Fineline Print and Web

15/09/2026

We’ve all done it.

You’re already cutting it fine for an important meeting when your car keys mysteriously vanish.

The air turns blue, and even the dog looks worried because he’s seen this scene play out before.

By the time you spot them, you’re late and facing a frantic drive to make up the lost time.

All because they weren’t where you normally leave them.

Something remarkably similar happened to one of our customers recently - except the missing item wasn’t a set of car keys. It was their company logo.

We’d received an urgent order, but the logo they supplied was too poor to use.

I asked our contact to speak to his comms department and request a vector version.

Hands up, it does sound very techy, but it simply means a version you can enlarge without it becoming fuzzy or blurred.

Surely, they’d have one to hand?

Apparently not.

Nearly a week later, nobody had been able to find it - and the deadline was horribly close.

One of our designers eventually recreated the logo from scratch, and we pushed the job through on an emergency turnaround.

We got it done, but it cost nearly three times what it should have, and everyone’s nerves were shredded.

None of it needed to happen.

A simple, clearly labelled folder containing the organisation’s approved logos would have turned a week of uncertainty and panic into a two-minute job.

Just one thing for you to check before you pack up for the day.

Until next week.

Alec

08/09/2026

Pilgrimage might sound like something from the Middle Ages.

Yet more people walk these ancient routes today than did in medieval times.

These days, just as many make the journey to escape the pressures of everyday life as for religious reasons.

And when it comes to destinations, we’re spoiled for choice.

Routes range from Tibet and the Inca Trail to places closer to home, such as Rome, Istanbul and Mecca.

And that’s not to forget the El Camino de Santiago de Compostela, the granddaddy of them all, where records of pilgrims’ visits date back over 1200 years.

However, here in Wales, we have our own pilgrims’ trail – the Welsh Camino.

The route stretches 135 miles from Holywell to Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island), two miles off the Llŷn Peninsula.

Centuries ago, the church decreed that three walks to Bardsey were equivalent to walking to Rome, thus guaranteeing sainthood to the weary traveller.

Known as the Island of 20,000 Saints, Bardsey’s significance stems from the monastery Saint Cadfan founded in the early 6th century.

Facing out over Cardigan Bay, only tiny remnants still stand, but the magic and mysticism endure.

This week we’re printing a new batch of pilgrim passports, which intrepid walkers have stamped along the way, and they’re proof of how much we value the tangible.

Because sometimes it isn’t enough simply to have been somewhere.

We want something we can hold in our hands that says: ‘I made the journey.’

Until next week.

Alec

02/09/2026

Writer’s block!

Sitting down to write today’s missive, I must admit to hitting a bit of a brick wall.

Maybe it was the approaching Bank Holiday weekend and a sudden onset of lethargy - who knows.

Whatever it was, it served me well because if I’d been rushing around like Looney Tunes’ Road Runner dosed up on speed, I wouldn’t have stumbled across this wonderful quote.

Said to be by Robert Louis Stevenson, but more likely penned by William Arthur Ward.

The phrase “on so many levels” is so badly overused these days, but if you ponder on what Ward said for any length of time, you’ll know what I mean.

Maybe it’s worth concentrating a little less on the harvest, and a little more on the seeds.

Food for thought as new plans are hatched and work begins to gather pace.

Until next week.

Alec

24/08/2026

If you’re ever lucky enough to have a few spare minutes to watch, the trials and tribulations of Edmund Blackadder are pure comedy gold.

Decades old, they may be. But the writing was sheer genius.

His biting historical satire had a wonderful way of getting his point across, even if there was nearly always some poor sap at the end of his cutting wit.

In one memorable scene, a man was found next to his victim.
13 witnesses had seen the attack.

And when the police arrived, the perpetrator said: “I’m glad I got him”.

According to the judge, the case was cut and dried, and he found the accused to be innocent.

Not only was the man acquitted, but the judge also got him knighted in the New Year’s Honours List.

In other words, what was plainly obvious to the jury was diametrically opposite to the judge’s take on the event.

It was a made-for-TV plot, of course, but it shows that no two people see an event in exactly the same way.

Which is a thought that gave me a very hard kick up the backside by way of a reminder.

You see, we’d just changed the PS on our emails to this month’s offer, which just happened to be about labels.

The very next day, one of my colleagues sent out an email about something or other (with the new PS in situ) only to get a reply asking if we did … labels.

The joke is obviously on us, and it was a painful reminder that when it comes to our marketing material, what seems screamingly obvious to us may be completely invisible to somebody else.

Sometimes it pays to look at what you’re saying from the other side of the counter. So, if you want a second opinion, you know where we are.

Until next week.

Alec

18/08/2026

Bumping up your tech stack?
Me neither.

Incredibly, this was part of the opening line of an email I received on Friday, and so badly written that it had me hooked from the off.

I immediately suspected this was a lazily written AI job, but on closer inspection, I don’t think it was.

In fact, I think the guy who wrote it was full up to the brim with testosterone and fancied himself as a big swinging tech bro.

And he was about to share his entire vocabulary of tech b*****ks with his unsuspecting readers.

Whether we liked it or not.

Full disclosure here: we work in a sector with its own peculiar patois, and some of it even grates on me.

But we use it internally, not firehose our customers with streams of jargon that folk outside the industry have never, ever come across.

It’s our job to understand that print is a tool for people to use; it’s not an end in itself.

People don’t wake up in the morning wanting print per se; they want it to drive sales, create a visual presence. And a whole lot more.

So it’s our job to guide customers - not drown them in tech-speak.

So, if you know what you want to achieve but don’t know how to get there with print, give us a shout.

We’ll do our best to help.

Alec

12/08/2026

What’s the best way to forget your wife’s birthday?

Forget it once.

And that’s pretty much the lesson I learned about Tesco vouchers.

But I didn’t forget about them; I didn’t know I had them in the first place.

I only found out by chance that I’d blown the lottery after vouchers to the value of a ‘round the world cruise’ had expired.

The pain was almost unbearable.

But it hadn’t always been that way.

Until recently, I’d hung on to my trusted club card and relied on any vouchers arriving by post. Antediluvian (*) or what!

Anyway, after deciding it was long overdue, I downloaded the app.
And that’s when it all went wrong.

If my Tesco vouchers had landed on the doormat instead of hiding in an app, I'd almost certainly have spent them.

Probably on far more After Eights (frozen, of course) than any responsible adult needs.

That's the thing about print.

It's remarkably difficult to forget something that's staring at you from the kitchen table every time you make a cup of tea.

If you're wondering how print could help keep your business front of mind, we'd love to help. The kettle's always on.

Alec

(*) Antediluvian: extremely old, ancient, or out-of-date.

04/08/2026

Danish architect or Seagull …?

Who hasn’t ever lost their car keys?

Finding them should be easy.

The logical approach is that we know what they look like, and as long as we’re able to retrace our steps, they should quickly come to light.

Logic is fine if you’re an uber cool Danish architect type who keeps everything perfectly in place at all times.

But what if you’re not?

What if your personal belongings look like a ravenous seagull’s just trashed your bin bag?

If that’s you, you probably don’t stand an earthly.

So hats off to Dimitri Ivanovich Mendeleev.

He’s the clever chemist who arranged the 63 known elements at the time into what we know as the periodic table.

And he even left spaces for those he predicted would be found later without ever being able to see them.

Mendeleev understood something most of us should, but don’t.

If you organise things properly, finding what you need becomes almost effortless.

The same applies to print.

Whether it’s a brochure, catalogue, menu or product guide, people don’t want to hunt for the information they’re looking for.

They want it to leap off the page.

The easier you make it for them, the more likely they are to keep reading. And … the more likely they are to buy.

If you’d like a fresh pair of eyes on your next print project, we’d be delighted to help.

Alec

25/06/2026

18/05/2026

For pure blood-curdling threats, few could match the letter we received from our electricity provider at the start of 2025.

Fifty Grand in arrears, the letter said.

And then went on to list all the unpleasant things that would happen to us if we didn’t pay the whole damned lot by the end of the month.

We politely but firmly told them to sod off, which was just as well because it turned out that they were the ones who actually owed us money.

That goolie-shrivelling feeling came flooding back when I received a ‘routine’ communication from one of our trade suppliers the other day.

This time, there was more blood-curdling language.

But on closer inspection, it was nothing more than a message to tell us that a proof was still awaiting sign-off.

All I can say is that it must have been written by an overgrown toddler with serious anger management issues. And … crucially, never checked by a responsible adult.

Which all goes to prove that the words we use matter. A lot.

There is, after all, a sizeable difference between ‘Just a gentle reminder’ (which this missive was meant to be) and a message that reads like the opening stages of a hostage negotiation.

If you’re working on new marketing material and want somebody to sense-check it before going to print, we’re always happy to act as a sounding board.

Until next week.

Alec