Those cool creative dudes at I Love Dust asked us to produce their iconic showcase book and here it is:

A beautiful A5 portrait piece with die cut slipcase.

We used Colorplan Ebony for the cover and slipcase, and Mohawk Options PC100 for the text.

Printed CMYK throughout, at 225lpi, the book portrays a stunningly vibrant reproduction of the amazing I Love Dust craft.

The cover has a very splendid skull graphic that we foiled in gloss black and metallic gold.

We have very limited samples that we would be pleased to show you, please get in touch if interested . . .

This really is a fantastic design piece – obviously supported by beautiful print.
That’s what we do you know!

WOW - what a great couple of days!

Our GF Smith draw prize was a brilliant success.

The lucky winners plus Les, 'yours truly', Matt from GF Smith & Stefan from Croppers

Thank you to Matt & Nick from GF Smith for organising this fantastic event. Thanks also to Sophie, Beth, Róisín, Ed, Dom, Martin and Sheldon for taking two whole days out of the office.

On the 18th November 2010, we took the train from Euston at 9.30, arriving at the mill in Burneside, near Kendall at around 1pm.

Following a nice, very welcome lunch, was a comprehensive tour of the fantastic paper mill. There was an awe inspiring yet nostalgic feeling as we walked through the huge mix of old and new.

First stop – the Lab . . .

Manufacturing . . .

Converting and packing . . .

A really interesting, inspiring and educational tour. By the way, if you have the use of 2 tonnes of paper, you can have your very own, unique shade of Colorplan!

Then – to the hotel overlooking Windermere (gorgeous) and a few beers at the Hole int’ Wall.

The next morning we took a very calm (veeeerrry slightly jaded) boat trip on Lake Windermere. Just beautiful . . .

This trip was absolutely fantastic, everyone agreed and the feedback since has be overwhelmingly positive. I am very sure we will be doing this again so please watch this space.

There are plenty more images than shown here so if you are interested in looking through these please CLICK HERE. If you would like any information on GF Smiths huge range of beautiful papers, please drop me a line.

Thanks again to all who made this possible.

Best

CP

 

 

Exciting news!

Our draw has closed and the results are now in . . .

166 draw numbers were allocated in total and 8 have been drawn at random by our GF Smith Representative Matt Ford! (Thank you Matt)

We thank you all for your entries, as expected we had a great response and we are delighted to announce the winners as follows:

The winning companies are as follows:

• The Potting Shed
• Float the Boat
• One Darnley Road
• Bond & Coyne Associates
• Deep
• The English Group
• Tom Lardner
• Command D

One member of each company will be invited to accompany us to The James Cropper Paper Mill on 18th &19th November. We will be in contact with the winners very soon.

(If any are unable to make the date, we will be obliged to re-draw their entry)

I hope to post some pics and comment about the trip so if you didnt win, you will still be able to see something interesting here!

Thanks again to all those who entered.

Final reminder that the last day to enter our Draw is Monday 18th October.

We can’t accept entries after 5pm I’m afraid so if you are hoping to enter and it’s looking tight, please get in touch and I will try and help get your job in before 5!

Thanks . . . best of luck!

Just a quick post to remind you that this is the last week for entries into our  Mill Visit Draw.

I stated in the original post that the closing date was the 16^th October but as this is a Sunday, I thought it best add the Monday on as well . . .

Therefore, draw will take place on the 25^th October with the lucky winners being announced during the same week.

To date, we have allocated 117 draw numbers . . .

Looking forward to receiving your entries this week.  Any questions please do let me know.

TTFN!

GF Smith Promotion

Just a quick reminder about the GF Smith Draw . . . your last entry date is 16th October so that‘s just over 2 weeks before the promotion closes.

We have had a great response so far – almost 60 draw numbers are now allocated – keep them coming!

If you would like any more info, please do get in touch.

CP

Would you like to find out and actually see it manufactured?

Well, along with our good friends at GF Smith Paper, Dayfold would like to offer you the chance . . .

We have up to 8 places for an all expenses paid trip to the James Cropper Paper Mill in the Lake District. You will have an extensive, first hand tour of the paper making process which will include:

• The lab and colour matching
• From wet pulp to finished product on machine
• Finishing
• Converting, laminating, embossing etc

and . . . not forgetting the all important visit to the sample room!

You will also enjoy an overnight stay in a quality hotel in Bowness and all travel arrangements from Euston Station. Food and drink will be looked after for you too, all you need to do is find your way to Euston.

So, what do you have to do to win one of the exclusive places?

Well, as GF Smith are sponsoring the visit, we thought it would be good to promote their materials and make it accessible to all . . .

On the appropriate job, we ask you to specify and use an element of any of GF Smiths fine papers. The job doesn’t have to use GF Smith material fully; just an element is required to qualify. Of course, we will be more than pleased to help you choose the appropriate stock if need be – we know their papers inside out!

This job is to be ordered through Dayfold and should have a minimum job/order value of just £250.00. You will then be allocated a draw number (per £250.00 ordered, so:  £500.00 = 2 numbers; £750.00 = 3 numbers and so on) which will ‘go into the hat’ with others. You can enter any numbers of jobs – the more you enter, the better the chance of your number being drawn. The qualifying period will run from 1st September to the 18th October. The draw will take place the week after with the winners announced on the 25th October.

The trip will take place on the 18th and 19th November so please ensure that you are free on these days.  You will be accompanied by the other winners, GF Smith and Dayfold personnel so we hope to make this a fun and also educational trip.

We are expecting a high interest in this promotion as mill visits are a little of a rarity these days, so: please do consider GF Smiths huge range of stocks when specifying your next job.

That’s it!

Easy and accessible to all!

Obviously if you have any questions at all, please do get in touch and we will be happy to clarify anything that is unclear.

We look forward to your feed-back and your entries.

Very best of luck.

ChrisP

Sorry I havent been in touch for a while – hope all is well where you are!

New Plate System

I thought you’d like to know that we have just upgraded our plate system!  ‘zzzzzzzzzz’ I hear you cry!

We think it’s pretty good news as we are saving 550kwh Electricity, 90 ltrs of harmful waste chemicals and a wopping 8980 litres of water . . . and this  is just a monthly calculation.

The new Agfa plates are still able to hold a 1% 300lpi dot too so quality is, as always, the dog’s doodahs!

Do you use 9 Lives?

A New Enviromental Benefit Statement has just been launched by Arjowiggins Papers and PaperCo.  (I can see the ‘zzzzzzzzz’s’ again!)  It’s a very factual and possibly a more meaningful statement than the various symbols available and you can print onto jobs using any of the 9 Lives range. See below:

We print a fair bit of work on 9 Lives so obviously we will be happy to help with the statement creation should you want to use something like this. It doesnt cost anything and could look really great on Annual Reports etc.

It would be great to get your feed-back on this please – is this something that is important to you/your clients? Please do let me know.

So, what is ‘creep’ ?

(yes, we all know of the Radiohead song and that weird bloke over there . . .)

and how do we get over the issues?

(This is a long one but I hope it helps!)

Creep occurs in saddle-stitched jobs (See Top Tip below though) where the sections/page spreads within the cover naturally move away from the spine. See this pic . . . exaggerated for effect:

When trimmed flush, the page margins are affected as the pages within get gradually narrower.

With saddle stitched jobs (especially those chunky beasts), although the finished article looks lovely and flush, the inner pages are actually smaller. Quite simply, if you grab a saddle-stitched job and pull out the central 4pp section,  you will see how much smaller it is from the ‘finished size’ of the job:

Unless creep is compensated for’ it can have a major impact on the margins and page layout.

Creep Allowance (sometimes called ‘shingling’ or ‘feathering’)

There are essentially THREE methods of creep allowance and the amount applied will vary and depend on the number of pages and the thickness of material:

- Manual Adjustment

- Page Offsetting

- Page Scaling

The next image shows a typical CENTRE SPREAD page layout that has had NO allowance made. Indications are shown where the page will be trimmed and the affect is has on the design:

Manual Adjustment

This is a very arduous procedure where, using a creep calculation factor, elements of the design are moved inwards, away from the foredge in tiny increments. Another way to put this is that each of the outer page margins will have to be manually tweaked. The closer the page is to the centre of the book, the bigger the adjustment is required. (This creates ‘progressive margins’) The example shown is a 56pp job so – Page 1 and 56 – will need a margin increase of 0.18mm; page 2 and 55 will need 0.36mm; page 3 and 54 – 0.54mm; page 4 and 53 – 0.72mm and so on in incremental multiples of the creep factor 0.18mm.                           Complicated? Hell yeah!

So where did we get the 0.18mm ‘creep factor’ from??

The Creep Factor is worked out as follows: Divide total number of TEXT pages by 4. Then multiply this number by the paper thickness (BUT, we also need to consider the ‘fold loss’ too. Another complicated issue but we find by adding 50% to the page thickness works very accurately.)  56pp divided by 4 = 14. Paper thickness 0.121mm PLUS 50% = 0.18mm. 14 x 0.18m = 2.52mm. 2.52mm is the TOTAL creep factor but adjust the margins progressively by 0.18mm. Don’t forget to ‘allow’ for the Cover – if your cover is a 300gsm, 0.28mm thick board, then your initial TEXT margin should start off ‘plus’ this amount . . . IGNORE the 50% fold loss. So if your initial margin is 5mm, you should make it 5.28mm and then apply the text creep adjustment from there. You do not need to adjust the cover margin. It can be left at your initial 5mm, for example.

You’ll be really pleased to know some printers (like good old Dayfold of course) have automatic methods to allow for creep.

Creep Allowance by Page Offsetting

Page offsetting works by ‘the system’ moving page elements inwards progressively. While this works well for the outer margin elements, there is a fundamental problem as the image above demonstrates.

Creep Allowance by Page Scaling

This is really effective:

Page Scaling works by ‘the system’ reducing the page elements in size horizontally. It is a tiny scaling, yes, distortion if you like but it is barely noticeable if at all. The ‘spec’ shown in the image above is pretty extreme to emphasise the effect. This is the system that we use at Dayfold and we never have any issues at all with ‘over-distortion’. It works extremely well and is so much better than both Page Offsetting and the highly complex and laborious Manual Method!

TOP TIP: If your job is Section Sewn/Case Bound or Burst Bound then creep WILL occur here too (within the sections) so again, it may need to be compensated for. Creep in small, thin sections will be quite minimal, so you may ‘get away with it’! However, if the stock is fairly thick or the pages are folded/sewn as more than 8pp sections, then creep allowance should be considered. On these occasions, it is certainly worth leaving any creep adjustment to the printer as you may not know how they plan to fold the job – ie whether they are folding as 8pp or 16pp sections for example.

TOP TIP: If YOU have manually adjusted your work, you must tell your printer (otherwise, they may apply one of the above ‘system’ methods . . . on top of yours!)

It’s highly unlikely that your printer will manually adjust for creep gratis. It is a very timely job so if they don’t have a method of adjustment like the above, it will be down to you to fix, or perhaps you should give us a bell

I hope this is useful – as usual, please do get in touch if you need help or clarification.

With thanks to Matthew Robinson, Dayfold’s pre-press guru, for his help with this.

Best

CP

We have had a huge overseas demand for our Little Black Book and until now, they have been restricted to the UK only (in particular the South).

After a fair bit of research, we have now made this available via Ebay. So, wherever you are, if you would like a copy, please check this link:

LBB on EBAY!

Please note the 2 packing/shipping cost variants – £8.00to Europe, £14.50 to rest of world.

Thank you for you interest.

Related Articles

• Dayfold’s Little Black Book (davidairey.com)