Quite simply, print finishing refers to anything that is done to a print after it has been printed. Generally, once an image or design has been printed it is often not quite ready for its purpose, and requires some further print finishing action to make it so. There are a wide variety of options available when it comes to print finishing, some relatively simple and minor, others more substantial. Here are a few of the possibilities.

Binding – Particularly suitable for things like reports and academic work, binding is a simple and convenient way of keeping a selection of pages tidily together. A range of different binding methods are used, including perfect binding, spiral binding, plastic comb binding, thermal and adhesive binding.

Trimming – Often when a print comes out it is not quite perfect. Trimming enables the print finisher to ensure that each print conforms to a certain size. Here at the London Printing Company we have recently purchased specialist equipment which allows us to deliver highly accurate trimming for individual prints as well as multiple pages.

Lamination – Sometimes you want to protect your prints and make them more durable, particularly if they’re going to be handled a lot (as with a menu or a hand-out in a meeting). Lamination applies a plastic film coating to prints that protects them and gives a glossy finish.

Mounting – If you’re planning on displaying a print for use in a promotional feature or an exhibition you’ll probably want to get it mounted on something harder and more resilient than paper, such as cardboard or wood.

Booklet making – A professionally printed and finished booklet has many purposes, such as for product catalogues and other promotional materials, informational products and guides. We recently acquired a new Kasfold booklet making machine which can produce A6 booklets with a perfect finish. Capable of producing more than 1700 booklets per hour, this enables us to deliver on all your booklet making needs with short lead times.

Enquire about our print finishing service today by using our contact form.

Pop-up banners can have much the same effect as permanent exhibition displays, but the good thing is that they can be easily folded up and used again. This makes them particularly useful if you plan to attend multiple events at different locations.

At the London Printing Company we can supply you with pop-up banners in a variety of sizes. Our banners have a length of 2000mm and can be supplied with widths of 800mm, 850mm or 1000mm, so whatever your needs are we can match them. Our expert printers can apply your design to the banner, whether that be one single image, a collection of images, your logo or simply text that announces what you have to offer.

Durable, practical banners you can use again and again

Pop-up banners aren’t just for exhibitions and other special events though. They’re also suitable for outdoor use, for example outside a shop. Thus they can be used on a more permanent basis to advertise a special offer or otherwise promote your business, but can be easily folded up and put away when not needed.

An alternative product for shops and other outdoor locations, such as entertainment venues, restaurants and building sites, is a large hanging banner that can be securely attached outside using brass eyelets. We can supply these in weather-proof durable PVC, so they’re suitable for long-term use, and perfect for displaying anything from a simple advertisement to catch the attention of passers-by, to details of a lunch offer, a sale or similar.

Whichever solution you decide is right for you, the London Printing Company can have it for you quickly and to exceptional standards. We’ve got more than a decade of experience in serving the needs of London businesses and if needed we can offer 24-hour printing. If you need help with the design of your banner, our in-house graphic design experts are on hand to assist you there too.

Contact us now for further information

Getting your message across

The first and most important thing to bear in mind when designing a flyer is that you need to find a balance between making it attractive and making sure it carries all the information you want to get across. Get it wrong and you could end up with a great-looking flyer that no one understands, or an attractive offer that no one bothers to read. A good flyer should be interesting and informative in equal measure.

It’s also important to ensure that your design fits in with the image or message that you want to convey. For example, if you were promoting your restaurant or some form of professional service your design would be entirely different to that of a beauty salon or a rock band promoting their gig. Don’t try to appeal to everyone, appeal to the people who are most likely to be interested in the first place.

Keep it snappy

Unlike a leaflet or brochure, flyers are meant to be consumed in a matter of seconds. Stick to a single concept and don’t bombard the reader with information. Often a flyer with just a few words on it can be more effective than one jam-packed with information.

A final point to remember is that your flyer should spur the recipient into action. Whether you want them to come to your gig, take advantage of your special offer or call you to enquire about your services, give them a reason to do so and specific information on how to take that step.

Of course if you’d rather leave designing your flyer to the professionals, we can provide you with a full design and flyer printing service. Just give us your brief and we’ll turn it into something that captures people’s attention and gets your message across.

Contact us now for further information.

By using our digital printing and finishing services, you can create your own unique design to send to your nearest and dearest, and have it professionally produced in whatever quantity you require. Aside from the fact that this can look really cool, it’s also a much better way of showing people how much you care than a set of generic cards you picked up for a quid from the supermarket.

Give them something unique this Christmas

If you fancy yourself a bit of a design whizz you can simply send us your design and we’ll commit it to high quality card ready for you to send. If on the other hand you’d rather just give us some artwork you’ve created, or a photograph, we can give that to our professional designers and they’ll transform it into a finished card that your recipients are sure to love, along with your own personalised message.

Whether you want to create a batch of cards with a single design or use a number of different designs to create a full personalised set of Christmas cards, we can turn your ideas into high quality cards.  We can also take several designs from you and turn them into one order – saving you both hassle and money.

Looking for inspiration? 

When it comes to the design of your Christmas cards, the sky’s the limit. Here are a few ideas to help you get those creative juices flowing.

Family photographs – Take a picture of the whole family, with or without Santa hats, and put it on the front of your Christmas cards.

Nature scenes – If you like dabbling in photography or you’re a pro with an SLR, why not take some beautiful pictures of your surroundings and put them on a card. Even better if they’re covered in snow.

Artistic designs/ cartoons – Skilled with a pencil or a brush? Share your talent by creating a series of personalised festive designs, or even your own humorous cartoon sketches.

Are your children budding artists? – We can convert your younger family members’ drawings and artwork into Christmas cards.  Imagine what a boost that will give them!

Contact us now for further information.

Flyers, posters and leaflets are often an effective means of promotion, but if you’re looking to do something to stand out from the crowd, a range of custom-printed novelty products is a powerful and innovative way of doing so.

Why use printed novelty products?

Whether you intend to charge for them or give them away for free, novelty printed items have a unique quirkiness that draws people’s attention.  Everyone loves a little kitsch from time to time, especially during a big event season, and you can tap into this either to promote your business and raise awareness, or simply to add a few unique and attractive items to your product range.

Here at the London Printing Company we can print the design of your choice on a huge range of novelty items, whether that’s your logo, a witty slogan or phrase or a distinctive and colourful pattern or picture. We’ve got the equipment and the expertise to print your design on everything from mugs, T-shirts, baseball caps, belts, jackets, novelty cheques and just about anything else imaginable.  We carry out all printing in house, so we can also get the job done very quickly – in some cases within 24 hours.

A few ideas

Novelty printing enables you to get creative in promoting your business.  For instance, with the Olympics just around the corner you might print some T-shirts for your staff to wear to entice the crowds in off the street to take a look at what you have to offer (even something simple like a cheeky caption may do the trick in capturing the attention of passers-by).

Or you could try creating novelty souvenirs which visitors to the Olympics and other events may purchase for themselves as keepsakes, or for friends and family back home. Clearly anything with a London or a sporting theme is going to do well this summer, but do be mindful of encroaching on protected Olympics trademarks (See our Top 5 things Small Businesses in London can do to Benefit from the Olympics blog).  We can help with designs too, as we have experienced Graphic Designs in-house to bring your ideas to life.

Get in touch today to discuss how The London Printing Company can help you make the most of this Olympic summer!

In all these situations, your natural instinct may tell you that there’s little to be done and that you’ll simply have to ‘make do’. But with our 24 hour printing service, the show can and will go on, with whatever marketing materials you require.

What exactly do we mean by ’24 hour printing’?  Exactly what we say – if you give us a printing job at 1PM on Thursday, we can have it to you by 1PM on Friday.

Printing on time, but not in a hurry

The reason that we’re able to deliver top quality printing in such a short time scale isn’t that we’re some new breed of supermen and women, or automatons diligently working through the night (we need to put our feet up and get some shut-eye as much as the next guys).

What  makes us different from many other printers is that we actually have all the machinery needed to get the job done in-house. If you order some banners and T-shirts for your upcoming promotional event, we don’t just knock-up the design and then ship it out elsewhere to be printed; our widely experienced team work together on top of the range equipment to see the project through from beginning to completion, on time every time.

Whether you need a stack of attractive flyers, a set of vinyl graphics, novelty items with your logo on, custom-printed T-shirts, hats, tea towels or anything else, we can get it to you exactly when you most need it. In fact, in the case of business cards we can get them printed for you in under an hour – perfect for networking emergencies.

But quick printing doesn’t mean rushed printing.  When you use the London Printing Company for your urgent marketing and promotional needs, we guarantee top quality results every time.

Contact us today and see for yourself how fast we are!

T-shirts and novelty products – Though you cannot of course use Games-related trademarks or do anything to imply association with the games, with a little creativity and imagination you should be able to come up with something that taps into the spirit of the ‘summer of 2012’ (which incidentally is an acceptable marketing phrase according to the official organisers).  Specially printed T-shirts and novelty products can be great promotional tools for your business, or even an additional revenue stream.

To find out what is and isn’t allowed when promoting your business during the Games, take a look at http://www.london2012.com/mm/Document/Publications/General/01/25/29/25/guidelines-for-business-use_Neutral.pdf

Leaflets and flyers – To attract the attention of the tens of thousands of additional people milling about in London, you need to let them know exactly what you have to offer. A colourful, eye-catching leaflet or flyer is a great way of doing this, and of providing details such as up to date price information.

Get your message out on the move – If you’ve got a fleet of vehicles, here at the London Printing Company we can help you spread your message far and wide. We can produce speciality car and van vinyl graphics to grab the attention of commuters and passersby. If needs be we can even design the graphics for you.

Draw attention to your premises with a banner – Banners are a great way of shouting out to would-be customers, and with hundreds of London businesses clamouring to be heard during the Games, it pays to make yourself heard.

Revamp your brochure/ menu/ catalogue – It’s not just the words in your promotional material that speak for you. A well-designed and printed brochure can speak volumes about your business, so it’s worth investing in professional digital printing prior to the Olympics.

What is bleed?
Bleed is an extension of all the elements that touch the edge of the design past the edges of the document.  Basically if you have a picture that goes right up to the edge of your document or a background colour, it must extend at least 3mm beyond where the document is to be cut.

Why do I need it?

Bleed is key in making sure that your carefully crafted artwork once printed looks as it did on the screen after all your hours of hard work!  Without bleed you may be left with a white border around your document, which would be disappointing to say the least.

How does it work?

Bleed gives the printing process a margin for error throughout the different steps towards your final glorious creation. There are several variables that can affect print layout such as paper quality, paper shrinkage and print alignment. All of these things can change the final print position by millimetres, that, without bleed, create a poor print with messy or white borders.

Once printed, bleed also allows for a margin of error within the trimming process, meaning the guillotine machine or finishing maestro does not need an unobtainable 100% cutting accuracy when trimming the items down.  Although we do try our best!

How do they know where to cut?

Which is where “Crop marks” come in, showing how and where your magnificent creation needs to be cut into it’s perfect final version.

The moral of the story.

Add bleed and crop marks to your artwork files!  Otherwise they are not “print ready” and risk not looking their best.  We can easily add bleed and crop for you, just supply us your original artwork (Not in a PDf) and relax!  We will always advise before putting your literature to print, and send you over a proof to make sure you are perfectly happy with your artwork, so rest assured we have your best interests at heart.

Feel free to contact The London Printing Company to discuss Bleed or for a no-obligation quote and if you have other questions, we’re happy to help!