A question that often arises in the life of a print designer is ‘what mix makes a good, rich black?’ and almost every printer will have a different answer; with warm blacks, cool blacks and the classic ‘shiner’. More often than not, unless you have the luxury of a wet proof you’ll find the production has created an unexpected colour cast. To complicate matters further, the stock used can affect the black reproduction… Step forth DayFold Print with their Little Black Book. This handy tool includes samples of black mixes on both coated and uncoated stocks. Every page of this swatch has a useful black base, printed with varying mixes cyan, magenta and yellow and has inset areas that display comparisons along with examples of key line and type tolerances. A designer’s dream!

Get in contact with Dayfold Print to find out how to get a free copy or you can find the Little Black Book for purchase on ebay.

(Opinion: Jon Price – Designer)

Whilst perusing the affordable Scandinavian wares of Ikea, I happened upon a particular sequence of wall graphics that told the story of how Ikea’s savings are passed on to the customer. Strangely, only five of the seven ‘Ikea concept’ panels used correct spelling with the remaining ones neglecting to use apostrophes (the above example also has a rogue space before the question mark). I’m now well versed in Ikea’s efficient production and distribution methods but surely they could have spent a few extra euros on spell checking. We’ve all made mistakes, but three in twenty nine words at 124pt nationwide is quite special. At first I thought ‘trust me to notice that’, so my biggest smile came from the huge ‘Thats why!’ that came after the equals sign, where a staff member had pasted a cut-out apostrophe on the wall!

This is the Ikea concept as it should have looked!

(Opinion: Jon Price – Designer)

On Friday last week, Jim and Katie headed up to London to take part in the 2009 Subway Greater London Franchisee Conference. We went primarily to spread the word about our new web-to-print solution, but it was great to see some familiar faces too.

While we were there we had a cup of tea in the Ritz. As you do. Only £6-a-cup too… Bargain.

The web-to-print system allows our Subway clients to select, modify, personalise and order their POS and promotional items 24-hours-a-day. The system goes live in the New Year and should help franchisees nationwide to order print at their leisure, without incurring design fees for minor changes. If you’re interested in how this system might benefit you, give us a tinkle.

Katie pretending not to be worried about her impending driving test

When appointed by British Ceramic Tile as their chosen design agency, we were delighted to get stuck into our first project which consisted of designing and print managing their new retail brochures. The brochures were introduced to highlight the new tile ranges, brought to the market to offer the consumer a wide variety of styles to suit a range of interior looks and tastes, whatever the budget. 

The design and layout of the brochures is consistent with the new corporate branding, and each introduce one of the 7 new ranges; Whites and colours, Rustic, Textures, Dartmoor Naturals, Urban and Elgin. These ranges work within British Ceramic Tile’s 4 collections; Essentials, Living, Inspirations and Designer. For each collection we created individual sub brand colours and logos to differentiate the hierarchy of the products.

We are currently working on the Designer collection, which consists of the Conran and Laura Ashley ranges so watch this space!