Copyright 2007 Forest Stewardship Council, A.C. All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the publisher’s copyright may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means (graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, recording taping, or information retrieval systems) without the written permission of the publisher.

Colourtime has made the decision to become FSC certified, showing that we comply with the highest social and environmental standards on the market. The certification process is carried out by independent organizations who assess forest management and chain of custody operations against FSC standards. After a thorough review Colourtime is proud to announce that we have passed the audit and have been granted the ability to use the FSC seal certifying our commitment to maintaining an environmentally responsible business!

For more information about how Colourtime can help your next marketing campaign or financial report be a little “greener” please call us at 1.866.372.6567 to find out more about our FSC certified products.
For more information about the certification process, the strict environmental standards or where to locate manufacturers or distributors please visit www.fsc.org.

Tags: Alliance, certification, council, forest, FSC, Rainforest, stewardship
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No matter the industry, in order to remain a successful business it is imperative to stay informed about new technologies, new tendencies and trends, and new products or services that your company may be able to incorporate into their offerings.

Many companies that have been in business for decades are sure that they have found the winning solution- and on the one hand they are right. Considering the statistics that claim over half of new businesses fail within the first year, any business that achieves that kind of longevity has certainly earned its place in the market. But as any professional gambler will tell you, past success is no guarantee of future success. Even a thriving business can take a hit without realizing why.

So what’s the solution? Well there isn’t one magic answer, but it’s always a good idea to stay abreast of what the leaders in the industry are doing. Are your competitors buying more up to date equipment, hiring more staff or introducing new products? Maybe they have started to include discounts for return customers or have invested in a completely redesigned marketing campaign. You may choose to adapt some of these same techniques, or you may decide that they are not right for you or are out of your price range, but by attending conferences, workshops and trade shows you are one step closer to making sure your company is taking advantage of all the options it has available.

That’s one of the reasons why ColourTime sends representatives to print shows across Canada and the U.S. One of the upcoming shows, Graphics Canada, is Canada’s largest and will be held November 12-14 2009 at the Toronto International Centre. It includes sectors devoted to sign printing, mail fulfillment, graphic design and plenty of new equipment and software. We are busy maintaining our edge so we can help your company maintain theirs.

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Anyone who has heard experts discuss the current economic crisis, no matter what their political persuasion, will surely have come to the conclusion that the lack of oversight and regulation by a third party was largely to blame.  While financial specifics such as leverage and illiquidity play their role in this complicated equation, the relative absence of a qualified organization of outsiders intelligent enough to understand the financial loopholes but ethical enough not to take advantage of them, is the more serious and overarching problem.  If we can take away one lesson from this recession, let it be this- humans are fallible.  We tend to be short-sighted and in this era of gleefully unchecked capitalism we tend to put profits before the well-being of communities.  Thank goodness then, for the Forest Stewardship Council.

In the past decade we’ve seen environmental awareness take on more importance, both in the lives of individuals and in the boardroom. Caring about the earth and its future is no longer just for hippies. In fact it has become a powerful a marketing strategy, which is precisely why consumers should be wary when purchasing products or services claiming to be “environmentally friendly.”  This is a vague term that may mean anything from not testing products on animals, to using a certain percentage of post-consumer waste, to simply incorporating the color green in the packaging implying a contrived affinity with the “green movement.”

The Forest Stewardship Council has been around for over 15 years focusing on one very important component to environmental protection- global deforestation. FSC is an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests. FSC provides a certification system with internationally recognized standards for communities interested in responsible forestry.  FSC recognizes the fact that many consumers try to do the right thing by buying responsibly produced products but that the choices can sometimes be confusing.  At least when it comes to timber and paper products business and individuals alike can make an informed decision.

That is why Colourtime has made the decision to become FSC certified, showing that we comply with the highest social and environmental standards on the market. The certification process is carried out by independent organizations who assess forest management and chain of custody operations against FSC standards.  After a thorough review Colourtime is proud to announce that we have passed the audit and have been granted the ability to use the FSC seal certifying our commitment to maintaining an environmentally responsible business!

For more information about how Colourtime can help your next marketing campaign or financial report be a little “greener” please call us at 1.866.372.6567  to find out more about our FSC certified products.
For more information about the certification process, the strict environmental standards or where to locate manufacturers or distributors please visit www.fsc.org.

Posted in Environment, For Your Information, Innovation, Print Industry | No Comments »

Just like in any profession or hobby, the interrelated worlds of printing and graphic design have many ins and outs, lots of important details and according to who you ask- very specific tools, processes, shortcuts and insiders’ tips. There are plenty of resources to help anyone better understand the design process and its follow-through to a great printed product- from books and magazines to blogs with tutorials and instructional videos. While all of us at Colourtime consider ourselves to be experts, any professional can benefit from a little brush up from time to time. If you consider yourself to be a desktop publishing connoisseur, here are a few tests you can take to see how you measure up:

The first one has to do with color in general and hue specifically. According to Wikipedia colors with the same hue are usually distinguished with adjectives referring to their lightness. This test shows four sets of color swatches with the varying hues mixed up between them. You have to rearrange the swatches so that the spectrum is correct.

Hue Test

Now good designers know how to effectively use typography to completely change the look of any composition. Pre-press technicians must have almost encyclopedic knowledge of fonts as they are often missing in files sent by customers and they must locate or find a suitable substitute for the missing font. This test, presented by www.ilovetypography.com could use some improvement, but it is tricky and even you experts may find yourselves forgetting the difference between script and calligraphic!

Font Test

Now, I did spend a good chunk of time looking for quizzes out there covering a variety of appropriately print-related topics such as inks, paper, composition and white space, even software shortcuts, but no luck. I did, however find what appears to a SERIOUS online review and final exam broken down into eight separate quizzes:

1. What is Desktop Publishing?
2. Page Layout
3. Prepress
4. Printing, Printing Presses
5. Elements of Design
6. Principles of Design
7. Typography
8. Text Composition

These quizzes are based on the material presented by the site itself- so their validity as the absolutely correct answers across the board certainly varies. I also found some of the questions irrelevant based on each printers’ own work-flow and preferences. One question in the pre-press section asks the difference between a contact proof, a contract proof and a press proof. In the print world you will also hear the terms soft proof, blue-line proof, final proof, customer proof…the nomenclature is essentially unimportant as long as you understand the concept. If you have a few minutes go ahead, see how well you do on the About.com final exam.

Desktop Publishing Final Exam

These tests are not only useful to those who work in the print world, they are also helpful to customers of the print world- whether you are a designer or just an independent business owner, familiarizing yourself with the print process makes you a better, more informed customer and ultimately increases the probability of the product turning out exactly how you want the first time around.

P.S.- As many print designers are also web designers, (the two worlds are converging at an alarming rate) I include a fun quiz that doesn’t actually test any knowledge on your part, rather it asks you to check adjectives that describe you from a long list of possible choices. It only takes about 3 minutes at the end of which you find out based on your answers which of the 144 named HTML colors describe you. The colors are found based on hue (how you think), saturation (how much you do about it), and lightness (the effect you think it has). Apparently I’m paleturquoise #AFEEEE!

HTML Color Personality Test

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Time Flies.

It has been thirty years since the two Brenner brothers opened their first shop on Burrard Street. The quick copiers were humming to the tunes of Fleetwood Mac as the business flourished serving customer’s needs for short-run, fast black and white documents. Originally named “Copy Time,” the business grew quickly.

As the printing world dramatically changed, technology moved from lead type and typewriters to word processors, personal computers, and desktop publishing. Project timelines went from weeks down to days and sometimes even down to minutes for quick changes. The team managed to keep pace with all the changes and continued to upgrade equipment and services.

In 2000, the company, having been a diversified printer for many years, decided they had outgrown the name “Copy Time” and updated their identity to “Colour Time” to reflect their growing expertise in colour document production. The staff, many of whom have worked for the company for ten or more years, are a fine-tuned working group of specialists, devoted to keeping customers happy. Thank you to everyone who has helped make ColourTime the success that it is!

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Printers like ColourTime, who offer a wide range of services and fast turn-around, are always concerned about the quality of their products and offering a high level of customer service. According to Toni McQuilken in the February issue of Printing News, this is part of a growing trend, “The industry as a whole is trying hard to move away from a strictly manufacturer role to more of a service provider and partner to the clients and end users.”

Part of the way printers look to improve relationships with their clients is by suggesting new products or services that they might enjoy. Because the process of traditional offset printing hasn’t changed much in the past 100 years, this leaves the innovation to other areas such as digital imaging and poster printing, as well as new technologies in either paper or ink. As we take at look at advancements in ink production, it is easy to see how the catalysts of such progress are primarily economic in nature.

In the aforementioned issue of Printing News, McQuilken interviews several representatives from ink manufacturers. Steve Simpson, senior vice president and chief technical officer for Superior Ink states, “In 2007, we saw the continuation of significant price increases in raw material costs, much of which was driven by skyrocketing crude oil costs. Additionally, the cost and availability of seed-derived oils such as linseed was dramatically impacted by the biodiesel movement, where farmers are shifting their crop selection toward corn, soybean, and other more profitable bioethanol feedstocks.”

As with many industries, the most important issue printers and print suppliers see going into 2008 is the subject of sustainability. Sustainability is one of those terms that is difficult to define, possibly bringing to mind images of quaint farmers’ markets or fields full of windmills. Sustainability, however, is just as much an economic term as it is an environmental one. As Wikipedia sees it, those in favor of a “sustainable approach” strive to make “human economic systems last longer and have less impact on ecological systems.”

While we often associate sustainability (or lack thereof) with major global problems such as climate change and oil depletion, it is important to remember that any economic unit- a business, a household- will naturally benefit from resources that last indefinitely. Many businesses are realizing that this “green” trend is moving from merely a buzzword to a profitable business strategy.

Though most printers already offer at least a few options of post consumer recycled paper it appears that we will be seeing even more “green options” in the years to come, including:

***Inks made with vegetable derived oils such as linseed and soybean, as well as resins derived from renewable resources like tall oil and gum rosin.

***100% UV-curable offset inks, which are not only free from volatile organic compounds, but they offer other benefits such as reduced makeready, which leads to less printed waste.

It seems that ensuring both sustainable profits for printers and sustainable resources to protect our environment don’t necessarily represent opposing viewpoints. As for any printers who want to move towards a more sustainable business strategy there are several organizations who offer just that sort of advice such as the Printers’ National Environmental Assistance Center and the new start up website SGP Partnership. For consumers in the U.S. looking for businesses and services in their area with a sustainable approach try pluggreen.com. Canada has its government run site with info about developing sustainable business strategies.

As the SGP site claims, and we have to agree: Print plays a vital role in communication, education, and daily existence. The printing industry has historically understood its effect on the natural world and accepts responsibility to continue efforts to reduce its overall environmental impact.

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In the print industry, you have to know about paper- it’s weight and dimensions, of course, but also it’s ability to hold ink through multiple runs in the same machine, streak potential, matte, glossy or super glossy. It is also generally believed that the more intimate knowledge a person has of an object, the more respect that object garners. That said, we have a healthy respect for paper, but we as printers are forced to watch thousands of sheets of paper flutter into our recycling bins each week- potential pieces of advertising, business cards, wedding invitations and financial reports that didn’t make the cut.

Along with those are the pieces of paper with bent corners which could jam the machine, and my personal favorite- when a solid color is streaking we flood an entire 11 x 17 page with each component color: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. These vibrant rectangles of color, sometimes printed over a dozen times to ensure correct saturation, float down into our recycling bins with the same indifference as any other sheet that has already served its purpose.

The bins are then emptied, the recycling collected, and we begin again. But if we have learned anything about the basics of environmentalism, recycle is only the third step in that simplified mantra from grade school- Reduce, Reuse, Recyle. What other uses might this excess of paper have? What could be rescued and utilized a second or third time before a trip to the recycling plant?

Here are a few fun ideas for reusing paper:

- Collect blank sheets and cut into smaller sizes to use as scrap paper or staple into a small notebook. This site has some simple instructions.

- Anyone who knows how to do screen printing or lithography could easily use the colored sheets for posters, flyers, artwork or wallpaper.

- Origami! The stiffer, high quality paper is great for folding. Cranes, paper cups, frogs- you name it. This origami site shows how to make everything from a ballerina to a badger all with printable PDF instructions.

- Apparently many dog shelters use shredded paper as bedding, so call a few in your area to see if they’d like your paper to help keep their dogs comfy and warm.

- Paper planes. Everyone knows how to make one, but there are tons of sites imparting their wisdom as well. This site even includes a paper helicopter, paper blimp, and paper Frisbee, along with the fiercely named Lightning Plane, Sabertooth Plane and the author’s original- Dragon Plane.

- Lastly, if you are an extremely talented and detail-oriented artist, like Danish artist Peter Callesen*, you can take a simple sheet of A4 paper and a pair of scissors and turn it into a master work of art that brings you fame and fortune. Click here to see more examples of Peter’s stunning and original work.

* Note- I first saw photos of Peter’s work in a chain email, though the information was incorrect. The email claimed that they were works of art from many different artists in a contest run by Hirshhorn Modern Art Gallery in Washington D.C. to see what could be done with a single sheet of paper. There never was such a contest, all works were done by Peter Callesen.

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Group 1 Software, a Pitney Bowes company, recently sponsored research showing that consumers pay more attention to direct mail than to their online equivalents. Americans, it seems, spend nearly twice as much time reviewing printed statements and other documents received in the mail than the three and a half minutes spent reviewing them on the web. As Rob Pipe, vice president, marketing and strategy for Group 1 Software states, “These findings suggest that organizations who put targeted cross-selling messages on physical statements may achieve higher return on investment.”

The Pitney Bowes press release indicates that this information might be especially useful to banks, credit card companies, mobile phone companies and even governments. The assumption is that if a current or potential customer is spending more time reviewing a company’s printed material, the extra time spent will allow that customer to see information about new products or promotions thus leading to additional sales or a greater level of brand recognition.

Why is it that the average person pays more attention to printed material than their web equivalent? Perhaps, as Jakob Nielsen claims, because “A web page is fundamentally a scrolling experience for the user…Users often begin scrolling before all elements have been rendered, and different users will scroll the page in different ways throughout their reading experience.”

Nielsen, who has been called “the king of usability” (Internet Magazine) and “the smartest person on the Web,” (ZDNet AnchorDesk) points out these restrictions on web-read statements: “less graphics, smaller graphics, shorter text (since it is unpleasant to read online), less fancy typography (since you don’t know what fonts the user has installed), and less ambitious layouts.”

Could it be that aesthetics play such an important role in the amount of time spent reviewing a bank statement? According to this information it seems that when it comes to capturing your customers’ attention for a sustained period of time, direct mailers have the upper hand over their web equivalents. Just another reason to come into ColourTime and let us show you what we can do to help your business.

For more on this research see Group 1’s press release.

For more on print vs. web design, see Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox.

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