Green issues have become a seriously hot topic in recent years and it is becoming ever important for businesses to adopt greener processes, not just to do their part in looking after the environment, but because potential clients will take into account how environmentally friendly a company is before deciding on whether to employ their services.

It may even become the deciding factor when weighing up which company to use. In very competitive industries such as printing or promotional products, it may be hard to differentiate between two companies based on price, customer service or delivery, so the decision of what company to use could come down to something like their environmentally friendly printing policies.

The printing industry ranks highly amongst the top energy consuming industries in the world, due to high demand on electricity and fossil fuels. Printing companies need to consider ways to cut down on consumption of natural resources and need to adopt more energy efficient, environmentally friendly printing processes. Environmentally friendly printing is getting more and more important in the printing industry.

Here are a few ways in which companies can adopt more environmentally friendly printing strategies:

1. Understand your environmental impact
Printing companies should implement environmental policies which help management and staff understand the impact of their printing services on the environment. Once the policy has been implemented, companies can provide training, set targets, and create more environmentally friendly printing strategies through the use of products with lower emissions and environmentally friendly printing technologies which use fewer chemicals.

2. Use soft proofing
Achieving more effective, environmentally friendly printing ultimately comes down to printing less! It may seem obvious, but this is often overlooked. This can be done through strategies such as ’soft proofing’. Pre-press proofs do not always need to be printed out onto a physical substrate such as paper. For simple jobs, PDF proofs are often sufficient. This has many benefits in addition to reduced printing, such as reduced paper use and reduced environmental impact of sending documents via ground or air mail. It also enables a faster turnaround of jobs.

3. Reduce energy use through investment
Investing in newer, more environmentally friendly printing equipment can have a number of benefits. Not only are you investing in more up-to-date printing equipment which is faster and prints at a much higher quality, newer equipment tends to be more environmentally friendly. Investment in environmentally friendly printing equipment often results in less demand on energy, less waste in terms of printing materials such as ink, and a greater level of reliability (there are less breakdowns with newer equipment).

4. Reduce, reuse and recycle
The three R’s are know well know throughout all industries and are the cornerstone for implementing good waste prevention and management practices within a company. Reduce the use of hazardous waste, reuse things such as ink drums and recycle inks and solvents where possible for more environmentally friendly printing.

In summary, printing companies should not overlook environmentally friendly printing as an essential part of their business. Not only are you doing your bit for the environment and saving money in the process, your environmentally friendly printing policies could be the deciding factor in winning that all important printing contract.

Here’s something a bit different for a Friday morning -  edge printing, also known as fore-edge printing. Edge printing consists of paintings or images applied to the edge of a book or brochure (see image).

Edge printing was widely used in the 18th century and from my sources, the process

“finds its origins in gilding, a process that applied gold or silver to the pages of a book to protect them“.

The process of edge printing however is rarely used today. I do ask though, why not? There are a number of interesting things you can do with print and fore-edge printing is one of them.

With edge printing, you can apply different images to the page edges, and these can either be shown permanently or are only shown when you fan the book in a certain way.

Surely there are uses for this in marketing your brand? Anyone who prints books (or brochures which are thick enough) should consider edge printing to give your publication that extra ‘wow’ factor, and not to mention to possibly increase the value of the book?

There are some amazing effects you can apply to your publications with fore-edge printing, so before you sign off the design of your book or brochure, get involved with edge printing and see how far you can take it!

The are a few different printing processes used in commercial printing today. It is helpful to have a basic understanding of printing processes if you are looking to place a lot of print work with a printing company, so here’s a basic introduction to two commonly used printing process, the offset printing process and the digital printing process.

Offset Printing Process

In the offset printing process, the ink is not pressed directly onto the paper. Instead it is distributed from a metal plate to a rubber mat where it is then set onto paper. Offset printing is the process of indirectly transferring ink to paper through the use of a metal or paper plate. This printing process uses CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yello and Black – aka Process or Full Colour) and Pantone spot colours (PMS). This printing process is widely used for the production of magazines, brochures, flyers etc. Generally speaking, the longer the print run, the lower the cost per 1000. This is because the majority of the cost of the printing process is tied up in the setup, rather than the actual production. The offset printing process produces high quality cost effective results for long print runs. Most print runs need to be at least 1000 to justify the cost of the setup. Usually, a colour proof is generated prior to the printing process commences, however colour matching is often still made ‘on press’ as the job is run.

Advantages Of Offset Printing

• The offset printing process provides consistent quality and produces sharp and clean images and type.
• The offset printing process conforms to many different textures thanks to the printing surface used
• Production of offset printing plates is fast and easy
• The printing plates used in the offset printing process have a longer printing life than direct litho presses.
• If you are printing high volumes of materials you will save even more money. With offset printing the more your print the more you save.

Digital Printing Process

With the digital printing process, both CMYK and RGB can be used, although colour shifts may occur with RGB content. The digital printing process is good for short runs of any quantity less than 1000 copies. The digital printing process also requires no printing plates so there is less time and expense involved in setting up a file to print. This means that the digital printing process can be turned around in a very short period of time, from approval of artwork, to a proof be produced, through to the final quantity being run. Unlike the offset printing process, with digital printing, proofs can be printed on the final stock choice for accurate colour checking. The digital printing process is done using a computer. The basic technology has made many things possible that would not have been otherwise. By utilizing the latest innovations in technology digital printing can help your business save time and money.

Advantages Of Digital Printing

• Digital printing gives you more options of substrates such as fabric, exceptionally thin paper and even ceramics
• The digital printing process is fast and economical and has a great turn around time
• Digital printing is cheap

Which printing process?

Ultimately in boils down to the time you have to complate the job, and the run quantity. The offset printing process tends to be better for larger runs however this printing process takes longer, whereas the digital printing process is good for short runs and takes relatively little time to complete. So price based on quantity required and available time are obviously key considerations, but the offset printing process offers the ability to specify PMS colour, so this may actually be the better choice to achieve higher quality results. The final printed effect of solid areas of colour can also be an issue to consider, as the digital printing process can appear less impressive than offset, especially within certain colour ranges.