At Newman Thomson we truly believe in sustainable print, we are FSC® certified, a not for profit organisation focussed on the welfare of the worlds forests. We are also ISO 14001 certified which recognises our commitment to conform with all environmental laws and regulations and actively work to minimise the environmental impact of all current and future activities and processes, reduce energy use and promote environmentally considerate practices throughout our supplier chain. 

It’s not just about badges and certificates though, we’ve switched virtually all of our lighting from incandescent to LED, saving a vast amount of energy, and reducing wastage. We’ve switched to processesless plating, virtually eliminating the need for harmful chemicals, and reducing water usage. We no longer use paper hand towels or electric hand dryers, we use continuous towel rolls which are collected and recycled. Our vending machines only use paper cups, not plastics. We could go on, but you can always read more on our environmental page.

2. Choose the right paper

This sounds like an obvious point, but it is one that is often overlooked. The range of environmentally friendly papers is growing continuously. As a rule, try to avoid glossy stocks, as these can cause issues with recycling. The most environmentally aware choice would be an uncoated stock, which as the name suggests, doesn’t have any form of coating on it.

We offer fully recycled, part recycled, and FSC® papers, as well as carbon balanced papers which allow you to offset the amount of carbon dioxide created during the production process.

3. Try to avoid glues and plastics where possible

Whilst you might not know it, the application of glue to a product, can render it un-recyclable. If you need to affix items to your printed products try and think about using different methods, such as slits, or tabs. One of our design team loves making challenging die cutter guides, so if you need a hand, just get in touch.

4. Use print on demand

Why print way more than you need of something? With the developments in the web to print landscape it’s now easier than ever to simply print what you want, in the quantity you want, when you want. No more throwing away out of date publications, no more over ordering. What’s more, due to it’s nature, print on demand work is virtually always printed on digital presses, which are far more environmentally friendly than their litho counterparts. No metal plates needed, no harsh chemicals to clean presses, considerably more energy efficient, in fact our 3 HP Indigo digital presses themselves were all produced in a Carbon Neutral production process.

5. Add value without environmental cost

Perhaps you want to create a glitzy event invite, and had been considering using a glitter or something similar to give it impact, neither glitter, nor the glue used to apply it are terribly good for the environment, so why not consider something that not only looks better, but doesn’t have a negative impact like embossing, or die cutting?

6. Recycle any surplus print

If you do have any left over print from previous jobs which are surplus to requirements, then let us know at the time of placing your next order, and we’ll pick it up and bring it back to our plant for recycling. That way, the product gets recycled, and it saves an unnecessary journey as our transport partners are in and out of our place every day. Not only will your product have been printed on recycled stock, it will then be being recycled again, now that is sustainable print.

7. Do your research

Find out what market you are aiming for and tailor your product to them as much as possible, whilst the ‘scatter gun’ approach to marketing used to be the only way, it ends up very wasteful and therefore not very cost effective, or good for the environment.

What would you rather be handed? A lightweight glossy thin generic flyer, or a high end stock with beautiful finishing and perhaps even personalisation (simple with digital print).

So whilst on the face of it you may be paying the same for less, if you consider that a lot of your cheap marketing materials will be going straight in the bin (and not the recycling bin as they’re on gloss) the higher end stuff which you’ve carefully targeted to the correct audience will be gaining traction and working harder and more efficiently for you. You’ll have also used less paper and energy to create it. Everyones a winner!

8. Check, check and check again.

Again, this may sound like an obvious one, but probably the easiest way to reduce environmental impact of your jobs, is to eliminate errors. One small typo could double the size of your job, thus doubling the environmental impact and of course the cost. Before going to press, have several people check over the job, ideally some who have no involvement with the job as they will be more likely to spot any errors that could be missed by over familiarity with the project.

9. Don’t encapsulate

If you have a job that you want to used in a hard environment, instead of going for the old fashioned method of encapsulation which uses all manner of glues and plastics, why not look at using a synthetic paper such as Agfa’s Synaps material, which is waterproof, tear proof, UV stable and of course recyclable. Less processes are involved as it’s printed on in a similar fashion to paper, as opposed to using the printer, then the guillotine, then the encapsulation machine, then the guillotine again.

10. Sticking around

There was a time when all stickers featured non-recyclable adhesives, and as such were (regardless of what stock was used) non-recyclable, we can now source FSC® approved stickers with biodegradable adhesives, so a sticky problem, has now been alleviated.

If you’d like to discuss any other aspects of sustainable print, please either drop us an email to info@newmanthomson.co.uk, or give us a call on 01444 480700

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Renewable paper

Renewable means that the product is made from a natural resource that replenishes itself naturally over time. To give a very simple example, trees are renewable, oil is not. For example, Huhtamaki Future Smart paper cups are made of 100% renewable plant-based materials and contain no carbon content older than 100 years.

The sustainability of renewable tree fiber is granted with certificates like PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) and FSC (Forest Stewardship Council). They make sure that forestry is sustainable and that for each tree cut more trees are planted. You can find out more about our environmental credentials here, and our sustainable printing and recycling mantra here.

The term ‘renewable’ is linked to the origin of the raw material and and does not refer to how the product is used or what the end of life options are. Products made of renewable material can be either recyclable or compostable.

Recyclable, compostable and biodegradable paper – what’s the difference?

Recyclable means products, which, after sorting and collecting can be reprocessed. The resulting material can be manufactured into new products. Paper is made of fibres/pulps that comes from trees. This fibre can be recycled and reused up to seven times before it loses its integrity. Magazine paper or corrugated board are examples of products made from recycled fiber.

The recycling infrastructure varies between countries and regions, and thus there is no universal guidance on where to dispose of e.g. recyclable paper cups. For example, in the United Kingdom the recyclable paper cups should be put into a specific cup collection, and in Finland they belong to the paperboard waste stream.

How paper cup recycling works:

Compostable means products, which will decompose and become soil in a set time frame under certain pre-defined conditions. These conditions are different in industrial composting and home composting and thus a product that is suitable for industrial composting might not be good for home composting.

As said, composting requires specific conditions – certain time, temperature and pressure. Therefore, even the compostable cups or other products should not be thrown to nature – it takes a very long time for them to decompose if the conditions are not right.

Biodegradable is a more general definition and means products which decompose naturally into small pieces. However, it is possible that they don’t decompose fully or don’t become good quality soil. Different raw materials can be referred to as biodegradable and using the term loosely may encourage littering the environment.

We as consumers must understand that correct disposal is the key for materials to be reused for new products or to be composted.

Credit: https://www.huhtamaki.com who wrote this post originally, we have simply amended it to cover a wider range of materials.

Credit: https://www.twosides.info/UK for the Featured Image.

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Just get in touch with us here if you have any jobs that need quoting.

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For instance, if you’ve got a business card template where only the contact details/job titles change, this system is perfect for you. You can change the details online yourself, see a visual proof, and save yourself £100’s in artworking fee’s. You could take advantage of the economy of scale, and order 12,000 letterheads, instead of the usual 3,000, and just call them off as you need them in whatever size batch suits you whilst enjoying the saving on cost per item, ordering a larger run gets you.

You don’t have to limit your store to just printed items, if you wanted to add clothing, or merchandise, you can, the system can be set-up to fire an email to your nominated supplier, the order is then fulfilled and sent out to your client.

On top of all of this, there is the option to create your own ‘front end’ which can be branded as you like either for use internally, or to offer a wide range of print services all under your brand to the general public. The process is pretty simple, the customer orders the product, the order comes to us, we print the product and supply to the customer with your branded delivery notes. You get to greatly increase your offering without incurring the costs associated with installing the requisite new kit.

We’d love to explain how our new web to print system can benefit organisations like yours, so if you’d like to learn more then drop us a line here.

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1. Keep your logo simple – an over complicated logo will appear harder to read the smaller it is, you also need to consider how your logo will look in other media’s i.e. sign-writing in cut vinyl
2. Do not add tone to your logo – once again, tone is impossible to replicate in cut vinyls, and may also appear differently if using the logo in black and white, or printed at lower resolution i.e. newsprint.
3. Do not use raster images – as someone who works with print you will be familiar with why we prefer using vector images or at least a minimum of 300dpi, otherwise you run the risk of the logo appearing pixelated when it is scaled up.
4. Your logo should be scalable – again, as above you need a logo that doesn’t lose quality when it is scaled up, think billboards, or large posters.
5. Do not use too many colours – the more colours you use, the more visually distracting the logo becomes, making it harder for the viewer to see what it actually represents.
6. Too many fonts kill the charm – at the most stick to two fonts, the ‘the 10 commandments of typography’ which you can find here does a good job of explaining why this rule is important.
7. Do not outline your logo – adding an outline or ‘stroke’ to your logo adds nothing, again its a visual distraction adding more noise.
8. Do not write on your logo – a seemingly obvious one, your logo should convey enough information in the text part of it, without having to add text to the logo itself.
9. Avoid putting the logo in a box – there shouldn’t be a reason for putting a box around your logo, it should be able to hold itself together well enough without needing a frame.
10. And lastly, flat doesn’t mean an icon – just because the current trend is ‘flat design’ doesn’t mean that it has to look like an app icon.

Credit to Designmantic for the original artwork

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1. Know your font families – GHOTMS, Geometric Sans, Humanist Sans, Old Style, Transitional, Modern, Slab Serifs
2. Combine a sans-serif font with a serif font – contrast is king here, the combo of sans serif and serifs can be really effective, just don’t go overboard (see no.7)
3. Combine a serif font with a sans-serif font – the same as above, just turned upside down
4. Combining two similar fonts is not cool – You’ve got the opportunity to do something striking, don’t make it look like you’ve forgotten what font you initially used then found something similar
5. Contrast is key – See points 2 and 3
6. Stick to two fonts, only go to three if you absolutely have to – Don’t over complicate things, only go for three different typefaces if it’s essential.
7. Don’t mix different moods – don’t mix something ‘Wild West’ with a graffiti type font then some sort of calligraphy font, that’s never going to work.
8. Combine fonts of complimentary moods and periods in time – it stands to reason that these will ‘get on’.
9. Use different weights of fonts from the same families – they were designed to match up, so make use of that.
10. Lastly avoid using any of the fonts shown in point 10, there are a whole lot more to add to that list as well… (this is purely down to personal preference of course!)

Credit to Designmantic for the artwork for this info graphic.

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One other thing regarding colours to consider is that of black, for text a single colour black is perfectly fine. However if you are looking to use large areas of black a single colour black can appear a bit ‘greyish’ in hue, a common solution here is to use what’s known as a rich black, or 4 colour black. As the name would suggest, this is where a 100% K black is enhanced by the addition of the other 3 print colours. The usual CMYK breakdown for a rich black is C-50% M-50% Y-50% and K-100%.

PMS Colours, PMS is the abbrevation for Pantone Matching System. Simply put, the PMS is a way of guaranteeing the appearance of a colour over a variety of materials. Commonly used by very large brands who are represented across the globe, the PMS allows you to ensure continuity by rendering your chosen colour, identically, no matter where it is, what material it is on, or what process has been used to produce it. For example, Ford use Pantone 294C in their famous blue oval logo, this ensures that the specific blue is replicated exactly the same across the world, and across any materials (signage, print, clothing etc.) in which it features. However, most brands probably don’t need that sort of colour control (which can be fairly expensive), and a traditional CMYK breakdown will suffice. As always, if you want any more info regarding this or any other area of printing, do please get in touch, collectively we have centuries (probably) worth of knowledge which we’ll gladly impart.

The infographic below details what the main differences are between CMYK, RGB and Pantone colours:

Credit for original infographic to thelogocompany.net

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The post How to set up a cutter guide first appeared on Newman Thomson.

Credit Paper Leaf Design for the original artwork

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