This is my 185th blog this year and also likely enough the last for 2010, as I’m now signing off for the Christmas/New Year break.
No doubt it’s a sign of advancing years but 2010 really has flown by. An Ipex or Drupa year always does, but this year has seemed exceptionally swift. What with Ipex, and the general election, the first half was a whirl.
Via a highly unscientific method involving wandering
about looking at stuff, it seems to me there’s a lot more lenticular work
around this festive season.
Notable finds include a Cadbury’s selection box
featuring a lenticular element on the packaging, with instruction on how to
turn it into a bookmark – a nice example of something that’s both
attention-grabbing and repurposable. Judging by the size of the stack of these
sweetmeats on display in my local supermarket, and envisioning the nation-wide
market for selection boxes, this will have been a sizeable print run, too.
How
often is overcapacity cited as one of the biggest bugbears affecting the
industry? For parts of it at least, the answer is often.
It was
a topic that came up repeatedly during the EU Summit on socially responsible
restructuring I attended at the end of last month. One of the industry quotes
flashed up on screen during the event came from a large company interviewed as
part of the accompanying study: “There is one and only one issue facing the
industry – overcapacity.”
The air has been blue at Francis Towers over the weekend. Not due to the usual pre-Christmas stresses and annoyances, but because of the WWF.
I’ve been in a state of head-shaking disbelief since I came across its ‘Save as WWF, Save a Tree’ non-printing PDF format initiative on Friday.
Thus far this Christmas season I have received just one hated e-card. Am hoping that number remains in single figures. It was, however, a concern to see some recent Mintel research citing a general decline in Christmas card sending (in 2006 84% of Brits sent cards, but this fell to 73% last year) – the cost of the cards and the postage seems to be the main issue.
I love birds. I love books. Yesterday evening there was a perfect coming together of the two at Sotheby’s in London, when Audubon’s Birds of America sold for £7.3m – a new world record for a book sold at auction.
Here’s a plant list to conjure with: one eight-colour KBA Rapida 162a; one six-colour KBA Rapida 162a; two five-colour KBA Rapida 162as; one four-colour KBA Rapida 162a.
Can you guess where it is yet? Gold star to everyone who immediately piped up with “Butler Tanner & Dennis of course”. I think we can safely describe BT&D as an all-KBA house, it’s been that way for a good while. Until next year, that is, when the firm takes delivery of one of Heidelberg’s new large-format Speedmaster XL 162 models.
Brace yourselves. Three weeks and it will be Christmas Eve. Triple-shriek.
There’s already a parcel delivery backlog caused by snow-based disruption across the country, so definitely time to get a wiggle on with ordering those print-related pressies.
Well, there’s interesting. Here we are wondering when there will be some sort of announcement from Heidelberg about its plans to return to the digital market, and up pops Manroland with a deal to do the very same thing with Océ.
Goodness me, I’m feeling a bit ‘curse of PrintWeek’
this morning.
Yesterday I’m writing about what an interesting
bloke John Caris is, today I’m putting pen to paper, or rather fingers to
keyboard, about his resignation. Talk about a bolt from the blue.
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