You’ve heard the theory. Print is dying. Young people are giving the sector a wide berth. It isn’t sexy enough. The skills shortage is only getting worse. Few could argue that the pool of talent entering the industry is drying up, but it’s not a drought. Plenty of under-30s are not just choosing a career in print but are taking to the trade with gusto. We sat down with three sets of young people pouring their hearts into very different businesses to find out what makes them tick.
The DistilleryNathan Leong and Jessica Foy learned the hard way that they don’t quite fit into the printing industry. Walking around the show floor at PrintEx11, they tried helplessly to purchase a guillotine. Cast off as hip hobbyists by the majority of finishing suppliers, the well-dressed pair left empty-handed, contemplating just where their edgy print business ideas fit into a traditionalist’s industry.
At 30 and 23, respectively, Leong and Foy aren’t your typical letterpress operators. Their niche business approach further separates them from the commercial print world. However this didn’t stop them from opening The Distillery, a start-up business offering creative-minded companies a unique design and print service.
When ProPrint visits Leong and Foy at their North Sydney hub one early evening in May, the last of the dedicated office workers are heading home for the day, yet the pair are still hard at work, huddled around their baby, ‘Wolfgang’, a 1959 Heidelberg Windmill platen press.
“We work very hard, but it doesn’t feel so much like work when it is something that you love doing, and when you are learning all the time,” says Leong.
“Financially, we want this business to be a success, but we also want to have fun while we are doing it. From a production point of view, we really just want to help creative industries, individuals and businesses produce beautiful, and finely printed material.”
The Distillery threw open its doors this month with proud owner Leong and creative director Foy introducing an excited clientele of desiwolfgn studios, wedding planners and creatives to Wolfgang.
The machine itself used to sit on the floor of Chippendale Printing, which went under in 2010. “I attended the auction, and picked it up for a few thousand. It probably would have just been sold off for scrap metal otherwise,” adds Leong.
Leong is putting a lot on the line by jumping into letterpress with no prior printing experience. An outsider might think that starting a business based around an outdated form of printing on antiquated equipment sounds a little nuts, but Leong has high hopes. He isn’t just some arty idealist. Leong has a Bachelor of Commerce with honours in Information Systems and has enjoyed business success with yearbook publisher Rockstar Memoirs. This young entrepreneur says he is in the printing game for the long haul.
There’s a letterpress love-in going on at The Distillery, where Leong and Foy are turning back the clocks and embracing the quality and ingenuity of a print method that has largely been consigned to the history books. But letterpress printing has been undergoing a resurgence as the creative industries embrace ’50s and ’60s pop culture. It’s a niche market, but a dynamic one.
There’s a letterpress revival going on in the US and the UK, and it is not just hobbyists jumping on the bandwagon. Proponents include the likes of New Jersey-based Boxcar Press, whose client list includes Sony BMG, AOL, Time Warner and Dominos Pizza.
Boxcar’s website explains the theory: “We’ve seen what the best old-fashioned printing can do: in this world of mass-produced and cheaply made stuff, our printing can conjure up a time when quality and beauty were inherent in our everyday lives.”
Foy, busying herself inking up a roller, is confident that overcoming the steep letterpress learning curve will pay off.
“Before we even officially opened, we were completely flat out. The interest has been incredible. Having the press here is such a big pull; we have all sorts of designers and creatives walking in and wanting to see us interacting with the machine. The take-up of the product has been really good.”
Taking a job from thought to screen, from screen to film, from film to plate and from plate to paper is a thrill and a skill that Foy, who trained as a graphic designer, has embraced with gusto. “I see the whole process as an art form.
“You are controlling the job through the whole process, from when it is just an idea in your head then to when it comes out on the other end. There is so much more going on than just hitting ‘print’.
We are mixing our own ink, we are making our own plates, sourcing the right stock, adjusting impressions – we are doing everything.”
Leong sums up his business concept simply: “Letterpress is the perfect counterpunch to the digital age.”
The team at The Distillery sees letterpress printing as a craft that must be mastered, refined and perfected through hard work and determination. However, as any operator would know, refurbishing and operating a 50-year-old Heidelberg letterpress is not an easy task. To make matters worse, formal training in letterpress printing is difficult to track down. Getting trained on this specific model was a near-impossible task. The pair sought out short courses and workshops, but their breakthrough came in the form of some sage wisdom from an old hand at the printing game.
David Ferris has worked with letterpress all of his career. Now retired, he was once the head printing teacher at the Sydney Institute of TAFE. He was recommended by other members of the printing industry and has been an integral part of the company’s early development.
“He is highly knowledgeable, has a real passion for the trade, and knows his way around the press like it’s an extension of his hand,” explains Leong.
“He truly is our mentor. It’s funny when he has been here teaching us we have had guys that have worked at Blue Star walking past and saying ‘Hey I know you’ and it turns out David taught them years ago too.
“I think it is interesting, in a sense that, with letterpress you have the really, really old school guys, and then you have the current generation of web and offset printers and now you have this new revival of letterpress.”
The ‘letterpress revival’ that Leong speaks of almost seems like some archaeological endeavour not just to preserve an antiquated art, but to restore it. The heyday of the letterpress platen manufacturing was well and truly over by the early ’70s, and since then the enamel, two-tonne behemoths have gradually faded away, more likely to grace the foyer of the average print shop than appear on the factory floor.
“In everything we do, we are going to need that wiser and worldlier generation to teach us. The challenge with letterpress is to pick that all up before that generation is forever retired,” says Leong.
“It is the same with the equipment. Most of it is being sold for scrap metal so it is up to us, the younger generation, to save it before it is gone forever.”
Leong did not come into print in an orthodox way; his father did not pass the trade down to him and he didn’t earn his stripes on the production floor of a major commercial printer. But his passion for print is unbridled and he sees his letterpress printing company as an infant with a lifetime ahead of it. He thinks there is a bright future for small and creative printers in the design market.“I think the market for print is becoming more niche and boutique and the use of elements of great design and high-quality print methods are becoming more of a necessity if you want to stand out. I think companies who plainly want to get their message across are going to look at the internet rather than print as a communication tool.”
The industry’s success – and survival – will require a new way of thinking from a new generation of printers who have grown up getting much of their information from a computer screen.
“We are going to have to get young people and find a good reason for it to keep going. In my opinion as a young person without much life experience, I believe for printers to survive they need to ask themselves ‘am I just communicating information?’ If the answer is yes then they’re not going to be around in five years.
“Printers need to start thinking about creating a rich communication experience, because that is where the future is.”
He reflects on a thought he had while watching footage of the Federal Budget being printed at a major print house. “I like to call myself a printer, but I found myself asking, why don’t they just PDF it?”
Love Mae
Newly opened business Love Mae is the alter-ego of a young Queensland trio based in the sleepy NSW border town of Murwillumbah. Amid tranquil surroundings, the girls have worked at a furious pace over two short years to achieve what many start-ups dream of – a company with global reach.
Love Mae produces digitally printed wall decals aimed at children’s bedrooms. The mix of old-time nostalgia with modern substrate technology have seen tasteful mothers swooning for a decorative product that appeals to both their children and themselves.
Love Mae began as a concept dreamed up by two young graphic designers, Emily Chamberlain, 22, and Rebekah Nolan, 23, and 32-year-old Peta O’Neill, the owner and operator of a small canvas printing business.
In 2011, the dream has become a reality, and the ‘world-first’ product that the girls created has hundreds of resellers dotted across the globe. It has gained a big foothold on Etsy.com (think the American craft world’s answer to Amazon).
Love Mae, which sources printed materials such as removable wall decals and wrapping paper through a number of offset and digital printers, is demonstrating that anyone can make a business out of commissioning, procuring and distributing print.
Chamberlain has always been fond of the versatility of print and interested in how her creative skills can integrate within the channel. So she was all-ears when the business opportunity to
work and develop a product in print presented itself.
“Becky and I both studied in graphic design, and our course covered a lot of pre-press, which is where our appreciation for print began. There is something lovely about a tangible, printed design.
“May it be a business card, flyer or sticker; time and effort has gone into it. We wanted to create and express ourselves through such a versatile medium.”
The past 10 years have seen pioneering advances in large-format digital print technology, handing designers and creatives greater opportunities for precise cutting, versatile stocks and cheaper costs. Love Mae was able to take advantage of advancements in the field with things falling into place when a local digital printer introduced them to a new polyester fabric stock.
“We started producing vinyl wall stickers just to bring in some initial revenue and then we discovered this amazing adhesive fabric that we could print onto digitally using large format,” says Chamberlain.
“At the time nobody was using it and it just exploded.”
Love Mae believe they were the first company in the world to create reusable wall decals on a fabric stock. The success of the product has seen a number of cheap imitations appear on the market. The company maintains that their point of difference is quality and durability of the product in conjunction with unique designs and colour palette.
For a craft-driven boutique company such as Love Mae, which does not want to sacrifice quality for price, deciding upon a printer has been a process of trial and error. Building relationships with local printers and working with them to create a product that fits the requirements and can still be sold on profitably hasn’t been easy.
“It’s an experience that has definitely helped us grow,” laughs O’Neill.
Rebekah Nolan puts it more plainly. She says their experiences with commercial printers have ranged from really great to really horrible.
“When you find a printer that ‘gets’ your style and is supportive of your work and does not charge a billion dollars, hold on tight and never let them go – unless of course you have a billion dollars to spare,” she says.
Love Mae is now onto its third large-format suppliers, partly due to an increase in production volumes and partly due to finding that all-important balance between price and quality. The girls keep the name of their printer top secret, but O’Neill maintains that convincing customers to pay top dollar for quality has been an imperative point of difference for Love Mae.
“Because of our margins it so important negotiating with printers and getting the right price,” she explains.
“Our prices sit at the higher end of the price bracket, and that is due to the product’s quality. This is something that we have to explain to printers and sometimes these conversations push us out of our comfort zones.”
The polyester fabric stock the company started out using two years ago was replaced but then resurrected when cheaper options failed to live up to the quality of the original.
“Two years ago the product was a brand new fabric. Other cheaper alternatives soon followed, and we noticed that some of our competitors were using that material. We trialled it for a six to nine months, but it just didn’t have the longevity, the edges would peel and it couldn’t stand up to the humidity,” says O’Neill.
As a mum of two, O’Neill has the perfect beta testers for Love Mae’s product. She maintains that the durability of the original product has stood the test of time.
“My youngest is two, and the things she has put her stickers through are absolutely terrible, but it has definitely demonstrated the quality of the product,” she laughs.
Much of Love Mae’s success comes down to the deep sense of nostalgia that their throwback designs evoke in customers. The intricate hand-styled creations are meant to inspire homeliness and warmth. The rich feel of polyester fabric textures and the company’s welcoming attitude is all in the spirit of a bygone era where quality and customer service came first. With all this taken into consideration, it wouldn’t quite be right if the company was not practising what it preaches in terms of production, so staying local, and staying green has been a top priority for the girls.
“Our stickers are made from a biodegradable eco inks and they are totally reusable and they will last for years,” explains Chamberlain.
“Our packaging is recyclable, we are very strong believers in sustainability and we are very mindful of this. We don’t want to damage the world by producing a product that is harmful to the environment. When it comes to eco-friendliness, we do consider the cost, but being green is non-negotiable.”
O’Neill adds that it is an important part of their philosophy to maintain strong and positive relationships with local printers, which she admits has been a challenging in terms of pricing.
However, striking up local agreements and creating such a fine quality product has clearly been worth the extra cost for Love Mae. The company now boasts resellers from India to Canada, and the product has received a phenomenal amount of praise.
“I don’t know whether it is normal or not, but it has just been insane how encouraging people have been and how we have received such beautiful comments the media,” explains O’Neill.
“The free media that people gave us is unbelievable. We’ve had an inside double-page spread in the Herald Sun and we have had support from all these blogs and magazines.”
The company rarely has to advertise, which is one of the reasons they can afford to spend more on print. Publications want to show off their product, which is a true testament to its originality and quality. The company has proved that the versatility and the tactility of print can still aid an opportunistic endeavour. Love Mae has taken something as simple as a new substrate and used it to propel a business success story.
Rebekah Nolan says that it is the timeless essence of quality old-fashioned print, which stands at the heart of it all, and which will keep print alive and kicking for years to come.
“I think it’s the nostalgic feeling of having something you can hold and keep and feel,” she says.
“I think we have been scorned by the digital age and we’re bitter – we’ve all lost photos and files and parts of our lives that we never got around to printing. In terms of magazines and posters, and my wall decals well, we’re all materialists at heart aren’t we? You can’t blame us for wanting pretty things!”
Whites Law Bindery
Of all the tenets of print production, few principles are as embedded in old ways of thinking as bookbinding. As technology propels print into a digital age where e-books outsell their print counterparts, bookbinders are fighting to re-evaluate where they fit.
Whites Law Bindery in Melbourne doesn’t have any radical ideas about some hardback book resurgence, but while others fall by the wayside, the 20-staff company stands tall. One of the key ingredients is youth – not a word immediately associated with this endangered industry part of the industry.
Whites Law director Ted Congdon has invested in the talents of young people who are using modern techniques to revolutionise and diversify the company. It is not a matter of young people bringing a new perspective to revitalise the core skills of bookbinding, but adding new strings to the Whites Law bow.
Two of these young talents are 29-year-old Vlad Stanojevic and 27-year-old Julian Gordon, who view bookbinding as just one service offering among many at the 65-year-old business. Gordon,
who has a Masters of Business, says his time at Whites has changed his mentality toward bookbinding.
“Bookbinding will always be a traditional industry. However, since I have been at Whites Law, I have learned that bookbinding is going to become increasingly less central to what we do. We are constantly diversifying and pushing into new markets and I think the more we diversify, the more secure we are going to be.”
The Whites Law work environment is divided between the old and the new; traditional bookbinders and equipment are complemented by a sophisticated digital set-up. Now digital printing comprises 50% of the company’s workload, which is a marked achievement considering that less than 10 years ago the company ran successfully without even owning a computer.
Vlad Stanojevich joined the White family five years ago and is a driving force behind its digital push. The company now operates Canon, Roland DG and Mimaki large-format printers, and Konica Minolta Bizhub digital presses.
Stanojevich actually stumbled into the job thanks to a random printing mishap. “I was finishing off my design degree and for my final project I had designed this magazine. I had spent a whole week cutting out designs with a Stanley knife and I had asked Whites to bind it, but they bound it on the wrong edge and the project was ruined. I was distraught. I went back to Whites, who said they would re-bind the job for me for free, but I still had to cut out the designs. It turned out the company had just invested in an Esko Kongsberg cutting table, but nobody knew how to use it. Ted told me that I could come in and work on the machine for my project, but I would have to figure it all out myself.”
Stanojevich figured out how to export Illustrator files to the machine, proving its capabilities to the bemused but impressed team. Congdon was so pleased he immediately offered the young man a job.
Stanojevich was given free reign to work out what could and couldn’t be produced on the new digital equipment. It was a revolutionary time for the company as Stanojevich brought his knowledge of computing and design to bear.
“Any new digital equipment that came in, the production guys would grab me straight away and get me to figure it out. If anything had a computer attached to it, the older guys just didn’t want to know.”
Stanojevich, who has since become office supervisor, says: “Since we have moved to digital we get people coming in with all sorts of jobs such as really interesting presentation stuff.”
“To keep to deadlines I liaise between the production manager and the designer. We spec it out and I draft up a PDF template for the customer. Clients often don’t understand things such as how much extra bleed you need for book covers, but I have been able to help ensure that we only need to receive a job once.”
For business development officer Julian Gordon, being the nephew of the boss has its ups and its downs. However, it was old-fashioned family trust that gave him the opportunity to build his own role within Whites. When ProPrint speaks to Gordon, he has just got back from a trip to the Fespa trade show in Germany, where he sought to gain a broader view of bookbinding. Gordon says he has seen the future for the traditional bookbinder and it is not pretty.
“I personally don’t think traditional bookbinders are going to be binding the same volumes in the future” he says.
“We visited a bookbinder in Canada, which was set up similarly to ours, besides the innovative digital equipment, and we also visited a massive bindery where the hardback Harry Potter books were produced. I don’t know if either of those companies will be around in the future.”
Diversification is the key strategy at Whites and Gordon has been heavily involved in pushing the company’s capabilities into new markets. His latest endeavour has seen him leading its menu-making marketing campaign, which included creating a new website. Bringing together a modern approach to cost-cutting, Gordon enjoyed success with an innovative online approach.
“Menus are a surprisingly big market for us, so I came up with the Menumaker.com.au concept so we could present our product online and really expand from our existing clientele.”.
“I hopped onto Freelance.com and managed to get onto a Macedonian web designer, and we exchanged emails and spent a lot of time on Skype working together and deciding what we wanted.”
Freelance.com is a “crowd sourcing” site, allowing companies to post a tender for a job and have designers across the world pitch for it. Gordon ended up deciding on the Macedonian designer because of the price and the level of communication they enjoyed over Skype.
“In the end it worked out magnitudes upon magnitudes cheaper than getting the job produced locally, which in turn makes it a lot easier to recoup your investment. When you are finding cheaper and more effective ways of doing things, you can take a few swings at the ball. Our next swing is going to be building a website for bookbinding.”
In director Ted Congdon’s time at Whites, he has seen the company move from a bookbinding powerhouse, producing ledgers for all the big banks, to a printing and finishing specialist diversifying its work to cater for new markets. Congdon said he knew the times were changing when he witnessed the unveiling of the Indigo at the first Drupa.
“We’ve stayed ahead by developing our own niche markets. Long gone are the days where girls walk round the banks with trolleys piled high with bound ledgers,” he says.
Congdon believes there will always be a role at Whites for the traditional bookbinder but says bringing in fresh blood can be difficult. “One of our staff members is a fourth-generation bookbinder, but we are seeing fewer examples of this in our industry.”
Bookbinding skills will be in demand in the future, but likely among a more niche group of suppliers. While it isn’t a sexy industry for young people looking at career choices, Stanojevich’s experience shows there’s still a lot going for it.
“All Vlad’s mates come in and ask me for work and go on about how jealous they all are. He’s been to Shanghai, Chicago – all over the world with us,” he says.
“It’s great to be able to give the boys a reward for their hard work while giving them an opportunity to see what can be offered to them in our industry. People have to see the bigger picture.”
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