Southside Print | Southside Print SE1, London

An A-Z of Printing Terms

29th January 2020/in Graphic design, Printers, Printing, Printing jargon, Printing services, SE1, Southside Print /by Mark at Pilot

If you’re involved in buying printing but are not a designer or printer yourself, you’ll probably have come across some printing jargon that, at some point, has left you a little confused. ‘CMYK’, ‘bleed’ and ‘outlining fonts’ are possible examples. Such terminology often crops up at the worst possible time too — in print quotes or just when you are in a hurry to finalise artwork. Fear not, though, as we’re here to help you make sense of it all. Here is our handy A to Z of common printing terms:

Looking for an Eco-Friendly Printer in London SE1?

24th January 2020/in Borough, Borough High Street, Digital printing, Graphic design, Graphic designers, Large format printing, London, London Bridge, Printers, Printing, Printing services, SE1 /by Mark at Pilot

At Southside Print, we’re passionate about doing our bit to save the planet. With such extreme weather around the world and record-breaking temperatures becoming the new norm, it’s more important then ever to reduce our carbon footprint and generally be more eco-friendly as a company and as individuals. We’re certainly stepping up to the mark.

Are you looking for a ‘green’ printer near London Bridge?

We hope that being ‘green’ is important to you too. If so, you’ll probably want to find an environmentally-friendly printer, i.e. one who uses eco-friendly practices and chooses sustainable materials wherever possible. That’s where we come in because we genuinely care about the environment and our impact on the planet. So, when you choose Southside as your environmentally-friendly printer, you know you are making a green choice and are also playing your part in the much bigger picture.

How we are environmentally friendly

At Southside Print, there are a number of ways in which we help to minimise waste and reduce our carbon footprint. Just a few examples include the following:

All paper, card and board off-cuts are saved for recycling wherever possible. As printers, that’s a no-brainer and results in a huge amount of paper-based material going back into the production of things like … more recycled paper! Speaking of which …
While the final decision about paper and card is down to the individual customer, we try wherever possible to suggest the use of sustainable papers. Depending on the job in hand, these might include paper that is 100% or at least partly recycled, made from pulp from sustainable sources, a mixture of the two, or even paper and board that contains nothing from trees at all — for example, paper made from sustainable cotton — this has a lovely crispness about it too. There is a wide variety of eco-friendly paper, card and board available on the market, so it makes total sense to offer such options to customers. Together, we can then help the planet and reverse some of the damage already done.
We also endeavour to choose only energy-efficient machinery. These days, this is easier than ever because most modern machines have energy-efficient modes and other eco-friendly options. These save energy, minimise heat loss and can even reduce the amount of wasted material and consumables used during production.
At Southside, we often also go the extra mile by using green cycle couriers to deliver to London customers wherever possible. There are not many printers that go to such lengths!
It may come as a surprise to some but our website hosting was also carefully chosen; at Southside, only ‘green’ hosting will do! The servers used to display our website are hosted in an energy-efficient environment and one that takes enormous measures to limit heat loss. Such measures help to reduce carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere — that’s an incredibly important step towards reducing the greenhouse effect that can so badly add to global warming.

Contact SE1’s eco-friendly printer

If you are as passionate as us about the environment and are looking for an eco-friendly printer, please give us a try at Southside Print. Printing need not cost the Earth, so Read more

Logo & Corporate Identity Design in SE1

7th January 2020/in Borough, Branding, Corporate identity, Digital printing, Graphic design, Graphic designers, London, London Bridge, Marketing Collateral, Printers, Printing, Printing services, SE1 /by Mark at Pilot

Southside Print offers a full logo design service along with corporate identity design from our print works near London Bridge in SE1. In this blog post we explain a little about the way we approach this type of design work.

Logo design – the brief

Getting your logo design right is incredibly important; after all, your logo is very much the face of your organisation or brand. As such, it needs to convey the right first impression, the right values, look attractive and be memorable as your primary branding device.

As part of any logo design brief, we’ll ask for guidelines about what values the logo will represent and what kind of visual feel you have in mind. Does it need to look eye-catching and punchy, contemporary and clean, hip and funky, earthy and natural, or understated and dependable? Does it need to look upmarket, cheap and cheerful, or somewhere in between? It all depends upon what you wish to convey when people see your new logo. It’s also important to know the answers to these questions from the very beginning so that our designers can embark upon the design journey knowing that they’re aiming in the right direction from the outset. After all, getting a logo 100% right is incredibly important for any business, organisation or brand.

Designing … or redesigning your brand

Our designers are here, on tap, to professionally design your logo – or even to redesign it, should the need arise. That service is useful if your business or organisation is a start-up, of course, but also if an existing logo is looking tired, dated and in need of a refresh. Updating your logo can be incredibly powerful as a marketing tool and in some ways it can be very much like a rebirth when it happens — a chance to re-launch your offering to your target audience.

Designing your logo

The design journey for logos varies enormously depending upon the company, organisation, product or service in question as well as the brief supplied to our designers. Also, of course, the available budget has a big impact on how much work, and how many iterations, we can supply as part of our logo designing service. Therefore, perhaps surprisingly to some, logo design is possible for a range of different budgets.

Getting your logo design right is incredibly important; after all, your logo is very much the face of your organisation or brand

Design budget

At the very lowest end of the budget scale, we could agree to professionally design a logo based closely on something our client has supplied, e.g. a sketched out idea. In that scenario, the customer already has a fixed and clear idea of what they want and so we can arrive at an agreed logo design fairly quickly and easily — and therefore inexpensively. However, it’s worth mentioning that, Read more

Opening Times for Christmas 2019 & New Year

20th December 2019/in Borough, Buy printing online, Christmas, Christmas cards, Digital printing, Graphic design, London Bridge, Printers, Printing, Printing services, SE1, Southside Print /by Mark at Pilot

A very Happy Christmas to all our customers! We’d also like to pass on every good wish to you for the New Year when it arrives. Thanks to each and every one of you for all the lovely graphic design and printing work that you’ve given us throughout 2019 — it’s been a wonderful year and we really appreciate all the work you have passed our way — Thank you.

Christmas 2019 & New Year Opening Times

We close for the Christmas festivities on Friday 20th December at 5.30pm, remaining closed throughout the Christmas period until January 2nd 2020 when we re-open at 9am — and then it’s all back to normal. In the mean time, if you have anything urgent that simply must be ready in time for Christmas, don’t delay. We’ll need your artwork and order right away please.

However, our online print shop will be available to everyone during the break. So, if you need anything like brochures, posters, letterheads, compliments slips, business cards or leaflets, simply order them online (follow the bold links) and we’ll print and dispatch those for you as soon as possible.

You can also continue to request quotations over the Christmas break and, again, we’ll sort those out for you as quickly as we can so you have prices ready for the New Year. You can also call 020 7378 6754 to speak with us either side of the break.

Thanks again to each and every one of you. We wish you a happy Christmas and all good things for the 2020.

The Southside Print Team, Tabard Street, London SE1.

Charity Christmas Prize Draw for SE1

2nd December 2019/in Borough, Borough High Street, Christmas, Digital printing, London Bridge, Printers, Printing, Printing services, Prize Draw, Promotions, SE1 /by Mark at Pilot

If you’re a charity based in London SE1, you could soon be in for an unexpected treat. As an alternative to sending Christmas cards and hampers this year, Southside Print is donating a total of £550 worth of printing services to SE1 charities via a December prize draw.

Win free printing!

Four lucky charities will split the winnings, with a top prize of £250 worth of printing going to one charity, with three other charities each receiving a voucher for printing worth £100. Charities need not be existing customers of Southside Print.

Prize Draw Rules

A few simple terms and conditions apply, the main caveats being:

No purchase is necessary;
Charities need to be based in London SE1, i.e. have an SE1 postcode in their published office address;
Charities must register here by 12th December 2019;
The prizes are given as printing vouchers (1 x £250 voucher plus 3 x £100 vouchers in total), and each charity can win a maximum of only one voucher;
The winners will be chosen at random on 13th December 2019. A list of winning charities will be published online;
Vouchers must be redeemed for printing services no later than 30th June 2020;
Vouchers can only be redeemed at Southside Print, Tabard Street, for in-house printing services available on site;
The value of each order will be confirmed before commencing production;
No cash alternative is available and no change will be given.
Vouchers need not be used in a single printing order; we will keep a running tally for each winner;

Submit your entry here

If you are a charity based in London SE1, you have nothing to lose, so register now! Vouchers can pay for the equivalent value of any of our in-house printing services. These include digital printing, large format printing, lamination and digital foiling. Winners can use them for ordering things like Read more

Thermographic Printing at Southside Print, London Bridge

23rd November 2019/in Borough, Borough High Street, Graphic design, London, London Bridge, Printers, Printing, Printing services, SE1, Southwark, Thermographic printing /by Mark at Pilot

Thermographic printing, or ‘thermo’ printing as it’s also known in the trade, is a useful technique to embellish your printing and make it stand out – figuratively as well as literally speaking to some degree. Here we’ll take a look at the process and how it can be used here at Southside Print in London SE1.

The thermo process

Thermography is, to some extent, more of ‘finishing’ process as it’s completed after the coloured inks have already been printed on the paper or card. While the inks are still wet, a thermographic powder is applied to the paper and it sticks to the wet ink. Any excess is quickly removed and then the dusted sheets are passed through a heating process. This melts the themographic powder into its final form. Once melted, set and cooled, it forms an attractive coating to just the printed parts of the sheet.

The effect of thermo printing

The new thermo coating is like a spot printed glossy varnish that actually has a thickness to it. This is why thermographically printed elements on the paper feel raised if you run your finger over them. While it’s not as crisp as embossing or UV varnishing, it is an interesting and slightly organic effect and one that is quite different to embossing in reality. As well as being raised, it makes the printed areas glossy, allowing the them to catch the light at certain angles. It’s also useful to note that thermo printing is a significantly cheaper alternative to spot UV varnishing.

Thermo printing is a significantly cheaper alternative to spot UV varnishing

Uses

Thermo printing is quite a well-established, traditional process but, when used well by talented graphic designers, can look incredibly attractive and contemporary. The thermographic powder/seal is transparent, so it lets the colour of the underlying printing ink show through. Because of that, it actually looks like the thermographically printing itself is coloured. So, for example, if your logo on a letterhead consists of black type for the company name and a big red square for the logo symbol, it’ll look like those two coloured elements are thermographically ‘printed’ and each of them will be glossy and slightly raised. Thermo printing also has a slightly organic feel about it as mentioned above, by which we mean that it has a slightly mottled, in-exact outer edge and the glossy ‘seal’ feels hard and glassy — almost jewel-like. This can really contrast well against the matt paper it is printed onto. Thermographic printing works well on anything from business cards, letterheads and invitations to Read more

We’re Now Printers in WC1 Too!

11th November 2019/in Clerkenwell, Digital printing, Farringdon, Large format printing, Litho printing, Printers, Printing, Printing services, WC1 /by Mark at Pilot

We’re pleased to announce that we are now the owners of an additional print shop, WCS Digital Print, based in Mount Pleasant, London WC1. So, if you’re looking for a printer in the Clerkenwell and Farringdon area of London WC1, we can also now help.

WCS Digital has been around since 1985, supplying high quality printing and design to west central London individuals, businesses and organisations for almost 35 years. Southside Print owners Rob Phillips and Sarah Codd have now also taken on WCS Digital Print and aim to bring similar improvements and investments to the WC1 print works, following on from their successes and proven track record at Southside Print. These are likely to include snazzy new printing and finishing equipment as well as cutting edge software that’ll help track the progress of orders and make print quotes fast and incredibly simple.

Printing services in Clerkenwell, Farringdon & London WC1

Like here at Southside, WCS Digital Print is a litho printer, a digital printer, a large format printer and a copy shop. So, as well as offering high quality printing of just about anything, you can also go to WCS Digital for photocopying, document duplication and image/document scanning services. WCS also offers print management services, graphic design, brochure production, booklet making, document binding, bookbinding and direct mail solutions. Just like Southside, it’s a full design and print solution! More details of the Read more

Postcard Printers in London SE1

29th October 2019/in Borough, Borough High Street, Digital printing, Graphic designers, London, London Bridge, Postcards, Printers, Printing, Printing facilities, Printing services, SE1, South London /by Mark at Pilot

Printed postcards are a simple yet potentially very effective marketing tool. This is especially true when working with digital printers like Southside Print because they’re incredibly quick to turn around and are produced at exceptional quality. Even better, our own in-house design and artwork specialists are on hand to ensure that your postcards look eye-catching, well designed and communicate all the right messages to your target audience.

Sizes

Postcards are generally affordable whether you require just a handful or many thousands, mainly due to their small size. This allows us to print several postcards on the same, larger, sheet before trimming down to their final size, so you benefit from the economies of scale and savings on materials. We print postcards mostly at A6 (148mm x 105mm) although some customers occasionally require larger sizes such as A5 (210mm x 148mm), smaller sizes like A7 (105mm x 74mm) or non-standard postcard sizes like square formats.

Shapes

As well as rectangular and square postcards, we can also supply them with all rounded corners or even with a mixture of square-cut corners and rounded corners, resulting in a kind of lozenge shape, for example. For those who require something even more unusual, we can also make up a unique cutter so your printed postcards are irregular shapes, for example with sides that follow the contour of your logo, photograph or graphics.

Finishes

When it comes to finish, postcards can be printed straight onto card with no additional finish — or additional processes can be used. It all depends upon personal preference and available budget. Without additional coatings and processes, postcards can simply show the inherent finish of the underlying card, for example uncoated cards (making for very matt and lower contrast printing), silk coated, glossy if the card itself has a glossy coating, or textured if the underlying card is itself textured. Additional finishing options that we can add include gloss or matt lamination, U.V. varnish or even spot U.V. varnish used in tandem with any of the other finishes (e.g. spot gloss U.V. varnish over the top of matt lamination — this looks phenomenally good). We can also digitally foil any of the above, resulting in metallic or even holographic detailing. All in all, your printed postcards can look (and feel) absolutely amazing when you let Southside Print really go to town!

What can Postcards be Used For?

Firstly, of course, postcards can be used for their traditional purpose. Perhaps you are a London venue — maybe a museum, landmark or experience of some kind — and want people to send friends and family a postcard featuring your venue following their visit. We can print that for you economically and in high quality. Using full colour printing and high gloss lamination, it’ll give images a real punch and a surface so glossy you can see your face in it! We’ll be happy to supply the design and artwork too.

However, postcards can also be great when used as an alternative to mailers. Send out a glossy, full colour postcard featuring your product or service in all its glory and you’re sure to impress. You can even have a set of postcards that each show a different product. That way you can follow up the first postcard with a second at a later date, then a third later still, and get some real momentum and brand recognition going amongst your target audience. Marketers know that people often need several reminders of adverts or marketing pieces before they take the plunge to purchase from a particular company, so a set of product postcards sent out gradually over the course of a few weeks can be a perfect solution. Postcards also have far more gravitas than a humble leaflet or flyer, leading to a higher perception of quality, so will be taken more seriously.

Postcards can also be used as Read more

Printers in Borough, London SE1

14th October 2019/in Borough, Borough High Street, Graphic design, Graphic designers, Large format printing, London, Online Printing, Printers, Printing, Printing facilities, Printing services, SE1, South London /by Mark at Pilot

We are printers in Borough, right in the heart of London SE1. Based in Tabard Street, Southside Print offers high quality printing to individuals, businesses, shops, charities and organisations across the Borough & SE1 region. So, whether you’re a resident who needs personal stationery, a cafe that needs printed menus, a pub that needs posters to promote gigs, an SE1 charity that needs fundraising literature, a shop that needs printed booklets or catalogues or one of the many businesses in the Borough that requires sales and marketing collateral, we can help. We’ll print everything for you at the highest quality, for a competitive price. What’s more, our turnaround times are hard to beat and we offer free local delivery and a click and collect service for those close by.

Further afield?

Perhaps you’re a little bit outside the Borough region. No problem! We print for companies and organisations everywhere in the UK and abroad and even have a web print shop where anyone in the world can order popular items like stationery, posters, brochures, leaflets and bound documents 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Simply choose your desired options, submit your payment and we’ll take care of the rest. And don’t forget that ‘click and collect’ service for local customers.

What can we print?

We can print pretty much anything you can think of! For example, brochures, catalogues, letterheads, business cards, compliments slips, NCR (multi-part) order pads, menus, posters, display graphics, exhibition panels, signs, newsletters, annual reports, leaflets, flyers, booklets, brochures, labels, stickers, wedding invites, postcards and a whole host of other printed items. In fact, if it’s produced by printing ink on paper, chances are we can supply it.

The Borough

The Borough is an extremely cosmopolitan community, with a really good buzz about it. You have Borough Market right at its heart and there you can pick up anything from gifts to fruit, vegetables, street food from around the world, the finest delicacies and much more. Pubs, restaurants, cafes and other eateries abound and throughout the Borough you have a huge abundance of shops including independent traders and high street brands all competing for the attention of shoppers. All these businesses and traders need to be at the top of their game to attract passers by so it’s important that they get their message across in window displays, inside and on their printed promotional literature. Many of them also hand out flyers in the SE1 streets. We can help with all of that not only by producing the finest print, but also by making it look a million dollars in the first place, courtesy of our in-house graphic designers. That’s where we can make a real difference in your ROI (return on investment) to ensure that you communicate your service or product USPs (unique selling propositions) and key messages clearly to your prospects. That’s how you are most likely to turn them into paying customers. Supplying your own artwork? That’s Read more

Personal Stationery Printers in Southwark

21st August 2019/in Borough, Business cards, Buy printing online, Compliments slips, Digital printing, Envelopes, Graphic design, Graphic designers, Letterheads, London, London Bridge, Printers, Printing, Printing services, SE1, South London, Southwark, Stationery /by Mark at Pilot

Personal Stationery

As well as being designers and printers of business stationery, Southside Print also produces personal stationery. This can be anything from a simple, typographic letterhead to a full colour, highly designed suite of stationery including overprinted letterheads, compliments slips, business cards and even envelopes. Each might include a personal logo, calligraphic motif or indeed even a family coat of arms. Personal stationery is not for everyone but it is perfect for the image-conscious and those who want to give people a convenient reminder of their name and contact details.

Personal Business Cards

Personal business cards are a great tool for creating a good first impression. Let’s say you’re at a posh function and want to do a bit of networking. Without a personal business card, you may initially impress but you may also be forgotten again within minutes without some kind of reminder. Hand out a beautifully designed personal business card and it’s sure to remind your prospect or future employer of you once again. After all, it’s something they can keep long term. Personal business cards are great at interviews, networking events, functions, trade shows or when you’re selling your services in some way on a one-to-one basis. Of course, in their simplest form, they are also a convenient way of reminding friends and family of your contact details and home address.

Personal Letterheads

Personal letterheads are a great tool for those wishing to create the best impression when communicating via the written word. Whether you’re sending off your CV, working as a sole trader or liaising personally at a high level, bespoke letterheads allow you to look great even though you’re not right there in person. You will stand out from the crowd as someone with style and as someone who goes the extra mile.

Personal Compliments Slips & Envelopes

You can take this a step or two further by including personal compliments slips and overprinted envelopes in your suite of personal stationery. So, the moment your envelope arrives with your intended recipient, they will know it contains a communication from you. And compliments slips are useful when you want to perhaps send something to someone and have no time to scribble a note. With the compliments slip accompanying the item you supplied, it all speaks for itself with minimal effort and fuss.

Personal stationery will tell people that you are a quality individual and be a lasting reminder of something very special … you!

Image, Information & a Useful Reminder

Put simply, personal stationery will tell people that you are a quality individual. Your personal stationery will impress, let the recipient know your contact details and be a lasting reminder of something very special; you. Read more

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