Graphic Design & Creative Print
Turn your ideas and concepts into vibrant realities with our end-to-end creative solutions. Apogee is here to support you in all areas of visual communication while continually pushing the boundaries of innovation.
With more than 30 years of industry experience under our belts, and a seasoned design team at your service, you can have confidence that what will be delivered on each of your projects will be something unique and lasting!
Being Effective in a Digital World
In today’s digital age, many organisations have shifted their marketing strategy focus towards digital channels and online graphic materials. While digital media offers numerous benefits, the reduced emphasis on physical print presents an opportunity for your organisation to distinguish itself from competitors.
Utilising graphic print in spaces, such as shops and on the street, opens your marketing material to everybody and broadens your audience reach, capturing the interest of a more diverse demographic. Furthermore, physical print holds a reputation for being a trustworthy and reliable form of media.
Creating an impact through traditional print materials may appear challenging for businesses of all sizes. Finding a creative print agency capable of bringing your ideas to life while managing the entire delivery process in-house can seem like an unrealistic request. As business deadlines become tighter, collaborating with multiple organisations to deliver an end-to-end solution can be stressful and expensive.
As we’ve progressed through this evolving era of digital technologies, we’ve reached a stage where graphic design is no longer limited to print media but extends to digital platforms, social media, user interfaces, and user experience design. It plays a pivotal role in marketing, advertising, and creating a strong visual presence in an increasingly visual world. Graphic designers are the bridge between ideas and impactful visual communication, making them essential in various industries and sectors.
What is Graphic Design?
Before diving headfirst into ideating and creating your next big piece, it’s important to first establish a shared understanding of what graphic design and creative print entail. So, what exactly is ‘graphic design’?
Graphic design is a multifaceted discipline that centres around the art and science of visual communication. It's about conveying messages, ideas, and information through a combination of imagery, typography, colour, and layout. Graphic designers are the creative minds behind a wide range of visual materials, from logos and branding to websites, advertisements, posters, and packaging.
At its core, graphic design seeks to solve communication challenges. It involves understanding your target audience, the purpose of your message, and the context in which said message will be delivered. Designers use their artistic skills and a variety of digital and traditional tools to craft compelling visuals that not only look aesthetically pleasing but also effectively convey the intended message.
As multifaceted a discipline as it is, there is much overlap between the different specialisms within graphic design. Below is a very brief list of the prospective types of graphic design that you might seek for you next project:
When it comes to creating accurate briefs for your projects and producing the best marketing materials, there are a few key elements of graphic design that you should take into account, and that our seasoned team will help you to navigate. Each of these elements is used to varying degrees across the different types of graphic design. These are:
Typography
Typography in graphic design involves the artful arrangement and presentation of text to convey a message. It encompasses font selection, sizing, spacing, and styling to create visual harmony. Typography sets the tone, guides the reader's eye, and enhances readability.
Whether it's a bold headline for impact or elegant script for a sophisticated touch, typography plays a crucial role in defining a design's personality and ensuring effective communication.
We assist clients to choose the right fonts for their branding and communication needs. In our process, we consider factors like readability, brand identity, and target audience preferences to make informed font choices.
Consistency in typography is crucial for brand identity, as such, we help establish typography guidelines that dictate font choices, sizes, styles, and usage across all brand materials. And for clients looking to create unique distinctive typefaces that align perfectly with their brand while setting themselves apart and making their brand instantly recognisable, we offer custom typography design services.
Our typography experts also excel in creating well-structured layouts for print and digital media, so whether you’re working in the realm of publication, or looking to optimise your website or app for seamless user experience, we have you covered with web design and editorial design. We pay particular attention to details like leading, kerning, and line spacing to enhance readability.
Imagery
Images serve as powerful visual elements that complement text or stand alone to convey messages. They stimulate emotions, illustrate concepts, and enhance aesthetics. Photographs, illustrations, icons, and graphics are carefully chosen or created to align with a design's purpose and target audience.
Imagery adds context, engages viewers, and communicates information efficiently. By balancing text with visually appealing images, graphic designers create compelling and memorable visual experiences that capture attention and deliver messages effectively.
Incorporating multimodal features such as illustrations, photographs, icons, and other visual elements to support and enhance text within your marketing materials is crucial for precisely communicating your message.
Visual mediums communicate general information and certain aspects of the human experience on a level that surpasses that which is possible simply through text alone. We help clients find the perfect images for their projects, whether this is through sourcing from stock photo libraries or arranging custom photoshoots. We provide professional image editing and retouching services to ensure that all images used align with your desired aesthetic and quality standards.
For our more custom project briefs, our skilled team are equipped to create custom illustrations and graphics, adding unique and creative elements to your marketing materials, presentations, and publications. We optimise images for various platforms, ensuring that they load quickly and appear sharp and clear on websites, mobile apps, and printed materials.
Contact us to find out how best our expertise can be tailored to your unique business and branding needs.
Colour
Colour is a vital tool for conveying emotions, creating visual hierarchy, and reinforcing brand identity.
Graphic designers choose colours carefully to evoke specific feelings or associations. It guides viewers' attention, distinguishes elements, and communicates information. Consistent colour schemes build recognition and reinforce brand identity. Variations in hue, saturation, and contrast can affect the overall mood and message of a design.
Effective colour usage ensures visual harmony, clarity, and resonance with the target audience, making it a cornerstone of successful graphic design.
At Apogee, we ensure that your brand colours and design elements are accurately reproduced by matching them to industry-standard colour profiles, such as Pantone or CMYK, for print or RGB for digital media. We perform colour correction to adjust and optimise images and graphics, ensuring that they appear as intended and maintain colour accuracy.
To provide clients with a preview of how their final printed pieces will look, we offer colour proofing services. This helps identify and address any colour issues before production. Following this, we employ colour management systems to maintain consistency in colour reproduction across different devices, ensuring that colours appear the same on-screen as they do in print.
Layout
In graphic design, ‘layout’ is the strategic arrangement of visual elements like text, images, and graphics within a design project. It's essential for creating an organised and visually appealing composition.
Layouts guide the viewer's eye through the content, emphasising key information, hierarchy, and flow. Effective layouts balance elements for readability and aesthetics, enhancing the overall message and impact of the design. They play a pivotal role in creating everything from eye-catching advertisements and magazines to user-friendly websites and product packaging.
For clients looking for publication layouts, we help to create professional and visually engaging materials, such as magazines, catalogues, and brochures, all the while making sure that the content within each such material is organised, readable, and visually appealing. We handle various other print materials, such as flyers, posters, and banners, with the same care and meticulous attention to detail.
Across all our graphic design and print services, we create consistent brand identity systems for you, to maintain brand cohesions within the various materials that are produced.
What is Creative Print?
Creative print specifically focuses on the physical output of graphic design work. It involves producing printed materials using various printing methods, such as offset printing, digital printing, letterpress, or screen printing. This can encompass items like business cards, posters, flyers, banners, packaging, and more. Creative print professionals work closely with graphic designers to ensure that the designs are translated accurately and beautifully onto physical media. They also make decisions about paper quality, ink selection, and finishing techniques to achieve the desired look and feel.
Creative print is about pushing the boundaries of traditional printing to create memorable and impactful printed materials. It requires a combination of design expertise, state-of-the-art printing technology, and a deep understanding of materials and finishes. Businesses often turn to creative print services to make their marketing collateral more engaging, enhance their brand's visual identity, and leave a lasting impression on their audience.
Contact us to see how we can help you with the techniques outlined here.
Specialty Printing
Specialty printing refers to the production of printed materials that require unique or specialised techniques, materials, or finishes beyond what is typically used in standard printing processes.
This may include the use of unique materials such as metallic or textured papers, specialty inks (like metallic or fluorescent inks), and advanced printing techniques (such as embossing or debossing) to add a tactile and visually distinctive quality to printed materials.
Some examples of specialty printing include, but are not limited to:
- Letterpress printing, a traditional printing method that creates a tactile, debossed effect on paper. It's often used for luxury invitations and business cards.
- Foil stamping, in which metallic foils are applied to paper or other materials to create a shiny, reflective design element.
- Embossing and debossing, techniques that involve raising (embossing) or depressing (debossing) images or text on paper to create a three-dimensional effect.
- Die cutting, in which custom shapes are cut out of printed materials, allowing for unique designs and packaging.
- Screen printing, which is ideal for printing on various surfaces, including textiles, plastics, and paper, screen printing is known for its durability and vibrancy.
- UV printing, in which ultraviolet (UV) ink is cured instantly with UV light, resulting in sharp and durable prints, often used for signage and labels.
- Wide format printing, a large-scale printing technique for items like banners, posters, and wall graphics.
Large Format Printing
Large format creative print, also known as ‘wide format printing’, is often used for eye-catching displays, banners, posters, vehicle wrapping, and signage. It allows for high-resolution graphics and vibrant colours that are ideal for marketing and promotional purposes.
As the name indicates, large format print is a printing technique designed for producing large or oversized documents, graphics, and images that are beyond the capacity of standard printers. It's characterised by the ability to create prints that are significantly wider than the typical 8.5 x 11 inch letter sized or A4-sized paper.
In architectural, engineering, and construction industries, wide format printing is indispensable for generating oversized technical drawings, blueprints, and architectural plans. These printers use various technologies such as inkjet, laser, or solvent-based printing to create high-quality, large-scale prints on a wide variety of materials like paper, vinyl, canvas, fabric, and more.
Our creative team has even been able to print on big blocks of ice—a first within the industry—in our project with Ice Bar London. Read the case study to find out more.
Packaging Design
Creative print plays a crucial role in packaging design, where it combines structural elements with innovative graphics and finishes to make products stand out on the shelves.
Packaging design is a specialised field of graphic design and creative print that focuses on creating the visual and structural elements of product packaging. It involves designing the outer appearance of packages, containers, and boxes to make them both attractive and functional.
The primary goal of packaging design is to protect the product, provide information to consumers, and promote your brand.
Graphic designers consider various factors such as colour schemes, typography, imagery, and branding elements to create an attractive and memorable package. They aim to make the product stand out on store shelves, convey the product's key features, and connect with the target audience.
Additionally, packaging designers collaborate with structural engineers to ensure that the physical form of the packaging is practical, durable, and efficient for production and transportation.
Promotional Materials
Promotional materials, often referred to as ‘promo materials’ or ‘marketing collateral’, are a set of printed or digital resources used by businesses and organisations to promote their products, services, or brand identity. These materials are designed to engage and inform target audiences, driving interest and encouraging desired actions.
Examples of promotional materials include brochures, flyers, posters, banners, business cards, catalogues, and more.
The primary goal of promotional materials is to create a compelling narrative around a product or service, highlighting its unique selling points, benefits, and value propositions.
These materials are carefully crafted to resonate with the target audience, using persuasive content, eye-catching visuals, and consistent branding elements. Effective promotional materials play a crucial role in marketing campaigns, trade shows, presentations, and other marketing initiatives, helping businesses leave a lasting impression and ultimately driving customer engagement and sales.
What Are the Benefits of Our Graphic Design & Creative Printing Services?
Outsourcing services have evolved into a critical strategy for businesses. Outsourcing enables companies to access specialised expertise and talent that might not be available in-house.
Whether it's graphic design or IT management, outsourcing providers often excel in these specific areas, offering a depth of knowledge and experience that can significantly improve service quality. This specialisation is invaluable as technology and market dynamics continually evolve, requiring businesses to stay at the forefront of innovation.
Outsourced partners can provide the latest insights and techniques, helping businesses remain competitive. Allow Apogee to be your dependable partner in your next project with our Graphic Design & Creative Printing services provided through our Outsourced Documents Service.
The Importance of Graphic Design & Creative Printing for Your Brand
When designing and creating graphic print for your business, personality can and should be driven throughout. The graphic prints you design extend your organisation’s identity, making it relatable and approachable when encountered inside or outside the workplace.
This approach fosters an effective branding strategy, setting the organisation apart from its peers and enabling clear differentiation.
Leveraging creative artwork and print breathes life into your ideas, and is a sure-fire way to capture the interest of potential customers. Whether your prints are displayed in the business environment or in public spaces, they cultivate awareness and draw attention to your business.
Delivering graphic print through a blend of visuals and informative content serves as an engaging mode of communication, captivating people through images and colours while targeting their emotions. This approach to marketing your brand resonates effectively, leaving a lasting impact on viewers.
How We Can Help
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Featured Case Study
TSG Building Services Plc is a multi-disciplined building services and construction company. A family-run business, the organisation hires over 200 staff to support its operations, which include servicing and maintenance, mechanical & renewables, commercial & electrical, property refurbishment, and new build construction.
Thanks to Apogee’s managed solutions, TSG has transformed its telephony to better support its staff and customers, overhauled its IT infrastructure, and enhanced its ESG credentials by joining the Affinity+ Partner Programme.
