Designers Thomas Matthews are nothing if not thorough when it comes to looking for ways to reduce the environmental impacts of their print. For TM’s rebranded stationery (letterhead, compliments slip, CD slipcase and various card items), they’re using a selection of unallocated papers from Calverts warehouse – small batches of recycled and FSC certified paper that were basically sitting on the shelf waiting for an application. Not only that, they asked us to do multiple overlaid preprints from existing litho printing plates, to create a rich graphic texture on the reverse of each item. To cap it all, they realised that, like the paper, Calverts holds small quantities of mixed pantone inks that were surplus to the jobs they were specified for, and likewise just waiting to be used for a good purpose. TM will be incorporating some these ink colours into the designs.

Word got round, and then we gave some of these surplus (but perfectly good) inks to Rose Gridneff and Alex Cooper from Workshop, the new letterpress design and printmaking co-operative in Hackney. Modern vegetable oil based litho inks are completely compatible with the letterpress process, so Rose and Alex used the inks for their demonstration and teach-in at Greengaged.

If you want to know more about environmentally benign printing inks, different types and applications for recycled and FSC paper, or in fact anything at all to do with print design, just get in touch.

Hot off the press and very very wet, these are simple cards for Jess Tully at Studioilse, to market their ‘furniture that brings people together’.  We’re literally watching the printed stack every five minutes, to see how fast the ink sets. Although we’re using special oxidising-only foil inks (vegetable oil based), printing on a material like this – 500 micron rough greyboard – is quite tricky.

It may seem counterintuitive, but litho ink sets much faster on coated paper than it does on uncoated. That’s because the solvent and oil in the inks is sucked up quickly by a china clay based coating, whereas paper fibre barely absorbs them at all. Sometimes we have to wait several days before the work is dry enough to finish (creasing, cutting, binding). Sometimes we even have to wait days between printing one side and printing the reverse. Such are the perils of life as a printer. It doesn’t mean the clients won’t want their printing today, and in this case it really is today. Doesn’t help that we use printing inks with a very low level of additives such as cobalt compounds, which are conventionally added to catalyse oxidation and have nasty environmental impacts.

Also hot off the Heidelberg 74VP press is this first in a series of promotional mailers, designed by the Calverts for Bargate Murray solicitors. Printed litho CMYK on Splendorgel 350gsm smooth uncoated white board, it’s a concertina folded strip of five cards, with a perforation across each fold. Each panel features one of the partners, and we have to have this one finished in time for next week’s Superyacht Fair in Monaco. (Don’t ask.)

Beatrice Bless from Camberwell School of Art was one of a group of students  who came on a study visit to Calverts two weeks ago with their tutor, Phil Seddon, who is running a module on Typography and Print Production – part of the FdA Design Practice course (in his other life, Phil is a senior designer at Mystery).

Beatrice’s course submission was an industry report entitled ‘Is Print Design Dead?’, for which she interviewed four design and print practitioners, asking them a range of questions around sustainability issues in design and the future of our industry. Notably, she asked Sean Murphy (Value & Service, print and editorial designers) “do you think print design will die?” – to which Sean replied “print will never die. When I was at college, it was always this kind of discussion – whether digital technology will spell the end of print. Now, 15 years later, nothing has changed …” He could also have added that well-designed print can communicate more effectively than other media, because it engages both the intellect and the senses; a printed piece has texture, three dimensions, interactivity and odour as well as colour (which it can reproduce at far higher resolution than electronic media). You may laugh, but our soya- and linseed-oil based Bio inks have a distinct smell (which admittedly fades after a few weeks). We even have a few customers who check the authenticity of our work by sniffing it, before they look at what we’ve actually printed (however, we do have low odour inks, for applications such as food packaging.)

Beatrice selected the papers for her book; the inner pages were printed on Cyclus Offset 115gsm (100% white recycled, uncoated) and the covers, with a set of image cards, on Colourset 270gsm Sand – a tinted board, also 100% post-consumer recycled and uncoated.

Calverts uses 100% vegetable oil based inks, with low levels of additives and metallic drying accelerators such as cobalt. The oils are mainly soy (from soya), or linseed.

Industrial soy oil is a commodity traded on world markets, and is generally blended from more than one source. This means that it almost certainly contains transgenic (genetically modified) soya. 90% of US soy production is GM, and the US government has successfully lobbied the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against the labelling of GM soya, making it almost impossible for buyers to ‘discriminate’ against their product.
On balance, we still firmly believe that vegetable oil based inks are preferable to mineral (petrochemical) or mixed alternatives. For more on the GM vegetable ink debate, see http://tinyurl.com/2selvn

To complement our range of mineral oil free and vegetable oil-based inks.

We can now offer a full range of Pantone® Metallic inks. Super Metal-Eco inks are the first truly mineral oil free, vegetable oil-based metallic inks. For spot colour specials with environmental consideration, use Super Metal-Eco.