A bit like the English spring weather, part of the pleasure of being in the print business is that you never know quite what the next day will bring.
This is particularly true when it comes to the range of subject matter we print.
Just glancing at our jobs board this morning I can see, in amongst the work for estate agents, schools, transport societies (we have a lot of those) and children’s charities, we’re also currently catering for the needs of a cricket club, a chocolatier, an iPhone packager, a juiceologist (?) and a choral society.
Different enterprises have different demands, especially so when we’re responsible for designing, as well as printing, material for our customers. An understanding of their businesses, interests and obsessions is therefore an important element of our work. Print, after all, is about communication and, if we don’t have a clue about what we’re producing, there’s a distinct possiblilty that those on the receiving end of what we print won’t either.
The need to engage with all sorts of interesting and not-so-interesting topics should greatly enhance my general knowledge and make me a serious asset to pub quiz teams, though this has not been evident to date. Our trained cliché sniffer dog won’t like it, but, to end on a couple, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing but variety is the spice of life.