Archive for February 2008
We have had plenty of compliments about our packaging over the years. One of our favourites was the American customer who enthused that it looked as if it had come from the next state rather than across the ocean. Of course, given the extremely fragile natures of most of our products, especially mounted prints etc we wouldn’t have survived these nearly 14 years in business if we hadn’t got the packaging right very early on and the extremely low level of damages in transit we get is the proof that we have got it right. Zero is pretty much impossible but if we were to get more than a couple in a year we’d be thinking there is something wrong. Now, if we were selfish and small-minded we’d not want to publish our way of doing this so that other companies can read it and benefit from it but we don’t think like that. Every damaged package is a disappointed person somewhere and there are enough disappointments in life without poorly packaged orders adding to it 
So here’s a reasonably complete list of how best to package pretty much anything from a book to a concerete rhinoceros
- One basic principle is “hard on the outside, soft on the inside”. The only times you can usually get away with not observing this rule are (a) where the goods are completely flexible like the T-Shirts, Skinnies and Hoodies etc that we supply where a good quality jiffy bag should do the trick or (b) where the external packaging is VERY stiff because the contents must not be bent under any circumstances. We package our mounted prints in this way using double layers of our specially made heavy duty corrugated card.
- Another basic rule is that any package where the contents can move in transit is badly packed. No movement means no possibility of damage by rapid movement against an internal wall of the packing.
- We wrap posters in polpropalene so that the polypropalene extends beyond the poster and protects the ends of it. Then we wrap the posters in bubblewrap to protect all around. Although we do use tubes sometimes we tend to prefer constructing triangular packages for posters from our specially made heavy duty corrugated card as these have proved more durable than tubes. Avoid cheap thin walled tubes - you might just as well go the whole hog and write “please twist this tube into a spaghetti shape” on it! Another thing with posters that many companies ignore is the problem of movement mentioned above. A poster sent loose in a tube can bunch up against one end and arrive with creasing all the way down one side.
- Although it is certainly true that there are plenty of conscientious and good people working in the Post Office and the various courier depots if you package something on this basis that it will be handled lightly and carefully you are asking for trouble. It is certainly not true that the Post Office and the various courier depots employ a large workforce of gorrillas and orang-utans but packaging based on this assumption will result in far less damages than the optimistic option
- Glass goods are the hardest to pack well and that’s why we frame everything with high grade plastic glass instead, especially because we are now shipping so many framed orders overseas. If you are sending glass goods then the “hard on the outside, soft on the inside” rule definitely applies. Be careful about your courier though as there are very few who will insure glass goods and if they smash it you might have no come-back at all even if you packed it really well.
- If you are sending CDs in jewel cases DO NOT send them in a jiffy bag like many online CD mail-order companies do. Jiffy bags should only be used for items that can be bent and CD jewel cases tend to shed little bits and fall apart after being bent. CDs in jewel cases need to be packed in stiff packaging. Even a cardboard envelope is better protection than a jify bag. Best bet is to wrap the CD in a bit of bubblewrap and then pack it in stiff card.
- Who do you choose to send it through? Despite the bad press they often get the normal postal service is not as bad as you might think as long as you get the packaging right! Who don’t we use? In the early years we had problems with two companies - Business Post and ParcelForce - so we never use either of them.
We hope this is of use to people in packaging goods so they arrive in one piece rather than several If you have any comments, additions or ideas about this then click the comments tab and let us know.
No, it’s not some kind of new exercise regime or new brand of cosmetic. It is the study of why art affects us the way it does … amongst other things. It is to do with appreciation of qualities like beauty and how to define these effects. There are some big puzzles. For instance, if a forger paints a copy of a Van Gogh that is indistinguishable from the original why is it of lesser value? Let’s say the difference can only be known by carbon-dating the materials used for instance. That means that the original and the fake as you look at them are absolutely identical and yet one is worth a fortune while the other one isn’t for reasons that have nothing to do with what it looks like. So; the aesthetic value of the painting is not just in the appearance of the art or even the technical merits of the artistic talent put into creating it but in the facts of the history of it. Now, isn’t that bizarre? Because it is the first one, painted by a particular person at a particular time it is worth much more, even if it looks identical to a copy. How can two pieces of art that look identical be of a different value? In the end, you see, it is all in the mind - the value we choose to give to something and the values by which we decide that even if they look identical they are not of identical value. It only goes to show how subjective the experience of art really is. Possibly there are as many versions of the Mona Lisa as the number of people who have looked at it
Way back in the hippy days of the sixties a monster of an album burst forth on an unsuspecting world in 1968. Robert Fripp, a guitarist of no small talent and a penchant for originality, had put together a new and unusual group fronted by a singer called Greg Lake who was destined to go on to dizzy heights later with ELP. The lyrics for the first album were oddly enough by someone who wasn’t in the band and whose own singing abilities (to be kind) were less than wonderful. But as a poet he was way ahead - reading the words to 21st Century Schizoid Man and then reading the newspapers today it is hard not to think of him as some kind of prophet. But we’re here to talk about art so here are both the outside cover and inside cover of ‘In The Court Of The Crimson King’ painted by Barry Godber -
The front is the schizoid man and the inside is the Crimson King with his jolly smile and very sad eyes. The artist Barry Godber was in fact a computer technician who the lyricist Pete Sinfield knew. In fact, he was the only artist he knew so the choice of who to ask was easy! Sadly, Barry Godber barely survived to see his artwork printed on the cover as he died in 1970 from a heart-attack at the tragically young age of 24. The cover and the album went on to become hugely venerated icons of art and music name-checked as influences countless times over the years. The raw emotion portrayed in the front cover and the way that the face is almost bursting out of the frame of the cover attracted many people to the album even if they hadn’t heard a single note of it. Strangely enough, given his tragic early death, the painting was based on a distorted reflection of the artist’s own face. The album itself was remastered for the final time in 2003 when they finally found the original master tapes, which is a bit like finally remembering you left the Rembrandt down in the cellar
From painting to photography. The first Black Sabbath album has this classic photo on it. The place is Mapledurham Watermill but the odd thing is that nobody knows who the woman was who modelled for the cover. Bit spooky eh? Not so spooky was the record company cashing in on the satanist hype in the media by putting a reversed cross on the inside cover much to the annoyance of the band who actually weren’t satanists. Made on a shoestring budget in a a couple of days it turned out to be one of the most influencial albums ever made. The title track is probably almost single-handedly responsible for the births of the genres of heavy metal and goth music. So now you know who to blame … or praise
The Battle of Pelennor Fields by Alan Lee