There's Cake...it must be Friday..!

 

 

So there's birthday cake on the go at Printagraph Central.

 

Home made ultimate chocolate cake. With sprinkles.

 

Hmmm, sprinkles!

 

Free Golf Balls...!

It's always nice when you get something for nothing!

 

For a strictly limited period, Printagraph will give you 50% extra free when you order 12 x dozen personalised Srixon AD333 golf balls!

 

That's right. Order 144 balls and receive a further 72 totally free!

 

But just until the end of April 2013.

 

Give us a call on 01224 893900 or email promo@printagraph.co.uk

Think you're hard...?

At Printagraph, we're always looking to make new and exciting additions to our range of services.

 

The latest service that we now have available is the ability to produce hard back bound publications (sometimes called case binding), and we believe this to be a first for the North East of Scotland.

 

Up until now, no print company in the area was able to complete it, so whilst the print was generally produced locally, all hard back binding was shipped south, mostly to the central belt, for completion.

 

It's a bit difficult to portray in a photograph, however the above books have been produced with a thick, hard cover..much like the annuals that the kids get at Christmas time.

 

Produced entirely by hand, and in-house at our premises in East Tullos, our new binding service is a perfect presentation option for many documents. Commemorative books, School / University YearBooks and Golf Day books are only a couple of uses.

 

And they can be bound with as little as one insert page!! (although why anyone would want to go the lengths of hard back binding a single sheet us beyond us.)

 

If you'd like to see some samples of recently completed orders, just give me a call on 07584473738 or email me at grantm@printagraph.co.uk

Birthdays and Christmas....

 

 

 

I hate bad manners.

 

Not the 1980's ska band with the bald outsized frontman Buster Bloodvessel.

 

But bad manners.

 

When you hold a door open fora stranger, and they brush past without the slighted "thank you", as if your only job is life was hold open the door to make their journey through it easier.

 

I was brought up to always use my please and thank you's, and I always do. I'll always send thank you cards after birthdays and Christmas (it might take a few weeks, but it will be done!). I always think it's the least I can do when someone has gone to all the trouble of remembering.

 

But my bugbear at the moment is the standard of driving, and lack of manners on the local roads, and in particular the seemingly growing trend for undertaking. That's passing the car in front on the inside left, rather than the outside right.

 

Whilst I understand there are moves afoot to make it legally acceptable, at present, it's currently discouraged in the UK.

 

And dangerous.

 

But more and more people seem to think it is acceptable.

 

Just last night, I had the driver of a van rap on my car window, mouthing off that I had dared to flash at him (just my lights) as he was undertaking me, even though I was already at the maximum allowed speed limit.

 

He was probably a nice guy, perhaps with a wife and young family, but for the few moments, he turned into a snarling, knuckle dragging, spluttering neanderthal. And yet, it was of his own doing. Not only was he undertaking, but he was doing it over the maximum speed limit (some people seem to think the speed limit signs are a MINIMUM not a MAXIMUM!)

 

He was in the wrong. Anybody that overtakes under normal driving conditions is in the wrong. Here's what the Highway Code has to see on the matter:

 

The Highway Code discourages undertaking on motorways with some exceptions (rule 268): "Do not overtake on the left or move to a lane on your left to overtake". Undertaking is permitted in congested conditions when frequent lane changing is not recommended.On other roads, the Code advises drivers "should only overtake on the left if the vehicle in front is signalling to turn right" (rule 163). Rule 163 uses advisory wording and "will not, in itself, cause a person to be prosecuted", but may be used in evidence to establishing liability in any court proceedings.

 

Like I said: I hate bad manners.

Opps...!

 

The above is a great picture that you may have seen doing the rounds at the moment, and is an unfortunate example of using the correct (or incorrect) font for your material.

 

Clearly it should say flickering lights, but whoops, the L and I are a bit close together creating a rather different word than the one they were originally intending.

 

One could argue that as this particular image has gone viral over the last few days, the company has received massive exposure and considerably more than even a decent advertising budget could ever hope to achieve.

 

But it comes down to the fact that that a different font would have been more appropriate.

 

As would an accurate proof reader!

Shrink and Enlarge......bah!

I was visiting the web site of a "competitor" earlier this morning.

I say competitor, they're not really. They're not even in the same city, however they are in the same industry offering a number of similar services, so it's fair to qualify them as a competitor.

 

I am sure that I am not the only one that does similar things, more out of nosiness rather than anything else, but we can sometimes become cocooned in our own little environment so it's good to keep an eye on what's going on out there in the big bad world.

 

Now this was a professionally built web site, which clearly had resulted in a bit of investment from the company involved.

But you know what, it didn't work.

 

I viewed it on my iPhone (other smartphones are available) however the web site wasn't optimised for viewing on the smaller screen. As a result, I had to either shrink or enlarge every single page. Even going back to a page that had been previously viewed, it defaulted back to the "full screen" setting.

 

I found the experience extremely frustrating and I guess that if I was a customer looking to purchase, I would be heading somewhere else pretty quickly.

Wouldn't you?

When a USB memory stick just won't do...

The 44 page instruction manual! No-one said it would be easy.

A completed model along with the sticker set and assembly instruction booklet.

Studio shot used for the outer packaging.

The printed boxes during assembly.

Completed and all ready to go!

 

 

It's not everyday we get to plan and build 200 drillships, however a recently completed project saw us do just that! We were in conversation with our client who wanted something different to hand out to delegates at a recent engineering conference. They felt the usual t-shirts, USB memory sticks and jackets, whilst useful, were not really what they were after, as they wanted something that reflected the engineering nature of the event.

 

The conversation turned to Lego and so started the process of producing their flagship vessel "Stena DrillMAX" made entirely from the famous coloured bricks. We enlisted the services of a professional builder, who working from photographs and other reference material, created the prototype. Initially it was hoped it would incorporate around 400 parts, however the extensive detailing involved with the model soon saw the brick count increase to over 800. We must say however that he did a fantastic job in creating the correct overall look of the vessel.

 

In the meantime, our own design team worked on producing the 44 page assembly manual, together with the self adhesive sticker sets and the outer packaging, all of which were bespoke and unique to this model. Trying to work at the smaller scale and yet keep everything looking proportionally correct took a bit of time and effort from our design team. However the end result was most satisfactory once applied to the finished kits.

 

Over 160,000 small coloured bricks duly arrived from our supplier, and thankfully were already sorted into their kits. All that was left for us to do was assemble the box and insert the assembly instructions, sticker sets and the model itself.

 

Following delivery, the feedback that we've received from our client has been extremely positive. The first batch of kits were recently handed out and were very well received. An inter-office competition quickly developed to see who could build their's the quickest, with the fastest time currently sitting at 3 hours and 28 minutes.

 

Completed model, built by Gareth Falls.

Completed model, built by Geir Johnny Eide.

 

For information on our extensive range of corporate gifts, see www.printagraph.co.uk or telephone +44 (0)1224 893900