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The Raft Race - Sunday 4th October 2015.  On the River Dart, from Buckfastleigh to Totnes Picture the scene, 7:30 in the morning next to the River Dart, mist in the valley and the water gently passing by… The field littered with rafts of all shapes and sizes, much like the people in their wet suits.Sausages and bacon on the grill with tea and coffee to follow, must be time for the River Dart Struggle. Our raft builder was looking slightly nervous as we hadn't even tested the raft. He should think himself lucky as he wasn't the one going to be sat on it. Into the water we ...

Meet our employee of the month - Chris Mellors, our new print estimator. He has joined the team with masses of print experience and has fitted in really well with the team. His work ethic and effort has been amazing so far and he is certainly making a brilliant impact on the team. Well done Chris you are already proving to be a valuable member of team Kingfisher! Thank you! Ross ...

Proud as punch. We are very proud to share the news that we are giving our support to TEDx Totnes. We are very much aware that our business is as much about the people we work with and the community we live in as it is the paper we print on. Totnes is a community formed by a desire to make fundamental changes in the way we all live our lives, and the impact we have on people and the world around us. We are very happy to be able to support the very first TEDx Totnes, and with tickets for the much coveted event selling out in a few hours, we know this will be the first of many! TED t ...

Studio designer Kim is our employee of the month. Nearly everyone in the business nominated her; even people who don't normally nominate sent messages about her. Kim has worked for Kingfisher Print & Design for nearly twenty five years – that is dedication! It's always great to reflect, and appreciate our high levels of staff retention; the team here are what makes our business great. Choosing an employee of the month can be difficult at times. There lots of people who constantly perform at a very high level and get nominated regularly. There was a person who was nominated by seve ...

We couldn't be prouder of our Jon Carkett as he recovers from completing his first (and possibly not last) Iron Man UK Triathlon, which took place in Bolton on Sunday 19th July 2015. The course featured breathtaking views and a spectator-friendly course, where his wife Jo and two children Abi & Amy were waiting to cheer him across the finish line after this gruelling race. An Ironman UK Triathlon is one of a series of long-distance triathlon races consisting of a 2.4-mile (3.86 km) swim, a 112-mile (180.25 km) bicycle ride and a full 26.2-mile ...

This month's employee of the month is our Estate Agent Studio Designer Dave Wong. Dave has carried the team since the beginning of the year, looking after other team members workload in their abscence and supporting our newest designers Jodie and Charley when they started. Since the General Election in May, the work load has just gone mad in the Estate Agent Studio and Dave had has the task of trying to keep all our clients happy. Although there has been lots of long hours and some hairy moments, everyone in the Estate Agent team have done an amazing job to juggle everything and get th ...

We had great fun in the lead up to Easter with our little golden egg hunt. It seems all of our customers enjoyed receiving their egg hunt packs with their print orders. Four lucky customers found a golden egg and were winners of a £50 high street voucher. Each of the egg hunt packs contained a uniquely numbered golden ticket. We pulled a golden ticket from the hat on Thursday 2nd April and the lucky (or unlucky in this case?!) ticket holder has failed to come forward to claim their prize - £500 of print for their company – despite sharing the ticket number across all of ou ...

One of my challenges as the business grows is always to find the right new people to fit into the Kingfisher team. We have had some good success over the years, particularly with a couple of our apprentices; Sam who works in the press room and Jenny in the design studio have both worked out really well for us. You can read more about Jenny's journey in her recent blog. As these apprenticeships were so successful we are now looking to employ a few more young apprentices in business. I feel there is a real lack of young people coming into the print industry so I am really keen to my bit a ...

It's exciting to see an increase in the number of our customers who are now using our web2print solution, and finding it helpful not only in the management of ordering marketing collateral but using it to support their organisations marketing efforts by utilising the Right Market data, which is available within the software – and most importantly, seeing some great results. We understand that the methods of managing marketing communications especially in large or multi-site organisations, can be labour intensive and costly and we are often told by customers that it can be a strug ...

Check your pockets! Darn you may even want to check the recycling bin! The lucky winner of the golden ticket hasn't yet come forward to claim their prize of £500 of print for their company or business.  The winning golden ticket is number 0187.  As of yet the winner has not come foward. We are on the hunt to track down the winning golden ticket. We hope you all kept your golden ticket safe? Please share the winning number with any colleagues, friends or family.  We will keep the prize open until after the May bank holiday (Tuesday 6th May 201 ...

Who found the golden eggs? The little golden egg hunt is now complete. We have delivered almost 600 egg hunt packs to our lovely customers over the past few weeks - we hope all of our customers enjoyed receiving their Easter treats. There were 4 little golden eggs hidden amongst all those egg hunt packs and these were found by: Laura, Essential Print Donna Smith, Knight Frank  Charlotte Iles, Exeter College Marketing Steve, 1 Vision Enjoy your £50 high street vouchers! How many eggs were in the basket? Thank you to everyone who entered our 'eggciting&# ...

Just a little bit of fun in the run up to the Easter break... The Easter bunny has delivered our eggs early – can you guess how many are in the basket? Hop-a-long and tweet us your best guess using #eggsactly – the closest answer will win a BIG bottle of bubbly to help your bank holiday go off with a bang!  Sign up to Twitter and follow us @KingfisherPD Good luck - we hope you win. ...

Don't worry if you didn't hunt a little golden egg with your print order – you will be automatically added to our great BIG golden egg prize draw for your chance to win £500 of print for your company! Every order delivered between Monday 16th March and Wednesday 1st April will be entered into the prize draw – winner chosen on Thursday 2nd April and announced on our website and on Twitter and Facebook. ...

a little gift from us! look out for your egg hunt pack delivered with every print order. find a golden egg and win a £50 high street voucher! Our very own Easter Bunny has arrived and every order delivered between Monday 16th March and Wednesday 1st April will receive a little golden egg hunt pack. Lots of golden eggs to be found up until Easter – keep ordering for your chance to win a £50 high street voucher! ...

Competition Terms and Conditions - The little golden egg hunt Place an order from Kingfisher Print & Design! Any order delivered or collected between Monday 16th March and Wednesday 1st April will be sent a golden egg hunt pack.   There will be three ways to win: Finding a little golden egg in the golden egg hunt pack Entering the great BIG golden egg prize draw Tweeting us your best guess at how many eggs are in the basket   Eligibility The competition is open to residents of the UK aged 16 and over. Proof of identity and age may be req ...

We are on the lookout for a brilliant bright spark to join us. Learn on the job by undertaking an Pre-Press Apprenticeship delivered by the British Printing Industries Federation (BPIF). Maybe you're at School, Art College or Further Education College and thinking about the next steps in your learning. If you're interested in print this apprenticeship maybe just right for you - degree courses are often seen as a high acheivement but what many don't appreciate is that the hands-on experience is invaluable! You can find out more about becoming an apprentice by signing up to the ...

Here's my story... As some of you are probably aware I started at Kingfisher Print & Design about three and a half years ago. I finished my A-levels at a local college and I was undecided about university. I was almost certain I wanted to pursue a career in graphic design but I wanted to be 100% sure. I approached several companies asking if I could intern for a year. Kingfisher Print & Design agreed to take me on as an intern and three months in they arranged an apprenticeship for me - I have never looked back! My apprenticeship was in desktop publishing and pre-press and wa ...

We love print. On valentines day and always. ...

Marathon training at Kingfisher Print. You may have read about my marathon quest in our personal goals blog posted at the beginning of 2015. If not, i'll quickly fill you in - I am currently in training for the 2015 London Marathon and hoping to raise lots of money for the Bobby Moore Fund  One month into marathon training. What have I learnt? Its very cold and dark at 5am!! I used to like getting up early to go to the gym or train. For some reason I have found this a real struggle with my marathon training – most of my runs have been after work and it ...

Employee of the month - January 2015 This month it goes to Mark Ellis. One of our team members had a really bad turn in the studio recently. Mark really took control of the situation and did everything he could to make them as safe and comfortable as possible, the way he went about what he did was amazing and he appeared so calm. Well done Mark you should be really proud of the way you reacted. ...

Christmas opening hours Our last working day is Wednesday 24th December and we are back in on Friday 2nd January. We wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year. ...

We are proud to be supporting #FSCFriday today. FSC Friday has become an annual celebration of responsible forestry - it is celebrated across the world, and anyone can get involved. You can find out more about FSC Friday here  The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC®) is an international, non-governmental organisation who are dedicated to promoting the responsible management of all the world's forests.  Our efforst have been recognised by the FSC® who have awarded us FSC® status for sourcing and encouraging the use of ancient forest friendly papers. Y ...

Where do we start with paper for print? If you want a simple answer… Well first chop down some trees, (sustainable of course), split them and chop them into tiny fibres, throw in some water and stir it all around. Next throw in some extra chemicals, optical brighteners, squeeze through a mangle whilst applying a coating and voila - a quality sheet of paper. But that's way too big for my Heidelberg press. So that large roll of paper that the mill produced is now cut down into sheets. The sizes for my press are SRA2, which is 640mm x 450mm and B2, which is 720mmx520mm. There ...

Ironically in finishing, preparation is key. My alarm goes off at 4:15am (iPhone classic in case you are wondering). It sounds like the evacuation alarm from some space ship being attacked by aliens! It does the trick though and I'm soon up and ready, heading from Plymouth to Totnes for another day in the finishing department at Kingfisher Print & Design. Ironically in finishing, preparation is key. And speaking from a triathlete's point of view, the transition can make or break the race. I tend to arrive before the rest of the team and prep the workload for t ...

Happy print customers It's always nice to hear customers are happy with a job we have printed for them. We've just had some lovely feedback from Applied Automation who provide innovative automation:solutions, systems and products for manufacturing, marine, homes and commercial properties. We were asked to print a series of invitations for a number of business launches. You can read the feedback and see the bespoke invitations on twitter.       ...

Does this ever happen to you? Now we do love to capture data here Kingfisher Print & Design. I'd almost say it's a skill we've mastered. But we all know if we don't use it wisely it's just a bunch of numbers. We always try to remind ourselves to see through them to find the trends, the kinks in our armour, and our strengths. Where you can pin point that investment and be confident that you'll get the return, remember that there's ALWAYS room for improvement. You don't need to reinvent print to be successful at it, there are enough models that already wo ...

Digital print closes the gap with litho quality We have just replaced our four-year-old Konica Minolta 6501 with a new digital machine - the Kodak NexPressBLM7774F. We dipped our toes in the digital waters with the Konica Minolta but now want to push our digital service to the next level by closing the quality gap with litho. The S300 Digital Colour Press offers unparalleled quality digital print.Our NexPress has been upgraded with the latest components used in the SX model and is designed to print on the widest range of substrates – over 500 are supported. ...

At Kingfisher Print & Design we are keen and avid collectors of data! We record lots of it - this helps us measure how well things are going; from how much paper we use, how long jobs take to print and also to recognize if a member of staff has put in that extra effort worth rewarding. All of our monthly recorded figures are written onto the press target board, where we can build up a picture of the year's good and bad months. We record things such as how many sheets we print in a month, how many sheets we use on average for make ready and our average monthly running speed. We also h ...

Kodak NexPress training week Germany was a revelation. Far from the grim, grey, rain washed northern industrial town we expecting, Kiel was for the most part a lovely city in which to spend a week under the wing of Kodak. The lovely Sarita at Kingfisher Print & Design had created a perfect itinerary for Simon and myself, and the plan ran like clockwork. The week's training was not at all what we expected. We both thought there may be a degree of maintenance and theory but after four days of not even running a job we were getting a bit concerned. Me and mechanics are like chalk and ...

A little 'home-made' but we wanted to capture our first live print job coming through our new digital Kodak NexPress. We are pleased with the end result and our customers were happy too. Everyone is looking forward to putting more work through this press over the coming weeks and months.   ...

So it's a pretty standard conversation. You are introduced to someone new, and you getting chatting. The question comes up - where do you work? Kingfisher Print & Design I tell them. The conversation continues like this: "ahh, so your a printer?"  And I say.. "no I'm a finisher" Oh they say.... "what's the difference then?" I try and put it simply... "An ego!" Believe me or not, us finishers are a breed of our own - we are the ones who bring the print project together, ensuring jobs get completed on ...

With Christmas now a distant memory and the January blues kicking in, we have the perfect antidote. Finally we can see some digital print that is not only cost effective but that blows you away. A combination of... And wait for it because I'm a cycling fanatic… The efficiency of Chris Froome combined with the speed of Mark Cavendish and the looks and beauty of what else but the Kodak NexPress. We are all gearing up to welcome its arrival to our factory in Totnes, Devon in the spring.  ...

Another day another dollar, is that not how the saying goes? Not every day is a great day in the world of print. With a sickness bug causing chaos in our team, we dig deep in the finishing department at Kingfisher Print & Design to meet the customer requirements - efficient and effective team work ensures we can get the job done. The finishing team have grafted to get everyone's work out on time and as team leader I am certainly grateful to them all. For every print finishing job you need - Paul, Jon, Steve, Richard, Karen, Paul and Karl. And for everything else there's Mas ...