The printing industry has woken up to the idea that in short time there will be thousands of graphic designers leaving with degrees from college and university but with no experience of print, of designing for print and with no idea of how print can work for their future clients.
It has been taken for granted that graphic design students will learn about printing, but that is no longer the case. In recent years the pendulum has swung completely towards designing websites and other digital collateral. It is simpler to organise, both for the educators and the students. And in recent years agencies and brands have needed talent that could create websites and so on.
The impact has been to create cohorts of designers for whom print may be considered archaic. These are the influencers who get to decide how products and brands are promoted in future and the risk is that, knowing nothing about print, the flow of print work will slow.
More realistically it means that the flow of files which do reach printers will be unsuited for print production and that the creativity that gives print its Wow factor will be missing. If students are not shown and taught about the impact of papers, of special colours, metallics, the different print technologies let alone finishing options, the work coming though will be mundane and will lack the impact that print can deliver. Screens work in two dimensions and on sight and sound only, print works in three dimensions and works on sight, sound, touch and smell.
The BPIF has woken up to the issue with its technical interest group proposing that modules be added to design courses to teach students how to create print ready files, to understand the limitations of the leading print technologies, to understand the importance of substrates, colour management and the all important production of a print ready PDF.
The immediate task is to engage colleges, industry bodies and the tutors themselves to find out the best way to incorporate this aspect of design into their courses.
Some print businesses have been addressing the issue on their own for some time, but almost in isolation. Consequently there is no industry wide pressure being put on the education sector to reintroduce a print element to their visual design curriculum.
There are individual initiatives intended to fill the gap and in some instances, suppliers have joined in. Canon, in collaboration with marketing magazine The Drum, sponsored Design Futures last year. This is an award scheme that rewarded students and young creatives working on an omnichannel campaign for the YMCA. An element of through the letterbox media was a stipulation as was a level or personalisation and audience segmentation. The eight judges included Sophie Grender from Marketreach; Mark Cross from JicMail, Mike Hughes, managing director of Latcham Direct; and Lucy Swanston, Nutshell Creative.
“Many students and people in education do not understand the power of print,” says Swanston. “This is why the Canon project worked so well. The fact that the omnichannel campaign had to include print is a testament to that.”
However, it is one voice amid the clamour for digital marketing. Likewise others are singing solo with initiatives to engage design students in print. “We could have a bigger voice where there’s so much cross pollination of work if we could bring all these initiatives under one responsibility,” Swanston says.
That may be starting to happen. Dayfold, a printer in Dorset with a very close affiliation with the toiletry brand Lush, is pulling together a committee of industry companies to promote a similar initiative, working with Bournemouth University and offering a stint working at Lush for a young designer as the reward.
A number of industry suppliers (Duplo, Foilco, GF Smith) are involved as well as the BPIF and IPIA. Dayfold managing director Del Simmons says: “We have taken a bit of a leap, trying to create an organisation that will have its own identity to promote the use of creative styles of print. Lush want to join us to help promote this to students with an internship for the winner. It’s about promoting the use of creative print and getting away from just the idea that commoditised print is the only way to go.”
However, working with the education sector is not always easy as Ipswich printer Healeys discovered when it wanted to forge a connection between print and design students last year. “We wanted to connect with design and marketing students and taking them away from their course and doing something that was real. They visited the factory and saw the process from end to end and what we have done with the World Land Trust, telling them our story and where print has been,” says managing director Phil Dodd.
The idea was to have the students design the company’s calendar, sent out to its customers, and so get their work in front of potential employers. “It took more time than we had anticipated,” Dodd says.
It will in future look for other ways to engage with youth, making the point that some coordinating voice might be better placed to help with printers that have the right intentions but lack the spare capacity to take on this task.
This is perhaps where industry organisations can step in. Swanston points out that the Institute of Direct Marketing and Royal Mail have worked with marketing courses to include elements around how to spec a print job. The younger generation, she points out “are prime candidates for a printed piece. They have never received any communication through the post before. Print is new to them.”
This can make it exciting and can spark a latent interest in working in the medium. Exposing them to print at a young age can therefore pay off when they come to a choice of career. The work that Healeys has done is therefore not wasted. Others have taken similar steps: FE Burman and Gavin Martin in London, BCQ and Banbury Litho in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.
“We know that BCQ does some good print workshops,” Swanston says. “They will invite students, brands and current customers to participate. I believe that if more printers did this and saw this as a long term project with value as well as the short term hope of gaining more business. It’s a two-pronged approach: the youngsters may be their future workforce or specifiers of the future volumes of print. As an industry we have all got to start taking the longer term view.
“We need to make the industry more attractive and exciting to be part of. Everyone at every part of the supply chain needs to reinvigorate that passion for print.”
Matthew Plant, commercial director at Banbury Litho, says that the courses the company stages are aimed at clients. “We try to teach them the ins and outs of print. It’s about telling them about the projects we do and to demonstrate that through creative design and cardboard engineering.” That leads to conversations he says about the challenges that the clients have in their business and what they are trying to achieve, in short the sorts of conversations that are not directly related to a particular job or project but which can inform how the printer pitches for future work.
“Often it’s that they want to make a certain product, but do not know how, they don’t know what materials to use and how to manage the creative design process. And frequently if the brand is working with an agency the agency does not know how to produce it either.”
The result then becomes a project that is dead in the water before the printer gets to find out about it. Hence Banbury Litho is strengthening its own design team, not to compete with outside design agencies, but to handle these types of project, to collaborate on projects. “It can be really beneficial,” says Plant. “A brand does not need to have to go to a designer and then to a separate cardboard engineer, but can deal with a single contact.”
When DecTek developed a new building across from its long term home in South Wales, managing director Mike Beese cherished a vision of creating a DecTek academy with students able to come in and be inspired by the capabilities of the technology that the company has and what it can be used to produce. In the last couple of years this has swung very much towards creative packaging applications.
That is still very much the vision, but even before this Beese is giving youth its head. “We have two 19-20-year-old youngsters looking after a new direct to garment installation, managing the stock and looking after the print management workflow. They have taken that on board and are excelling, bringing in new ideas,” he says.
There are links to Coleg Morgannwg where we can present them with our end of life equipment where suitable, and which will build the relationship between the college and potential employer.
There are deep links between FE Burman, the London College of Printing and other institutions in the University of the Arts London. For ten years the Southwark company has operated an open doors policy for students and welcomes several hundred a year through its doors where sales director Paul Regan aims to “give them a passion for print and paper”. GF Smith and at times Diamond Print Finishers help in this endeavour.
The resource that the business provides is welcomed by the students and by the college which is able to give its charges an appreciation of what really goes on in the commercial world. Regan jokes with them that “the worst client is a student because they want everything without the resources to pay for it”.
Nevertheless the students are welcomed with open arms. “When they arrive here they don’t know much about print. There is a huge digital element to their world and print is not at the forefront of it. Depending on which year they are, they will have more or less of an idea about print. We want to tell about what to do with artwork because they do not understand what input they should have so that by the time they walk from here and find a local print, they will be able to have a conversation about what they can get from a job and what they can do to maximise their budget.
We will give them an experience they will not get in college so that they don’t get into difficulties when they try to place work and can’t get the folds right.
“Colleges ought to be more responsible about how they help students understand print and how they present files for printing,” he says.
Over the years there has been a growing influx of overseas students who may or may not return to their country of origin after finishing the course. That does not matter to FE Burman. “But it does mean we have to be respectful of the different cultural backgrounds that they may have,” says Regan.
Visual design is not the cheapest of courses. The student needs a Mac and relevant, often Adobe software, they need to visit museums and exhibitions and they need materials where the likes of GF Smith can help with student discounts. In short graphic design is an option for the committed. By skimming over design for print, the colleges are not delivering a complete education.
The commitment needed raises questions about whether educating youngster about printing and paper should be happening earlier in their education. Swanston certainly believes. Drawing on personal experience she came up with the Topic Heroes concept where junior school children write a story and have it printed as a book. “That exposes children to print in a subliminal way,” she says. “If the industry can get them early through grass roots support into a club. This happens in the US where at 14 years old the students choose an extra curricular activity and printing techniques.”
That can be about textile printing as much as print on paper, and like the PrintIT scheme which ran for several years in UK schools is about giving youngsters an early exposure to print that may lead directly to a career choice, or may result in print being chosen later on. The point is to open the doors and windows to remove any mystique about printing and to communicate a passion for print to people who ultimately will be responsible for choosing or not choosing print, for growing or shrinking the volumes of printing that follow.
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