A former reporter here at PrintWeek had a booming voice and an amusing catchphrase. If he was on the phone to an interviewee who was proving reticent for some reason or another, he would bellow “PrintWeek opens doors, you know!” much to the amusement of the rest of the team.

The thing is, he was absolutely right and that catchphrase remains true to this day.

Although PrintWeek’s most-read articles tend to be dominated by some of our industry’s more unfortunate happenings (as any major news outlet will confirm, there’s nothing like a catastrophe of one form or another for generating page views) we’re definitely not just here for the negative things in life.

And while we don’t generally blow our own trumpet, this recent story about Tech-ni-Fold’s Graham Harris publishing a book made me feel incredibly proud, because we definitely did play a part in Graham’s inspirational success story.

I vividly remember speaking to Graham many times in the early stages of his venture, I might even have offered him a crumb of useful advice when I urged him to take professional advice and think very, very carefully before agreeing to the exclusive supplier deal that one manufacturer was pushing him for.

When we wrote our first news story about Graham’s clever new creasing device it resulted in his phone ringing off the hook and his initial swathe of orders. Fact!

It was also PrintWeek that highlighted the potential for Riso’s low-cost high-speed inkjet technology when that made its debut back at Drupa 2004, and look where Riso tech is now.

More recently, it was great to be able to flag up the clever artwork automation system developed by the home-grown team at Daena. Again, I know for a fact that PrintWeek’s article caught the eye of some influential readers and has opened a few doors for the company.  

There are many more examples like the above, but, as I mentioned, we don’t tend to blow our trumpet. We’re extremely happy, though, to make a big noise on behalf of others.

PrintWeek does indeed open doors.