Like many business we have had to re-invent ourselves over the past few weeks. After an initial ‘Lance Corporal Jones’ moment (“Don’t panic!”) and a period of shock, we talked to our franchise operators and were offered an opportunity we couldn’t refuse. To become a Nettl partner, enabling us to deliver better designed and more responsive websites.
Franchise?
You have in the past known us as Hailsham Creative @ Printing.com – printing.com is the franchise that we bought into several years ago, run by Grafenia PLC. This enabled us to offer, alongside our design services, competitively priced, good quality print from printing.com’s main hub while at the same time being able to shop around local suppliers to ensure we got the best price and product for our customers. Brilliant.
So who is Nettl?
Nettl is another arm of Grafenia PLC. It came into being as Grafenia’s response to the changes in the world of print. An increase in the use of websites and in viewing those sites on mobile devices has meant a great change in the design and coding process. Pretty much every business, large or small, that needs printing, also needs a website and, more often than not, signage. Now Nettl can offer it all.
Doesn’t it take years to learn coding and SEO? Don’t you have to keep up to date with fast moving technology?
Yes and yes and the beauty of Nettl is that we are part of a much larger team that includes the ‘Geeks’ – these brain boxes have all of those skills and knowledge and have their fingers firmly on the pulse of the technology world. And they are ours! This leaves us free to do the designing and building of the websites using the latest Nettl software with a wealth of expert support behind us.
So, having made use of the quiet lockdown weeks by doing online training courses, video seminars, test projects and sample sites, we have now gone from offering the very simplest, basic starter websites to being able to offer the best website solution for pretty much any project, with added functionality and integrations, totally responsive for viewing on any platform. See, we’ve even started to talk ‘website’.
Here are some examples of sites created using the Nettl system
inspireplus.org.uk
supportwealden.co.uk
pickhams.com
So where does Accomplice Ltd fit in all of this?
Accomplice Ltd is the name we registered when we became a limited company way back in 2004, having been trading simply as Accomplice before then. When we moved to offices in Hailsham we started the trading name of Hailsham Creative as that better explained what we offered… and where. When we joined printing.com we added that to the name. We now work from a home office in Wilmington, East Sussex and still have close connections with Hailsham so, rather than change name once again when we left Hailsham, we kept the Hailsham Creative name as we’d grown fond of it and our branding was pretty well known. Now we’ve swapped the added printing.com to Nettl and we are offering exactly the same service as before but with with added website ‘wow’.
In a nutshell, we’ve evolved and are pretty excited about it!
So next time you see the name Hailsham Creative or Nettl of Eastbourne North, you’ll know that we are the ones for web… and whatever other design, print and signage needs you may have.
You’ll know him as Jim Tipler, one of the Directors of Hailsham Creative and chief designer. Here you can see his own website, By Jimbo! (yes, it’s a site created by Hailsham Creative, isn’t it gorgeous!?) with many examples of his branding and identity work.
Jim says: There aren’t many Jimbos around so I adopted it for my business. I can help you find a distinctive style – something that will stick – something that will have a shelf life. It might have a story. It WILL have integrity.
If these are attributes that you also aspire to, we should chat. I think we could work together.
One of the great things about my job is finding out about you, your business and your story. Branding of course doesn’t simply mean creating a logo. It means keeping that visual language consistent across every type of media you use and, through Hailsham Creative I can help with that.
So, if you are interested in talking to Jimbo about your branding, get in touch and you can meet up for a chat over a coffee.
We (Jim and Josie) trained in graphic design in the 80’s and were fortunate to be taught the skill of typesetting using lead type. The other traditional skills we learned including hand lettering, font design, colour separation and camera ready artwork have all proved their worth even in the days of computer aided design and print. Returning to our roots, we are delighted to now have a 1950’s Adana letterpress and some beautiful lead type so we are looking forward to doing some ‘artisan’ printing alongside our regular work.
Check your stocks
The start of the year is a traditional time for planning ahead and making decisions about marketing, keeping in touch with your clients and networking. Now is a good time to check the level of your stocks of letterheads, business cards and all the other stationery you will need to put those plans into action. We are not suggesting you have your stock re-printed using letterpress techniques (honestly, we wouldn’t have the strength!) as we have digital backups of artwork for design or print work we have done in the past few years and can quickly make any necessary changes, such as new mobile ‘phone numbers. All you need to do is just drop us a line if you want to place an order.
Did you know that many of the words and terms used in print today originate from letterpress printing?
From the creation of the first metal type printing press in the mid-15th century, letterpress was the primary form of mass produced print of the written word until the 20th century saw the invention of offset printing. Johannes Gutenburg made type from an alloy of lead, tin and antimony, a durable moveable type suited for high quality printing on the letterpress – the inked type was literally pressed onto paper.
Uppercase and lowercase
The ‘lead’ type was stored in cases, with box compartments for each character, number, ligature and punctuation mark. The cases containing the majuscule or CAPITAL letters were stored above the cases containing the minuscule or lowercase letters. Now most typing programmes give you the option to ‘change case’.
Leading
This is gradually dropping out of use on desktop programmes but in all print it is the term for the line spacing between rows of text. When setting lead type you place a strip of lead of a particular point size between each line of text – the leading.
Mind your p’s and q’s
Lead type is reversed so that the imprint bearing the ink views the correct way round. When setting the type it is very easy to confuse p’s with q’s, especially if the last typesetter was less than careful about returning characters to their correct compartments in the case.
Uppercase and lowercase