Below are some samples of work that we've carried out since we started trading in June 2000. The selection below gives a brief (and incomplete) history of the co-op's progression in the variety of work carried out. It also consists of pieces of work that are specifically memorable for one reason or another.
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Green Events was our first job and the second time we ran the press. As a 9000 run of double sided A3 it was quite an undertaking. The task was not made any easier by the fact that we were using lots of odds and ends of paper that were all slightly different sizes due to a blunt guillotine at the technical college. Three days later it was printed, now it takes one of us between 5 and 6 hours. We published Green Events ourselves and basically used it as intensive training on the press. It wasn't until about the 4th time we printed it that it went well, before then we dreaded printing it, as it was, in truth, a little beyond our capabilities at the time. |
| The Permaculture Association (PcA) gave us our first BIG (at the time) print job. A 1000 run 20 page A4 news sheet. We nearly bottled it just before it was time to go, but Andy (from the PcA) persuaded us to go for it. We did and were amazed at the quality of what we produced and since then have not really looked back. Permaculture Works is produced quarterly |  |
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Cops and Robbersis a free listing of DiY gigs in Leeds (and sometimes outlying towns and cities). Their 1000 copies of between 16 and 24 pages of A6 booklets is, to date, our only really regular monthly work and whilst not very lucrative enabled us to keep our hand in at the beginning when jobs were very few and far between |
| Action for Peace (produced quarterly by Yorkshire CND) is another of our earliest regular jobs. Yorkshire CND also got us to print several briefings on National Missile Defence and Menwith Hill's role in the US Star Wars programme. |   |
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This A3 poster was our first 2 colour work and was printed for the Lifecycles Project in Devon. In fact it was the first time we'd printed using anything but black ink. It was a real joy to print due to the triple excitement of helping an innovative project, printing quality original artwork and seeing different colours on the rollers. It was to be a 'pedal powered genetix roadshow'. Unfortunately foot and mouth restrictions curtailed the project to a degree, but I think that all went well eventually. |
| Land and Liberty's (now Spiral Seed)Permaculture, A Beginners Guide by Graham Burnett could have been nasty. At 60 pages long with a print run of 3000 we didn't have the money to buy the paper so he paid us up front. We made a couple of trips to the finishers to make absolutely sure we knew how they wanted to receive it. After putting it off for more than a few weeks we gradually worked our way through it over about a week and a half. We then had a nerve-wracking 5 days until it came back from the finishers. If it had gone wrong it would have been disastrous - I couldn't imagine doing a reprint and we'd have had to find £1300 to buy more paper. |  |
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These gummed envelope reuse labels for Radical Routes were a bit of a pain to say the least. The paper curled down at the edges causing the image to move about on the page to quite a remarkable degree. The only finisher that we could find to cut them up and make them into pads would only take the job as we worked out the average location and just asked him to cut at specific measurements whatever happened. Fortunately we lucked out again and even got a few tips on how to prevent it happening again on this type of paper. |
| EEK Our first disaster. Due to a 'fit to page' check box being ticked at a local printers who let us use their computer equipment, these CD covers all came out about 5mm too small so they didn't fit in the cases. Even worse the job was on relatively expensive recycled paper and card and, worse still, we were doing it at cost price so there was nowhere to absorb the cost. Fortunately they were very understanding and met us halfway on the cost of buying more paper. The 2 Benefit CD's were named Moving Onand produced for the Nottingham Sumac Centre (aka Rainbow Centre) |  |
| We'd just finished the reprint of the Moving on CD covers when we got a call from someone who wanted us to do their CD covers. A Punk / Ska band called the Propagumbies wanted to print the cover to their bowing out CD the rise and fall of nothing much at all. The result worked really well considering the paper they chose just looked like parcel wrapping paper. I thought it'd never work printing black on brown but I suppose that's why I'm the printer and not the designer. |  |
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The Rising Tide (climate change campaign) gave us quite a bit of work over the summer of 2001, including numerous briefing sheets, the fantastic Funny Weather cartoon book of climate change, written and illustrated by Kate Evans, and the 'spoof' 90% for 90% train ticket style cards. No disasters this time but we did run out of black ink after having the wrong type delivered. Small print (a helpful print shop up the road) lent us a pot of a different make of ink which worked significantly better on the press than what we'd previously used. From this point we were able to print with massively reduced wastage due to ink / water balance problems. |
| Tommy and his terrific Tyne Tunnel was the first big job we did for the North East region of Friends of the Earth. We'd previously produced various short runs of various filers at cost and have since printed their Real Food Guide. |  |
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Shortcuts to Manchester is a free guide produced by activists in Manchester to give new students a brief introduction to what is available in the city. It focuses on Direct Action (groups and ideas), eating out, going out, getting out of the city, free food, housing, social centres, alternative media and more. The cover of this 20 page booklet was also our first 3 colour work, and jolly fine it looked too. |
| After months of trying to get a group of people who all wanted business cards doing to agree on a type of card and ink colour we printed them off. With 5 different designs laid out on an A3 sheet so that everyone got about the number they asked for. This job meant that the housing co-op's eighth birthday party got some rather posh double sided business card type invitations (we needed to make up the numbers slightly to make it cost effective).> |  |
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The release of the a 6 track CD by Stand, a metal band from Grimsby gave us one of the few print jobs that we decided would be greatly improved by getting image-set film for reproducing high quality photographs. The amount of red ink on this poster caused us problems as the paper would stick to the blanket rather than get passed to the grippers that remove the paper from the press and stack it. We've since learnt that leaving a bigger border (this job was printed on bigger paper and cut down later) would help prevent this as well as a cunning trick with some talc and a tub with holes. |
Last Updated (Thursday, 14 January 2010 15:11)
