of-sale, marketing materials and colour hardback books for three decades. It adds value with an in-house ink lab

"At Fulmar Colour, we pride ourselves on being one of the few printers with our own in-house ink mixing facility. The lab, managed by Flint Group and with its own ink lab technician, enables us to do a range of experimentation on materials and substrates to cater for a client’s precise demands.

One of the most popular uses of this facility is colour-matching inks. We’ve colour-matched chocolate bars, fruit and fabrics in the past. One client wanted corporate stationery with an aubergine colour on it so we had to develop a new shade for this as we couldn’t find a Pantone close enough. I can think of two or three major accounts where having this capability has played a major part in bringing in their business.

The ink facility was also instrumental in working with another client, not for colour matching, but for developing a light-fast ink. We were working with a company who needed bright and luminous health and safety stickers to go on scaffolding. Normally inks are very prone to fading
but obviously it’s critical in this instance that these colours don’t fade and the safety stickers continue to attract the attention of workers.

We’ve also developed specific laminates and varnishes for clients who require a particularly slick finish – automotive and cosmetic brands for example. We can then offer these new finishes to other clients. We’ve also added-value to cosmetic companies’ materials through scented inks: a popular finish is a varnish that releases a scent when it comes into contact with the warmth of someone’s hand as they take a piece of mail out of an envelope.

It can take three to four months to develop a special ink or varnish, as the light-fast inks for the scaffolding project did, but this is very worthwhile. It breaks the dreaded cycle of having to sell print as cheaply as possible."

Mike Austin sales and marketing director, Fulmar Colour

Hammesfahr
Based near Duesseldorf, Germany, Hammesfahr is a commercial printer offering a wide range of printing and finishing solutions. It prides itself on offering an in-line cold-foiling service, an option that is not yet available through UK printers.

"When we installed Manroland’s inline foiler Prindor in February 2007, we were the first printer in Germany and in Europe to offer this kind of foiling. A lot of clients came to us specifically because they knew we had this technology– the beverage, cosmetic and automobile industries particularly find this kind of finish meets their needs so that 20-30% of the printing we do now involves a cold foiling finish.

Whereas hot foiling is best for small areas on the printed product, such as company logos, cold foiling is ideal for giving larger areas, such as whole images, a metallic finish. Applying this kind of effect on large areas with a hot foiler would be too expensive as coloured foils would have to be used. Cold foiling, by contrast, works by applying cheaper silver foil to the product first and then applying ink on top. So clients such as Mercedes, BMW, L’Oréal and Jim Beam whisky can opt for this process to produce posters and flyers with a luxury finish.

Not only is cold foiling a cost-effective way of applying a metallic finish, the results can be neater and more polished than some hot foiled pieces.

Because it is an inline machine, the cold foiler ensures that registration between the foiled areas and the rest of the piece of print is spot on, whereas there’s always a possibility with hot foiling that it won’t be in the right place as you have to manually transfer the pieces from the press to finishing unit.

This kind of foiling is also more durable than hot foiling as, instead of being sealed around the edges, cold foil is actually joined to the substrate.

The two processes do produce a different result and hot foiling’s shinier and more tactile effect will still be most suitable for some jobs. But the look of a cold-foiled product is preferred for other applications, so we can add value by being one of only a handful of printers to offer this effect."

David Köppen sales manager, Hammesfahr

Hudson Display Services
Hudson Display Services is an Essex-based wide-format printer producing work for designers, signmakers and builders of exhibition stands. They add value for their customers by teaching designers to add more colour.

"There’s nothing glossy about the added-value we offer, it’s just a case of teaching designers how to use more colour. Because wide-format inkjet presses are often thought of as proofers, printing trial copies of large web offset press jobs as a guide to how the press output will look, designers often don’t realise that wide-format machines are capable of a wider range of colours than other presses.

The majority of designers use Adobe CS, which ships with US Web Coated SWOP v2 as its default CMYK space. Sadly, that means little to a lot of printers and designers, yet it’s vital to understanding digital colour. SWOP is the range of colours produced by a web offset printer so most designers by default limit their artwork’s colour range to this space.

What we do is hold tutorials to educate designers about the wider range of colours that a wide-format job can potentially feature. We add value by sitting down one-to-one with a client, ideally at their graphics workstation, and working through a couple of examples that demonstrate exactly what can be done and how to do it. I will also be holding a free colour management seminar in the new year and launching YouTube videos covering the basics. One-to-one is obviously the best way, but I want to get this idea used by more designers, and I can only see so many people in a week.

It’s hard to quantify the positive impact that colour management has for clients as obviously you never run a project with a narrow and wider range of colours for comparison’s sake. The difference is something you can’t quite put your finger on; the graphics are just that bit "better" and an observer won’t necessarily know why.

There are many companies addressing colour management issues for print companies but they focus on making the printer output predictable. By contrast we are dedicated to demonstrating to clients how much more striking and vibrant their posters, billboards, banners, wallpapers and exhibition displays can be."

Craig Hudson managing director, Hudson Display Services

NB Colour
NB Colour is a litho and digital printer based in Lancashire, producing catalogues, brochures, leaflets, stationery and annual reports. When Lancashire housing association Calico Homes called with an urgent request for eight six-foot people-shaped display pieces, the company was more than happy to maintain good client relations by going the extra mile. 

"When Calico Homes called with the request, at first I wasn’t sure if we’d be able to help them out. The pieces were for a communications meeting held by Calico Enterprise, the charitable arm of the organisation, and they wanted pieces that service users could stick their ideas for improved services on. The silhouettes would have to be screwed into the wall so I couldn’t do it with Foamex material. I thought it would cost a fortune to get ply board cut professionally and a jigsaw tool wouldn’t be up to the job.

But then I realised we might be able to get our foam suppliers to use their laser cutting equipment to cut out the ply board figures. We were doing a lot of printing for Calico Homes at the time so obviously I knew that going above and beyond the call of duty in this instance would make for great customer relations. It was a very last- minute request and they didn’t have time to research other companies.

So we went to B&Q and bought the ply board and spray paints, and then had the board cut. Our print finishers created a temporary spray booth in our loading bay out of paper waste skips and sprayed the figures black. Calico came to us with the job on Thursday morning and we had it done for Friday.

It was actually quite easy in the end – we could use our print knowledge to go about the job in a print-orientated way. I would definitely do jobs that weren’t strictly within our remit again – I never like to say ‘no’ to a client."

Dan McLaughlin estimator, NB Colour

Royle Print
Croydon printer Royle Print specialises in the production of corporate and marketing literature including annual reports, corporate and social responsibility reports and a mix of marketing literature such as brochures, folders, books, in-house magazines and calendars. Royle Print adds value with a wider range of finishing services.

"People come to Royle Print because we offer a balance between having the firepower and the capabilities of a big group and the personal touch and experience that comes with specialising in a niche area. Because Royle Print is part of the CPI Group, it shares its Croydon site with CPI White Quill, a book production company specialising in book jackets and covers. This means that Royle Print has a much wider range of finishing machines and technology at its disposal, such as laminating, embossing and foiling, than some other brochure and report printers. We’re even as specialised as making our own dies, and that’s pretty unique in the book world never mind in the printing world.

Because we are affiliated with White Quill and have access to their finishing equipment, we carry out every aspect of production in-house. We believe if we keep as much of the production in-house as possible, we’ll increase our control of the process and so we can be more flexible in responding to a client’s needs. So if we have projects that are very demanding – very complex or needed in a hurry – we’ve got the equipment and firepower to deliver that work.

We also ensure full control of a project by getting involved as early as possible. If we can get in at an early stage, we can identify papers and processes to enhance the finished result within budgetary constraints. It’s by getting involved at this stage that we can help shape the project and suggest innovative screening and printing techniques to push the boundaries and produce something really extraordinary. For those who work in marketing communications, creating something that stands out from the crowd is what it’s all about.

For our reports and accounts customers, they really value that we have in-house financial typesetting. Having the ability to typeset pages of technical numbers is something that clients demand. It shows how, despite being part of a large group, we’ve still got a valued specialism."

Dino Bishop marketing and communications manager, CPI UK