Was sent this link to YouTube by an Agency Print Production Manager I use to work with many years ago. It appears that while technology and price pressures are driving down the cost of print production, the technical requirement are increasing.

This video captures the frustration many production and design people feel on a daily basis. Which probably explains the language. NB: Not, do not watch is profanity offends you.

There is a saying that "possession is 9/10 of the law".

If this is the case, who has possession of your brand? Or more specifically, your brand assets?

Many marketers spend millions of dollars building the value of their brand, but spend little time or money ensuring the security of the brand assets.

What are your brand assets?

The brand assets are the visual expressions of your brand - logotypes, fonts, colours, illustrations, images, photography, layouts, designs, corporate identity, packaging and the like.

Each of these elements is an essential part of the brand expressions.

The Nike swoosh and line "Just do it" are as well known as the Cadbury "purple" and the "Glass and a half" illustration. These are valuable assets, which the companies who own them protect vigorously.

Who is holding your assets?

On reviewing many advertisers print processes, we find that brand assets often reside not with the advertiser, or their agency, but with a myriad of suppliers. Printers, packaging companies, design companies, public relation firms all have these brand assets in their possession.

One advertiser had taken steps to consolidate their brand assets with one supplier, only to have to pay that supplier a significant fee when they want a copy of the asset.

In another case, the advertiser's agency had placed all their brand assets with an external supplier, who subsequently went into receivership. The receivers then demanded payment to return those assets.

So how do you manage your brand assets?

With brand assets scattered across many different suppliers, managing the various versions becomes difficult, time consuming and in the case where a wrong version is used, costly. You could lock them away, but brand assets appreciate in value with use, not just time.

There are a number of ways to protect these assets, depending on the number of assets, how often they change and the number of stakeholders that need to access them.

The simplest way is to develop a brand asset kit that is shared with stakeholders and updated, through to an investment in one of the many Asset Management Systems available.

P3Print has the experience and expertise to help you define your brand assets, locate them and develop a system to manage and protect them.

Author: Darren Woolley

Print and prepress have changed more in the last ten years than in the previous 150 years. The printing industry continues to evolve at such a rate that it is challenging even the owners of printing businesses. While many will fall, some will prosper.

Here, we will cover what you should be looking for in a print provider today?

We are constantly amazed by the way the print industry attempts to service its customers. It believes you constantly lay awake at night thinking of nothing else but their new eight-color press! When what you should be looking for from your printer is innovative ideas, top line service and quality print that represents your brand values to the customer.

So what does this printer look like? We believe you should be looking for the following three qualities in your approved print supplier.

1. Customer service

2. Established organization

3. Pre press

Customer Service

A great printer should spend time understanding your particular business requirements.

They should respond with a proposal not just a quote.

They should offer ideas and innovations to enhance your communications, not just produce more ink on paper.

Most of all, these people should earn your trust with true problem solving purpose in their business dealings with you. Has the M.D. or C.E.O. ever discussed "your" business with you?

Established Organisation

Look for a printer that has strong business planning, process, systems and procedures.

This organization should be prepared to invest in technology and innovation that helps its customers grow.

It should be prepared to educate its customers on how to work together and not ignore problems you may have with files and applications.

It has to be an organization that has figured you into its planning for the future.

A simple gauge is how much you value them. If you had to change to another printer, for whatever reason, would that be difficult? If the answer is yes, you are on the right track with your current supplier.
Pre-Press

Although a radically changing area, prepress can make or break producing business communications. A great printer should be doing this 'in house' or running full C.T.P. (computer to plate).

Smaller printers may choose strategic alliances with specific pre-press houses, which are fine, but this second supplier arrangement must be accountable. They should be competent at all applications you use in your business, Mac or PC.

The key to great pre-press is how well they assist you in helping them.

Do they have a pre-flight process that picks up mistakes before it is on the press and too late?

Do they offer some form of content management system that allows you to reuse images or files as you wish?

Do they have an education process to help you improve the preparation of files for them?
Around the world companies are evaluating the way they choose and value print suppliers. P3Print can help you choose a great print provider, that not just offers more products, but can offer you more business solutions - a great printer for the future.

Author: Darren Woolley

The benefits of sending and receiving artwork files and corrections electronically are clear to anyone familiar with this process. Not having to rely on couriers, where expenses can be high, poor delivery times and occasionally lost artwork.

Adobe PDF files are now commonplace when sending and receiving digital files by e-mail or the Internet. But how accepted is this process and the actual file to the end users, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of approving artwork using traditional email?

How reliable is email?

When you look at it, using conventional email for artwork approval is not that different to sending a hard copy proof, but it comes with its own set of issues. Email is primarily a one-to-one communication method, although you can address the message or file to many people. The process however is still the same as sending proofs. You send an email with artwork attached, hope the person has received it and has been able to view the file on their screen (without possible firewall corruption, file size limitations, or software compatibility issues).

Managing versions

If they can open the attachment, each stakeholder makes his or her comments before e-mailing those comments back for revisions, then the artwork is reissued. Now, unlike a hard copy proof, there can be multiple copies of the artwork and multiple copies of multiple versions.
But what if not all of the comments from the previous version are returned? Or what if comments from different stakeholders conflict? Having various versions of the artwork 'out there' can lead to confusion and delays, exactly the opposite benefit of electronic artwork.

How reliable are pdfs?

Viewing files on screen is very different to that of proofs because monitors are colour calibrated differently and all are displayed in red, green, blue (RGB), while the printing process is always cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK).

This raises the question of whether electronic proofs can be of sign-off quality? In the black and white area, this will be accepted in 90% of all cases, particularly with standard documents such as those used in government, legal and education, but for high quality print, a hard copy proof is irreplaceable.

Size and resolution force you to choose to view the overall composition (zoomed out) or relish the fine detail (zoomed in) but never adequately both, simultaneously. Colour and contrast consistency is irrelevant, since set-up of the viewing monitor and the environment in which the monitor is placed can be vastly different in each case.
The alternatives

There are some very clever and simple to use programs in the marketplace that unlike traditional e-mail, can make getting artwork approved easier, simpler to track and manage the entire process. These systems are generally collaborative. They allow extensive tracking of your job, its progress, and who's doing what, eliminate firewall and file size limitations, make those involved accountable and therefore continue to lower costs and reduce turnaround times.

Author: Darren Woolley