Monthly Archives: April 2011

Wedding whirl

By , Thursday, 28 April 2011, 4 Comments

Driving down the A316 past Twickenham Stadium the
other day, I saw one of those electronic roadside signs that usually warns of
some sort of never-ending water main or gas pipe replacement works further
along the road. This one sported the following understatement: “29
April, major event, central London”.
I don’t think it also included a recommendation to “avoid area”.

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Domino shells out for egg deal

By , Tuesday, 26 April 2011, Be the first to comment

Easter. A time for too much chocolate and punning tabloid headlines along the lines of egg-cellent, egg-citing, egg-stravaganza, etc etc.

And now along comes Domino with some egg-straordinary egg-based news of its very own. This morning we learned that the company has invested a cool $50m in cash on a 15% stake in USA-based company TEN Media. TEN being short for ‘The Egg Network’.

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Cloudy outlook

By , Thursday, 21 April 2011, Be the first to comment

Words are my tools. And Wordle is the perfect tool for examining other people’s.

In case you’re not familiar with it, Wordle is an application that analyses any given text, creating a ‘word cloud’ of the most dominant or frequently-used words. It’s fun and rather illuminating.

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Sun not shining for Polestar pensioners

By , Tuesday, 19 April 2011, 2 Comments

Six years ago I wrote a news story about Polestar’s latest set of results, in which I quoted someone who spends all day poring over company accounts, thus: “Unless this superplant prints money it’s difficult to see how they won’t have to restructure their debt again. This business is less about printing and more about capital markets and debt restructuring.”

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Print’s right riveting reads

By , Thursday, 14 April 2011, Be the first to comment

By happenchance I
seem to be developing an occasional series on ‘interesting print-related books’.

In fact, I’m developing
a mini-library of such specialist tomes, and very interesting it is too.

In keeping with
the late Rowley Atterbury’s fascinating memoir about Westerham Press, as
mentioned last week, the other book I’ve been delving into recently is The Way
of the Sun by Peter Greenhill and Brian Reynolds, which is the story of Watford’s once-famous Sun Engraving and Sun Printers.

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Glorious failure

By , Tuesday, 12 April 2011, 3 Comments

Failure seems to be very on-trend at the moment.

Having spent Sunday evening watching television through my fingers, as Rory McIlroy’s meltdown at the Masters came to its wince-inducing conclusion, I then find that Wired magazine has opted for Fail! as the cover story in its latest issue. How topical.

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Here comes the bill

By , Friday, 8 April 2011, 1 Comment

Looking out of the window today, the prospect of the upcoming back-to-back four-day weekends is a particularly delightful prospect if the weather stays this way.

That’s a personal viewpoint. I don’t own a business or employ anyone.

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Polestar pitch is hard sell

By , Wednesday, 6 April 2011, 1 Comment

A further noteworthy
aspect of all the current shenanigans in publication printing, specifically
with Polestar’s in-process refinancing, is where we’re at now compared to the
last time the group refinanced, or indeed the time before that.

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Deinking strife end in sight

By , Tuesday, 5 April 2011, Be the first to comment

Good news to have caught my eye (apart from the fact that someone has launched a new magazine. About curry) is this rapprochement between INGEDE and the Digital Printing Deinking Alliance.

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BPIF 2011

By , Monday, 4 April 2011, Be the first to comment

News from Farringdon Point makes it pretty obvious that a new-look BPIF is beginning to emerge. Or should that be a new- new-look.

While Michael Johnson remains in charge until the summer, it seems unimaginable that a decision as significant as making the role of commercial director Richard Gray redundant could be taken without the say-so of chief executive designate Kathy Woodward.

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