Nice Hats!!!!

A HUGE THANK YOU TO EVERYONE FOR YOUR SPONSORSHIPS, ENCOURAGEMENT AND SUPPORT.

With your help i've exceeded my target and raised over £500 for Hospiscare.

THANK YOU!

...WE'RE ON YOUTUBE! Triumphant at the end!! ;)

Fancy a dip?

On the 26th September, in a freezing cold lake on the edge of dartmoor, I'll be taking part in the Hospiscare 1-mile Open-Water Swim! A challenge for me and a tribute to the memories of some very special people.

Hospiscare offer an invaluable service funded purely by your generosity... Please dig deep and sponsor me now!

Your donation will be greatly appreciated - and HUGELY encouraging!!! TO SHOW YOUR SUPPORT VISIT...

www.justgiving.com/Lous-gonna-swim-a-mile/

THANK YOU

Who's that answering the phone...?

A big welcome to Hannah who joined our team last month….

Adding a new face to our front of house, Hannah comes from a creative background and has been working in the print industry for the past 5 years, she joins us brimming with knowledge and ideas. As well as working alongside Janet to greet you when you call in, she’ll be assisting the Management Team with Customer Care, Accounts, Marketing and general all-round support.

Bursting with enthusiasm and a real bonus to our team, we look forward to fun and exciting times with Hannah onboard!

BEWARE OF THE WOLF…

Is your company affected by competitors halving their prices?

As we’re all trying to work through the same economic crisis, we all face similar challenges. We find ourselves battling more and more against other print suppliers offering rock bottom prices, which they are unlikely to be making any money on. Whilst this approach may fill machines in the interim, it serves only to de-value the work we do.

We would ask that you check your prices carefully, be certain that you have been quoted on comparable stock, that the quality of proofs supplied are at the same level and that delivery has been included in the cost. Also ensure that you are being offered services that you actually need - and that the supplier is competent at delivering these services at such low prices. Consider the quality of the end product, and that of future reprints, will the supplier still be there when you need to re-order? It is not simply a case of different companies offering the same service at different prices.

Having been around since 1878, we’ve survived wars and depressions. If you want to be sure of a quality job and a service that you can rely on from a supplier that will still be here to see the next recession through, make sure you choose the right price.

“The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded from memory.”

What have we done..?

Don't you want to know?

Increasing paper prices...

Many printers have expressed concern at the latest paper price rises, which are set to hit the industry as the UK teeters on the brink of recession.

An expected rise of 7 - 9% is due at the beginning of February 2009. Merchants quote 'a need to increase paper prices in order for market prices to reflect the rise in raw material costs'.

A guide to effective print buying

At Maslands we fully appreciate that print can be a complex, daunting and expensive process. We want to help all you print buyers out there understand the best way to buy all of your print solutions by making transparent the key issues involved.

However, by its very nature, every print job is unique and therefore if you have any questions at all, please feel free to pick up the phone and discuss your needs with any of the team at Maslands.

Design, art work and proofing
Obviously most printed material is intended to look good to the end user. Most printers simply print whatever the customer (or their designer) tells them to print. However it may not be obvious until the final job is produced that it doesn’t look exactly as originally intended.
It may therefore be important for you to see a high-resolution digital proof BEFORE going fully to print. Or you may want our designers’ input into the job so we can explain the impact of certain colours and fonts at the design stage rather than let you see flaws in the finished article.
When buying print you need to consider whether more investment up front in the design, artwork and proofing stages is worthwhile, to be absolutely sure of the look and feel of the final job, BEFORE you spend money on the actual print run.

Volume
A large part of any print job is the set-up of the machine in preparation for printing. Therefore the cost to keep the machine running means that larger volumes cost proportionately less. For example, a print run of 1,000 documents may cost £500, whereas 2,000 might only cost another £100 and 5,000 may only cost £800. Therefore if you want 1,000 business letterheads it may be better to buy 3,000 even if this looks like it may last you a year.
Make sure you understand the price/volume options for your print jobs and discuss these with your printer to get the best deal for you.

Timing of the job
It is much more efficient for printers to keep machines running for as long a period as possible, and therefore planning ahead what jobs will be on the machine and when, is important to them. Equally, for some customers the delivery time is crucial (Christmas cards delivered on 26 December are worthless, and brochures not produced on time for a product launch, may have a big impact on your business).
Make sure your printer knows the key dates for you, and check that they are able to deliver to your deadlines. The more time you can give them the more likely they are to hit the dates and the lower the price should be.

Quality of the end product
It may seem obvious, but there is a wide range of choice for customers in the quality of the end product. A key detail is the type of paper (stock) that is used. For some jobs it may be perfectly OK to use low grade stocks, for internal paperwork or flyers etc. For other jobs it may be critical to use a significantly superior stock that promotes a “quality”message to whoever the material is aimed at. Consider for example the quality of the stock in a ‘TV Times’which is only expected to survive one week,with that of ‘Hello’ magazine which may stay on coffee tables for a month or more.
In addition there are many different types of finishes that can be applied to make a job look and feel different. You should decide on the significance of the final finish and explore with your printer the benefits and cost of each option. Make sure that you compare each quote you receive, as a lower price almost always means lower quality.

These are just a few of the key issues to make sure that you get the best results and the best value for money from your printer. There are many suppliers out there who can offer cheaper prices for printing, but as with every other purchase you make, there is a compromise between quality and price.

At Maslands we strive to be open and clear with our customers on the choices they have to reduce costs and the consequent impact on quality, or in many cases the options to spend a little bit more and improve the impact and end quality of the job enormously.

I only asked for a sample and he called me a Dummy!!!

We understand that some of the terminology used by us printers can be a little confusing...

Work and turn? Work and Tumble?

...what is this, a circus?!

Printing has a language all of its own and to help you understand what we're all on about, here are a few well used terms and their meanings...

BACKING UP
Printing the reverse side of a sheet already printed on one side.
BLEED
An extra amount of printed image that extends beyond the trim edge of the sheet or page. As in 'the image bleeds off the sheet'.
CMYK
(Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) The four process colours used in colour printing.
CREEP
Can also be called "push out". This happens when the middle pages of a folded section extend a little bit beyond the outside pages. Printers compensate for it during layout and imposition - otherwise you'd be stuck with a little creep, and who needs that?!
DOT GAIN
A defect in which the dots that make up an image print larger than they should, causing loss of detail or stronger colours. Dot gain can mean the difference between a dark print and an acceptable print.
DUMMY
A preliminary mock-up of the final piece, showing images and text. This is sometimes just blank pages of the chosen paper,made up in advance to simulate the final size and format of the print job.
HARD PROOF
A proof on paper or other substrate as distinguished from a soft proof that is an image on a screen.
HICKEYS
These are small spots or imperfections that occasionally show up in printing, due to dirt on the press. Hickeys are bad news no matter where they show up.
IMPOSITION
Is the positioning of pages on a plate layout so that after printing, folding, and cutting, all pages will appear in the proper sequence.
KISS CUT
To die cut the top layer but not the backing of self-adhesive paper.
MAKE READY
The process of setting up and adjusting a printing press for a particular ink, paper and specifications prior to printing.
MOIRE
A moiré (pronounced mwa-ray) is an undesirable pattern that might make you think your vision's in trouble. This is caused by incorrect screen angles for printed colours.
PDF (Portable Document Format)
A file format developed by Adobe. It can capture formatting information from many publishing applications. This makes it possible to send a formatted document to a computer screen or printer and have it look exactly the way in which it was created. You need Acrobat Reader to read PDF files. Printing industry work flows are now primarily PDF-based.
REGISTER
The positioning of two or more printing images in exact alignment with each other. Printing that is correctly positioned on the page is said to be 'in register'. When you can see a single color 'hanging out' underneath another (an effect similar to 8 pints!) that colour is out of register.
RESOLUTION
Resolution is the term used to describe the number of dots (dpi - dots per inch), or pixels, used to display an image. Higher resolutions mean that more pixels are used to create the image, resulting in a crisper, cleaner image.
SEAL
An emulsion or varnish applied over a printed surface to protect it.
SHEETWORK
To print one side of a sheet of paper with one plate, then turn the sheet over and print the other side with another plate using same grip edge and opposite side guide.
SCUM
A film of ink printing in the non-image areas of a plate where it shouldn't print. (Although not specific to print, we wonder if the person who came up with this word also invented Dummy and Creep!)
SPECIFICATIONS
A detailed description of a print order. You have to provide a lot of information to your printers, particularly comprehensive, detailed job specifications (specs). It's this information that determines your price. Send wrong specs and you'll get wrong prices.
VERSO
Is the left-hand and RECTO is the right-hand page of a book or magazine. Latin makes everyone sound smarter. Use these terms and impress your friends.
WET PROOFS
Also known as Machine Proofs - a proof of a job made on the actual printing press, in advance of the production run.
WORK AND TUMBLE
To print one side of a sheet of paper, then turn it over using the opposite grip edge but the same side guide and plate to print the second side.
WORK AND TURN
To print one side of a sheet of paper, then turn it over from left to right and print the second side using the same grip edge and plate but opposite side guide.

Printing is fun business! These are just a hint of the wild and wonderful terms that connect us all.

Wink if you think you look great in pink!!!!

So we dug around in the bottom of our wardrobes (and those of our kids, wives and friends!!!) in a search for anything pink and donned it all for our 'Dare to Wear it Pink 'day in aid of Breast Cancer Care.

With some fun activies - including 'Pummel the Pinata', 'Pick a Prize in our Pink Raffle', 'Put on Pounds with our homemade Pink Treats' and 'Pick your brains with our Pink Quiz' - and a whole load more pink(!) we raised £100 in total for a very worthy cause. Thanks to everyone here for getting into the spirit!

Real Engineering in Motion...

I came across this video on YouTube and was instantly captured by that hypnotic sound, made with each impression, not tarnished by any background interference...

As well as reliable mechanics, the old Heidelberg presses really are a thing of beauty - you'll see on our plant list below we have one of these very machines, a Heidelberg Platen, which we use for creasing, die-cutting & perforating. The platen always had me entranced as I was growing up, I can remember standing in front of it thinking how much it looked like a little man waving his arms at me...

Our thanks to the creator of this video for such artistic portrayal of a wonderful piece of heidelberg engineering.