Fresh quack to victory

in the 1st Mix 96 Duck Race NOT  

Well we would like to have used this headline but unfortunately our duck ran out of quacks at the first ever Duck Race held at the bridge by the Honeybee Pub on Fairford Leys.

It was a closely fought contest and there was definately some tactics being used by some of the other ducks as they paddled towards the chequered flag. Our duck named Fresh put in a brave performance but was sadly quackered towards the end and came in 2nd place.

Aftwerwards Fresh Duck commented, ' Quack, Quacked, Quack Quack Quakered '

Kevin Brook manager of Fresh Duck said ' We started off well but the water got the better of us, we had some obstacles to overcome and Fresh Duck was carrying and injury as well, we will train hard through the winter and come back stronger for next year.'

Read  the Signs

Over the last couple of years we have been producing various signage around the area and have really showcased our talents.

We can produce a simple banner to advertise an event to fully bespoke attention grabbing fascia signs to sit on buildings.

If your looking for something that will attract attention then why not try something that has a polished
aluminium effect, all our signage solutions are completely bespoke and all guaranteed.

Or if you need to uplift your reception then our ranges of glass wall mounted signs will brighten up the darkest corners.















We can also produce enormous attention grabbing post mounted signs that will get you noticed, all fully installed.

Or if its just a simple vinyl description then these can be produced within 24hrs.

If you would like to find out how Fresh can help your business get noticed then call us on 01296 489998 ( Aylesbury Office ) or 01442 345088 ( Hemel Office ) or email us at hello@freshdps.co.uk or visit us at http://www.freshdps.co.uk/


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Fresh Invest In New Bookletmaker

We have always been in favour of improving our quality and service to our customers which is why we have invested in our finishing department and bought a brand new 3 station collator bookletmaker.

It is an Horizon SPF-20 which can collate, fold, staple booklets at 4050 an hour, and produce up to 72 paged books.

Kevin Lingard from Fresh's Finishing Department said, ' It is an incredible machine that can practically do anything thrown at it, its speed and quality are exceptional and has improved our production capabilities no end.
The finishing department is a key element to the final look of our work and we take pride in what we produce.'

If you want to find out how Fresh can help your business then call us on 01296 489998 or 01442 345088 or email us at hello@freshdps.co.uk or visit us at www.freshdps.co.uk

Our New Design Area

We thought it would be a good idea to give our design studio a bit of a makeover, we'll let the pictures tell the story.

Blueprint School

New Beginnings With Fresh                

With a brand new school being built for students who better to help with the image inside and out than us here at Fresh. It all started back in January when we were asked to come up with solutions for Exterior Signage and Interior Signage to enhance the image already whilst being practical.

What we came up with was a beautifully crafted and constructed sign for the front canopy in brushed stainless steel, another one for the inside reception, as well as a unique halo led sign with built up brushed stainless steel letters also for the reception, as well as individual door plaques that were laser etched and a special material called margard that was to be used for curved directional signage on 4 curved walls.

When fully installed they effect was immediate and looked incredible and had all had to be installed by the middle of April for when the school was handed over from the builders


Andy Gerlack from Fresh said, ' This was a really interesting project with all the different types of solutions needed, it was good to see it all come to life and I am glad that we have been a part of making this project a success. Signs are always tricky because each one is completely unique and there are a million and one things that can go wrong, so I was very pleased with the outcome.

If you want to see how Fresh can help your image and business then call us on 01296 489998 or 01442 345088 or email us at hello@freshdps.co.uk or visit us at http://www.freshdps.co.uk/

'Its not worth the

paper its written on.'               



We told you last month about where some of our industries sayings come from and this month we have researched the line 'It's not worth the paper it's written on.'

"In 1861, Johann Bernhard, Graf von Rechberg (1806-99), in a dispatch concerning the recognition of Italy, wrote: 'Guarantees which are not worth the paper they are written on.'


Below is what we found out about Johann Bernhard von Rechenberg

Johann Bernhard Graf von Rechenberg, was an Austrian diplomat and foreign minister.

In 1828 he went into the Austrian diplomatic service and was with the embassies in Berlin , London and Brussels.

The five years he was there during which he held the portfolio of foreign affairs and covered the war with Piedmont and France, the insurrection in Poland, the attempted reform of the German Confederation and the Austro-Prussian war with Denmark. After the defeat of Magenta, Rechberg accompanied the emperor to Italy, and he had to meet the crisis caused by a war for which he was not responsible. He began the concessions to Hungary and in the Polish question, and was responsible for the adhesion of Austria to the alliance of the Western Powers. In the German question Rechberg's policy was one of compromise. The project had been suggested to the emperor Franz Joseph by his son-in-law, the hereditary prince of Thurn und Taxis, and the preliminary arrangements were made without Rechberg being informed. When at last he was told, he tendered his resignation, which was not accepted, and he accompanied the emperor to the abortive meeting at Frankfurt (August 1863). The attempt made by Rechberg at the subsequent ministerial conference at Nuremberg to establish a German league without Prussia was equally unsuccessful, and he now returned to the policy, which in opposition to Schmerling he had throughout advocated, of a peaceful arrangement between Prussia and Austria as the indispensable preliminary to a reform of the Confederation.


At this juncture the death of King Frederick VII of Denmark (15 November 1863) opened up the whole Schleswig-Holstein question. In the diplomatic duel that followed Rechberg was no match for Bismarck. It suited Austrian policy to act in concert with Prussia against Denmark; but Rechberg well knew that Bismarck was aiming at the annexation of the duchies. He attempted to guard against this by laying down as a condition of the alliance that the duchies should only be separated from Denmark by common consent of the two German powers. Bismarck, however, insisted that the question of the ultimate destination of the duchies should be left open; and, when he backed his argument with the threat that unless Austria accepted his proposal Prussia would act alone, Rechberg gave way. His action was made the object of violent attacks in the Austrian Lower House, and when the war was victoriously concluded and Prussia's designs on the duchies had become evident, public opinion turned more and more against him, demanding that Austria should support the Duke of Augustenburg even at the risk of war. Rechberg yielded so far as to assure the duke's representative at Vienna that Austria was determined to place him in possession of the duchies, but only on condition that he did not sign away any of his sovereign rights to Prussia. The outcome of this was that the duke refused the terms offered by King William and Bismarck.


On 22 August there was a meeting of the emperor Franz Joseph and King William, both Rechberg and Bismarck being present. Rechberg himself was in favor of allowing Prussia to annex the duchies, on condition that Prussia should guarantee Austria's possession of Venice and the Adriatic coast. On the first point no agreement was reached; but the principles of an Austro-Prussian alliance in the event of a French invasion of Italy were agreed upon. This latter proposal was, however, received with violent opposition in the ministry, where Rechberg's influence had long been overshadowed by that of Schmerling; public opinion, utterly distrustful of Prussian promises, was also greatly excited; and on 27 October Rechberg handed in his resignation, receiving at the same time the Order of the Golden Fleece from the emperor as a sign of special favor. He had been made an hereditary member of the Upper House of the Reichsrat in 1861, and as late as 1879 continued occasionally to take part in debates. He died at his chateau near Vienna on 26 February 1899.

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Our Newest
Member Of Staff              

We would like to introduce our new Office Manager, Sharon Milner to our ever expanding team.

Sharon comes from a printing background with managing a design studio over in Milton Keynes and has come highly recommended. She has now been with us for over 3 months and has settled in well to the Fresh philosophy of 'design & print the way it should be '

Im sure you'll hear more about Sharon over the next few months and wish her all the best in her new role.


If you want to talk to Sharon then give her a call on 01296 489998


If you want to find out how Fresh can help your business then give us a call on 01296 489998 or 01442 345088 or email us at hello@freshdps.co.uk or visit us at http://www.freshdps.co.uk/

QR Codes

What are they and how will they be used? 

  
You may have seen random signs like a bar code getting onto your breakfast cereal packaging or on a leaflet that comes through your door, this unique symbol is called a QR code (short for Quick Response) and is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background.

QR codes store addresses and URLS and appear in magazines, on signs, buses, business cards, or on just about any object about which users might need information. Users with a camera phone equipped with the correct reader application can scan the image of the QR Code to display text, contact information, connect to a wireless network or open a web page in the phone's browser. This act of linking from physical world objects is known as a hardlink or physical world hyperlinks

Over the next year we predict that more businesses will be adopting these codes as part of their marketing brand to promote themselves as an ingenious new way to attract a younger digital generation to buy their products.

Try scanning the above QR code and see where it takes you, you will need to download the free app for your phone first, browse your app store under QR readers then scan it, its easy and you will see how useful they will be.

If you want to find out how QR Codes can help your business then give us a call on 01296 489998 or 01442 345088 or email us at hello@freshdps.co.uk or visit us at http://www.freshdps.co.uk/


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Twitter helps investors

predict the stock market

The millions of messages sent daily via Twitter can help predict moves in the Dow Jones by signalling sentiment, researchers at Indiana University and the University of Manchester have found. 




By scouring tweets for key words and analyzing them using an algorithm they developed to define the mood of Twitterers, Johan Bollen, Huina Mao and Xiao-Jun Zeng said they were able to predict the daily up and down movements of the Dow during a period in 2008 with 87 percent accuracy. Now they are testing whether their results can be applied to real-time data.


“So far we have observed that some of the parameters may change over time but that our conclusion that Twitter mood data can predict fluctuations in the stock market will stand,” said Indiana University’s Bollen in an e-mail interview. “We feel that we have merely uncovered the tip of the proverbial iceberg.”


The research suggests that Twitter analysis could provide a cheap way to improve results of other computer models that use news events and other publicly available data to anticipate how investors will act. The data may even predict to some extent the magnitude of stock market moves, Bollen said.

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Our Chosen Charity

Of The Year                                     

                               

We have always liked to help local charities as much as possible and this year is no exception, as designers and  printers we are in an ideal position to help, so when we were asked to help support local charity Wheelpower to help raise awareness and funds we thought this would be a great way to show how we could help and save Wheelpower some money as well.

We are always inundated with appeals but we have always said that we can only support one charity per year and after some careful thought it was Wheelpower that we wanted to support the most.

For our part we will be supporting the Tour De Vale Bike Ride event which will be happening in June, with all the promotional material which includes 50,000 leaflets, vinyl banners, race numbers, route signs, posters and flags.

                                                    

We will have a strong contingent at the event on the day to help support the event, so please help support a great charity and have some fun at the same time as well, click on the link below to find out more about the event.

http://www.wheelpower.org.uk/WPower/index.cfm/featured/mix-96-tour-de-vale-bike-ride/

If you would like to find out how Fresh can help your business then email us at hello@freshdps.co.uk or visit us at www.freshdps.co.uk or call us on 01296 489998 or 01442 345088

Fresh launches its

2 New Radio Adverts






After months of creative input into our new radio adverts they will now be aired starting Wednesday 30th March, if you want a sneak preview then click on the links below.

We are launching a campaign on Mix 96 to drive home our message of 'Design & Print The Way It Should Be'.

Have a listen and see what you think and let us know any feedback.

http://www.freshdps.co.uk/mix_96_adverts/fresh_design_and_print_car_654.mp3

 http://www.freshdps.co.uk/mix_96_adverts/fresh_design_and_print_generic_remake.mp3



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'Licence To Print Money'

Ever wondered where some of the popular sayings come from and what they mean? Well over the next few weeks we thought we would explore some of our industries sayings and meanings and where they come from.

This weeks it is the saying 'Licence To Print Money', read below and learn about its origin and impress your friends next time you go out for a drink.

Roy Herbert Thomson, 1st Baron Thomson of Fleet GBE

(June 5, 1894 – August 4, 1976) was a Canadian newspaper

proprietor and media entrepreneur.


Roy Herbert Thomson was born in Toronto, Ontario.
           
During World War I, Roy Thomson attended a business college, and owing to bad eyesight he was rejected by the army. He went to Manitoba after the war to become a farmer, but was unsuccessful. Thomson travelled to Toronto again, where he held several jobs at different times; one of which was selling radios.

 In 1934, Thomson acquired his first newspaper. With a down payment of $200 he purchased the Timmins Daily Press, in Timmins, Ontario. He would begin an expansion of both radio stations and newspapers in various Ontario locations in partnership with fellow Canadian, Jack Kent Cooke.By the early 1950s, he owned 19 newspapers and was president of the Canadian Daily Newspaper Publishers Association, and then began his first foray into the British newspaper business by starting up the Canadian Weekly Review to cater to expatriate Canadians living in Britain.


Thomson’s ancestors were small tenant farmers on the estates of the Dukes of Buccleuch at Bo'ness, in the parish of Westerkirk, Dumfriesshire, Scotland.Thomson himself made the decision to move to Edinburgh where in 1952 he purchased The Scotsman newspaper.


In 1957, he launched a successful bid for the commercial television franchise for Central Scotland, named Scottish Television, which he was to describe as a "licence to print money". In 1959 he purchased the Kemsley group of newspapers, the largest in Britain, which included The Sunday Times. Over the years, he would expand his media empire to include more than 200 newspapers in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. His Thomson Organization became a multinational corporation, with interests in publishing, printing, television, and travel. In 1966, Thomson bought The Times newspaper from members of the Astor family.


In 1964 he was made Baron Thomson of Fleet.In order to receive this title, it was necessary for Thomson to acquire British citizenship, as the Canadian government had made it common practice since 1919 to disallow the conference of titular honours from the Canadian Monarch on Canadians. However, the Canadian Citizenship Act between 1947 and 1977 stated that any Canadian who became a citizen of another country through means other than marriage would cease to be a Canadian citizen. Thus, Thomson lost his Canadian citizenship in the process.


In the 1970s, Thomson joined with J. Paul Getty in a consortium that successfully explored for oil in the North Sea.


A modest man, who had little time for pretentious displays of wealth, in Britain he got by virtually unnoticed, riding the London Underground to his office each day. Nonetheless, he made his son Kenneth promise to use the hereditary title that he had received in 1964, if only in the London offices of the firm.


Thomson died in London in 1976. At the time of his death, his son Kenneth Thomson became chair of Thomson Corporation and inherited the baronial title becoming the 2nd Baron Thomson of Fleet. With the Thomson operations now principally again in Canada, the younger Thomson did not use his title in Canada though he did so in Britain, and used two sets of stationery reflecting this dichotomy. In any case, as the peerage title he had was inherited, it did not debar him from retaining his Canadian citizenship, and he never bothered to take up his right to a seat in the pre-1999 House of Lords.


Thomson died in London and a plaque was placed in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral.

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Cinram - The Rebrand -
Fast, Effective Solutions

With time running out to get their rebranded marketing material produced, Cinram turned to Fresh for help. With only days to spare before launching their new brand identity at an exhibition, Fresh had to produce Pop Up Banners, Full colour brochures, data sheets, business cards and other literature in 2 days.

With the artwork coming from Canada and timeline difference of 5 hours, proofing wasnt easy but with only minutes to spare Fresh delivered it all into Central London as well.

The point to this story is who else in the area could produce all the these different solutions in-house, ontime and to a high spec.

Andy Gerlack from Fresh stated 'It was a bit hairy at times and the whole team sweated a lot to make it achievable, but we managed it, we co-ordinated it brilliantly but it helps that we can do all of these different print solutions all in-house and that we have total control over the job as there are still a lot of design & print companys out there saying they are producing it in-house when in fact they have not got the equipment or expertise  and sending it out.'

So if your looking for fast effective design & print solutions for your business that are all produced in-house the call Fresh on 01296 489998 or 01442 345088 or email us at hello@freshdps.co.uk or visit us at www.freshdps.co.uk/

                                                          

Is this the Death of a Salesman?

Have you tried
e-marketing?                  

Over the last 2 years we have seen a massive increase in the number of clients that now use us for their e-marketing campaigns, with the economic climate looking like a bumpy road to recovery more and more businesses are looking for better value for money marketing than the usual mediums of press and radio advertising.


What our customers have found by using e-marketing to stay in touch  with their existing clients and to generate new leads is a cost effective sales tool that brings an excellent success rate on their return of investment.


Our clients include some very big names around the Vale and all have had success with us.


Andy Gerlack said ' This is the easiest way of staying in touch with your existing customers and not hassling them at the same time, people dont want to be bombarded with sales calls and this is perfect for letting them know your offers and your news in an easy informal approach, from as little as £100.00 you could send out up to 2000 email addresses and the report you get back can help so much in generating new sales leads.


Gareth Davis for GES said ' We started using Fresh for our e-marketing because we believed that this is the future of keeping your existing clients informed and letting them know what else you could do. Its given us a new dimension to generate very hot leads and convert them quicker by the results who opened and how many times they opened, its been a great sales tool for us.'


So with the increase in e-marketing and the need  for good, cost effective marketing could this be the 'death of the salesman'


If you would like to find out more about how e-marketing can help your business then book into our business surgery on 01296 489998 or 01442 345088 or email us at hello@freshdps.co.uk


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Websites R US

Exactly!! We are the first to admit that we are not renowned for doing websites but just recently since we launched back in the summer we have taken on 7 already, 3 of them are about to launch and we will show you the results.

We have always prided ourselves on being creative and design focused and the websites we have produced thus far endorses this. With this in mind we will be launching our new website early in the spring as its being worked on at the moment. But perhaps this the perfect time for us all to look at our own websites with the increase in social networking and online shopping everyone is spending more time looking at sites.

Try to put your customers shoes on and look for your product or service and see if it is easy to find and then see once on it if it presents itself in its best light and is easy to navigate, websites dont have to be a costly exercise to look good and functional as our team here can talk you through it and make it easy if you have an existing one already or you have to have a new one.

Have a look at a couple that we have already launched.

http://www.momentousmoving.com/


http://www.freshdps.co.uk/pool/


Give us a call for a chat to find out how we can help your existing website or a brand new one on 01296 489998 or 01442 345088 or email us on hello@freshdps.co.uk

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Fresh put their best foot forward

Fresh are now the proud sponsors of Bucks CC U14 FC, with their new kit the team look nice and Fresh!

"We have to say thanks to Fresh for this, it’s great news and hopefully we will be able to have a really successful season" said Steve Short, Team Manager. 

The team always goes out fighting for the win and show great determination to do their best, which makes the partnership so unique. 

To follow the teams success go to http://www.bucksccfconline.co.uk           

"The team are great to watch, and winning a lot of games, they have every chance of winning some trophies this year. Success breeds success and Fresh are proud to be part of the Bucks CC U14." commented Kevin Brook, Director, Fresh.




The proud team, Kevin Brook and team managers

 

If you want to find out how we can help your business to be a success then contact us on 01296 489998 or 01442 345088 or send us an email at hello@freshdps.co.uk

A Momentous Rebrand      

When it comes to challenges this rebrand project has to be the biggest for us to date.

Baxters International Removals wanted to update their identity for the new year and asked Fresh to come up with some ideas with only eight weeks before the official launch.

But this was only the beginning of the challenge - once the logo was decided upon, Fresh also won the business for the marketing programme. This involved the design and production of the exterior signage for all the buldings and the vehicle liveries for the whole fleet of lorries, trailers and cargo containers. It also included producing all the stationery, brochures, folders and forms, a brand new website and an e -marketing campaign! All this had to be ready for the January launch.

Andy Gerlack from Fresh says, " This was an exceptional challenge to meet and where else could one business organise and produce all of these different solutions? This has been one amazing project and I am so pleased with the results."

Simon Osborne, Group Managing Director of Momentous said " Andy and his team at Fresh were exceptional in every department, their attention to detail and their problem solving have been amazing. I would totally recommend them to anybody. They rose to a momentous challenge!"


If you would like to find out more about Momentous then visit them at

www.momentousmoving.com

If you would like to know what Fresh can do for your business then visit us at www.freshdps.co.uk or email us at hello@freshdps.co.uk or call us on 01296 489998 or 01442 345088

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Not B2B but P2P                                      


I went to a breakfast meeting a couple of weeks ago and got talking to some regular clients of mine who were there and they were talking about how their business is now more focused on B2B ( business to business) rather than relying on the public. I argued the point that all sales focus for new clients or business' should be more P2P  ( people to people).

We all know the old saying that people buy from people and this is completely true. Sales & Marketing is about knowing your audience and interacting with them. Knowing what people want to know and encouraging them to interact with your brand is essential to building loyalty and should never be overlooked. As pro-active as we are we accept that our clients will always know more about their product, but it is our job to know the people and build the relationship and loyalty.

Somewhere along the way a lot of us have undervalued good old fashioned values of service and I find this remarkable as the best way to sell your product or service in the best light is the to sell yourself in its best light and then half the battle is won.

So I told my client that not to use these buzzwords but be more personal, be interested and also interesting and then you wont go far wrong.

If you would like to find out how we can help your business then email us at hello@freshdps.co.uk or visit us at www.freshdps.co.uk or call us on 01296 489998 or 01442 345088



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Fresh Hemel is now 1                         

Well how time flies, here we were last year telling you about how we were going to expand and have another branch in Hemel Hempstead and low and behold here we are celebrating our first year there.

It has been an exceptional year for us and we could not have done it without the businesses of Hemel seeing what we have to offer and liking it, so we would just like to say a big thank you for all of our Hemel clients for giving us the opportunity to be your first choice design & print provider.

You can expect more from us in this coming year and some exciting news in the Springtime as well.

If you would like to find out how we can help your business then call us on 01442 345088 or email us at hello@freshdps.co.uk or visit us at http://www.freshdps.co.uk/

We look forward to seeing you all very soon. Thank you once again.

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