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.

Posted in Environment, Just Plain Cool, Print Industry, Tips and Techniques | No Comments »

Color is a fascinating concept and far more complicated than one might expect considering that the names of colors are one of the first things we learn as children in school. Though color theory is most often studied by artists, designers, photographers and other creative professions, how a color comes to be is actually quite scientific.

Scholars have learned that all the colors in the universe, from the yellows and oranges of leaves in autumn to a neon green paint job on a hot rod, originate from a mere fifteen fundamental physical causes. And these fifteen causes of color combined with the signals received by your eye and sent to your brain are what make us say things like “Wow, what a beautiful sunset!”

The average human eye has three types of cones that sense three different sections of the light spectrum. One cone perceives mostly short wavelengths (450 nanometers) which translates into a bluish color, another cone perceives mostly medium wavelengths (540 nanometers) which we see as a green color and the third cone perceives mostly long wavelengths (580 nanometers) which we interpret as having a red color.

Now anyone who is familiar with photo editing software will immediately recognize these three colors as those that make up the RGB spectrum. In most software of this type, a person is able to adjust the level of each color individually thus changing the overall appearance of the photograph.

The RGB (Red Green Blue) colorspace actually grew out of early experiments done in the late 1920s by W. David Wright and John Guild who mapped all the colors visible to the human eye in a three dimensional graph.As for most people, from an early age it’s hard to grasp the idea that red, green and blue combine to make white. As anyone who used finger paints as a child will attest to, combining red, green and blue paint only leads to a murky brown.

The difference, of course, is that the RGB colorspace is an additive model that combines all primary colored lights, while black is the absence of light. In the CMYK model, it is just the opposite: white is the natural color of the paper or other background, while black results from a full combination of colored inks. CMYK, the model on which the entire printing process is based, stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and K is used to represent Black, though the letter K actually comes from the word Key, as in the key line on the metal plate used to transfer the ink to the paper.

The interesting part comes when we at Colourtime try to match colors designed in an RGB space to our output colors based on a CMYK model. But of course, with the level of expertise we have, it’s no wonder the documents we print end up looking fabulous every time!To learn more about these forms of color, from “made light” to “lost light” to “changed light,” visit the Causes of Color website.

Posted in For Your Information, Graphic Design | Comments Off

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.

Posted in For Your Information, Innovation, Print Industry, Tips and Techniques | Comments Off