From the Archive: How Lord Nuffield Helped Holywell Survive the War

This year is the 50th anniversary of the death of William Morris, founder of Oxford based Morris Motors. Lord Nuffield as he later became, was the most famous industrialist of his age, and a generous philanthropist who donated much of his personal fortune to charitable causes; a lesser known fact perhaps, is that he is also someone to whom Holywell will always owe a debt of gratitude…

A contemporary of Harry Burrows, founder of the Holywell Press, Morris engaged Holywell to produce much of the advertising material promoting the early Morris cars. As a result of their business dealings, the two men became great personal friends, and during the second World War, this friendship, and the direct intervention of Morris played a key role in the story of Holywell; in fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that if it were not for William Morris, it’s possible Holywell would not be here today.

In 1942, at the height of the war, the Board of Trade wrote to Harry Burrows notifying him of their intention to requisition the Holywell factory in Alfred Street, Oxford, where our printing presses were located in those days. The letter, received in May of that year, stated simply, “I regret it will be necessary to take over the premises occupied by you for work of national importance.” We can’t be sure for what purpose exactly the Board wanted to requisition our factory, but it was well known that Hitler did not want to bomb the city - some sources even said that he was intending to use Oxford as his capital if he conquered England - and so for this reason, factory space in the city would have been much sought after by the War Office.

But in fact, Holywell was already doing its bit for the war effort – including working for no less than 33 units of the services, as well as for William Morris who was himself putting many of his resources at the disposal of his country. Harry asked his friend to step in and make this point to the Board which he duly did, explaining in a face-to-face meeting and in subsequent correspondence, the importance of the contribution Holywell was already making to the war. As a result of Morris’s appeal, the Board withdrew its requisition notice saying, “it appears that as the Holywell Press is doing a considerable amount of work for so many of your interests which are engaged on essential war work, it would be advisable to arrange for the Holywell Press to continue in operation.”

And so, thanks to Lord Nuffield, we lived to fight another day – and another 71 years!

The communications between Morris, Harry Burrows and the Board of Trade are in the Holywell archives, and we recently made them available to the National Trust - guardians of Nuffield Place, Lord Nuffield’s Oxfordshire home. Located between Henley on Thames and Wallingford, the house ̶ which the National Trust calls ‘The home of one of the most remarkable men of the 20th century’ - is open to visitors and well worth seeing.  For information on Nuffield Place, please click here!

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Giving Wings to a New Brand

Our design studio is an integral part of our business, providing a highly creative resource for many of our clients. While much of the work we undertake involves designing specifically for print, we are also experienced in developing brand identities, as demonstrated by a project we’ve been working on recently for our customer, Volare Aviation.

Volare is a new company, a corporate aviation sales and brokerage organisation with global business activities. Briefing us to create a brand identity for them, Volare asked us to design a logo that would capture the essence of what the business does, clearly referencing its links with the aviation sector, while reflecting core brand attributes encapsulated in words such as, ‘established’, ‘exclusive’, ‘prestigious’, ‘professional’ and ‘global’.  In addition to all of these considerations, our customer also wanted their new logo design to have a ‘retro’ look to it.

Our designers set about creating initial concepts which took all these elements into account, and the visual theme of ‘wings’ quickly emerged as a strong directional route. With feedback on these first stage design treatments, we were able to refine the preferred option and prepare a final concept.

The finished logo is simple and bold; the stylised wing motif makes a nostalgic reference to an earlier age – evoking the glamour and romance of a time when air travel was a luxury enjoyed by a privileged few. The use of only two colours has the effect of giving the design an understated, classic feel; it also makes it very easy (and cost-effective) to replicate across all online and offline sales and marketing materials.

With the identity signed off by Volare, we progressed to printing business cards, and the end result is striking, with the logo printed white out of blue on one side and black and grey on white on the reverse.

We wish Volare Aviation all the best with their new business, and we’re looking forward to working with them further in the future. For more information on Volare Aviation go to www.volareaviation.co.uk.

Do you need to create a brand identity for a new business? Is your existing identity in need of a refresh? Our design studio at Holywell is brimming with creativity, so talk to us about how we can give your brand wings!

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Holywell Helps Opendoors Unlock Hidden Oxford

Every year, around 9.5 million visitors from all over the world come to Oxford. They come to see the ancient colleges and iconic buildings, to enjoy the museums and theatres, and to immerse themselves in the culture of this unique city. For those of us who are lucky enough to live or work here, it’s easy to take the city for granted, and feel that we know it almost as well as the tour guides who, umbrellas held aloft, chaperone their groups through the busy streets.

But while there is plenty to keep the tourists busy – and a photo opportunity around every corner, some of the most interesting aspects of Oxford are out of bounds to the general public – except that is for two days each year when Oxford Preservation Trust holds the Opendoors weekend. Now in its 6th year, Opendoors aims to give people – especially locals, the opportunity to discover more about their world famous city.  The event was established by Oxford Preservation Trust, an organisation committed to preserving and enhancing the City's historic character. From small beginnings, the event is getting bigger each year, now encompassing some 180 venues and events, and attracting over 60,000 visitors.

This year, Opendoors will be held over the weekend of 14th – 15th September, and it’s a great way to discover a side of the city you would never normally see.  There are dozens of events and venues to select from, and access is free – though you will need to book for some of them. This is your chance to (among other things) go behind the scenes at the Ashmolean Museum and see works of art not normally displayed; to visit the original cells in the old city prison; look around parts of the colleges that are usually out of bounds; take guided tours with experts ̶ and generally have exclusive access to some of the hidden gems of Oxford.

Holywell has been closely involved with the Opendoors project since it first started, producing the free guide which highlights all the venues and events. In line with the success and scale of Opendoors, the guide has gradually evolved from a simple leaflet into a full colour, 40 page booklet that has a print run of 50,000. We’ve worked with the Trust  ̶  a non profit making organisation - to help them keep production costs to a minimum, and the current guide format (185mm x 140mm) is optimised for cost-effectiveness. It’s the same pocket-friendly size as another guide we produce for our customer Artweeks. The format is ideal for visitors to carry with them and use for reference as they enjoy the weekend – and it means we’re able to print it in 32 page sections, providing the most economic solution.

You might think you already know the city well, but don’t miss your opportunity to discover another side to Oxford; go to, www.oxfordopendoors.org.uk for more information on Opendoors ̶  and if you want to produce high quality materials to support your own event, make sure you talk to us first!

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What’s Your Type? A Guide to Typefaces

Typefaces are the unsung heroes of design; they have the power to grab attention, engage a reader and enhance a message just as much as any image can. Although they may not always be consciously noticed, typefaces have the power to carry subtle undertones, in fact, they can be just as expressive as the words they create, communicating concepts like ‘traditional’, ‘classic’, ‘contemporary’, ‘modern’, ‘chic’, ‘stylish’, ‘serious’, ‘fun’, ‘bold’, ‘understated’ –  and many more besides. 

Choosing a typeface that complements the message and creative approach is only part of the story, the size, spacing and weight of each letter must be carefully balanced by the designer to achieve a perfect end result.

For this week’s blog post, the Holywell studio have put together a brief guide to typefaces, tips on using them and things to consider when selecting them - Click here to download the guide in PDF format. 

Made in Oxford: Holywell helps CTSU with Oxford-China Fellowship conference

At Holywell, we love a challenge, and some projects test our skills on a number of different levels. A recent project for our customer, the Clinical TrialsServices Unit (CTSU) is a great example, calling for a range of competences, and requiring us to coordinate and deliver a range of disparate elements.

Part of the Nuffield Department of Population Health, a major section within the Medical Sciences Division of Oxford University, CTSU’s work chiefly involves studies of the causes and treatment of “chronic” diseases such as cancer, heart attack or stroke, as well as studies of other major conditions in developed and developing countries.

Hosting the Oxford-China Fellowship Conference, an event for Chinese delegates that takes place in Oxford, CTSU briefed us to support them with a package of services which, in addition to producing the conference programme, included printing personalised certificates for delegates, framing them, and providing overprinted jute bags – all while the conference was taking place!

Production of the programmes could not begin until the full itinerary for the Oxford China Fellowship was confirmed, and details were not finalised until immediately before the event was due to take place.  Cue our digital printing press and our perfect binding machine (see lastweek’s blog post for more information) – the perfect solution when we need to create high quality, professionally bound books at very short notice. What made this project a little different for us was that the text supplied for us to create artwork was in Chinese. While the designers in our studio are a very talented bunch, none of them is a fluent Chinese speaker! Not a problem, our customer supplied a Chinese proof reader to sit with our artworker and check our typesetting before we went to press with the full colour, A4, 30 page (26 pages of text and a 4 page cover) programme.

Our next challenge was to produce training certificates for each of the conference attendees, personalised with the delegate’s name and other details. We used high quality, heavyweight (300gsm) paper and printed the certificates digitally. We also sourced wood and glass frames, hand framing each of the certificates individually. Once again, because delegate details were only able to be confirmed last minute, production was carried out while the conference was underway.

The finishing touch for our CTSU project was to supply natural fibre jute ‘goodie bags’ for all delegates. We created artwork featuring the Oxford University crest and the Oxford skyline, and oversaw the screen printing of this image onto both sides of the bags.

By their nature, events are always likely to be subject to late changes, as itineraries, speakers, presentations and attendees can alter right up until the very last moment. Here at Holywell though, our ‘can do’ attitude and our responsive approach to print production means we are used to working under pressure and delivering to extremely tight deadlines.

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Perfect in the short run: Low volume, high quality books printed in hours

How often have you come out of a conference, a seminar or a training meeting clutching a set of stapled handouts run off by the presenter or event organiser?  If you were lucky, they might have even been held together with a plastic spine! Where are they now? The odds are that they stayed in your briefcase or on your desk for a few days or weeks before you filed them in the bin! It’s a sad fact that many excellent events are often let down by the quality of the materials that delegates are given to take away. For one thing, second rate material diminishes the value of the content delivered; for another, it makes it less likely that it will be retained for future reference.

Of course, the reason why handouts are often produced ‘fast and dirty’ is because content – or parts of it at least – may not be known until very close to the event – or perhaps even while it’s still taking place.  But if that’s been your excuse up until now, you can’t use it any longer, because thanks to digital printing and our perfect binding machine, we’re able to create book quality documents in a matter of hours.

The perfect binding process uses hot glue to fix pages together, and the end result is a professionally bound book or booklet that’s almost instantly dry and ready to go out of our door as soon as it comes off the machine.  Creating content pages and covers using our digital press, and then feeding these into our perfect binder, makes it possible for us to be receiving artwork in the morning, and delivering high quality books by lunchtime.

Combining digital print with perfect binding is ideal where a fast turnaround is needed, and using this production method gives us the ability to be incredibly responsive, printing virtually in real-time. But speed is not always the driver – there are plenty of other reasons why you might require low run, high quality print including:

•           Impressive presentation documents for an important meeting.
•               A limited run academic publication.
•               A self-published book, printed on demand.

If you need to produce a professional looking book or document, this process is fast and cost-effective for anything from just one copy - up to a print run of several hundred. Books and booklets are usually printed in A4 or A5 format, as these are the most economic sizes for our digital press, but we can go up to a maximum size of 350mm x 350mm if required. The size of the content should not be an issue either as we can produce books up to 50mm thick.  For a really impressive document, it may be worth considering printing the cover using the lithographic (rather than digital) process. Even if the content is not going to be available to print until the last minute, covers can be litho printed and finished in advance so they are ready to go when the content is finalised. The same principle can be applied to any other elements which might be available in advance, or require special finishing; this might include diagrams, illustrations or photographs for example.

So next time you need to produce low volume, high quality documents quickly, don’t break your desktop printer or burn out the photocopier, call Holywell and do it properly. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing Holywell!

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Don’t forget to write! Using postcards to stay in touch

Many of us will still send a postcard back to the office or to friends at home when we are away on holiday. Why choose this medium in a digital age? Well it’s effective, it’s inexpensive, and the format allows us to convey as little or as much as we like. From the recipient’s perspective, a postcard is personal, fun to receive, quick to read and demonstrates that the sender is thinking about them. What’s interesting is that all of these same attributes apply in a business context too.

With a little imagination, postcards can make a valuable contribution to your sales and marketing effort, especially when they are used alongside other online or offline communications, as part of a campaign. Over a period of time, postcards can help to build awareness, develop relationships, and ensure your brand stays front of mind.

Postcards are a very versatile communication medium - use them to distribute a series of messages over a period of time, or drip-feed a story in parts to create interest and intrigue - we’ve worked on projects involving both these routes recently:

·         A client offering a high-tech service ran a campaign using postcards designed to look like iPads. We printed a stock of cards, leaving the ‘screen’ area clear to overprint digitally with a series of messages which changed throughout the campaign. Printing all the postcard stock in one go, but overprinting messages digitally was a cost-effective way of enabling our client to tailor messages according to responses as the campaign progressed.

·         Another client made very creative use of postcards by designing a series based around a town centre street scene. While all postcards showed the same view, the scene changed progressively over the course of several mailings with shop fronts changing, lights coming on, cars moving and so on.

Summer is a great time to mail out postcards; here are a few basic things to keep in mind as you plan how to use them in your next campaign:

• Grab attention with an eye-catching image and a strong headline
• Be clear about why you are making contact – don’t just list your services.
• Have a strong call to action – say clearly what you want the recipient to do next!
• Consider using a ‘handwritten’ font to give more personality to your communication.
• Be sure to use other communication channels in conjunction with postcards.

We’re sure you will have plenty of ideas on how you might use postcards to boost your sales and marketing, but if you’d like some help developing creative concepts; our studio is brimming with inspiration!

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