About Us    Printing    Artwork & Logo Design    Copying    Web Design    Art Gallery    Framing    Photo Restoration

 Contact Us    Other Services     Roller Banners    Testimonials   Links    Site Map

Friday 6th June 2008 marked a significant milestone in the history of Speedprint...

25 YEARS!!

When we opened Speedprint in Gants hill in 1983, design and print was totally different to what it is nowadays.

Artwork was produced by hand, using a drawing board, a scalpel, rotring drawing pens, cow gum, a set square and plenty of tippex! Copy had to be typed 1 line at a time, printed out photographically in a dark room and laid on to the workboard line by line. This is where “cut ‘n paste” originates. There was no computer RAM memory back then, and typesetting machines were huge and cumbersome, so if you made a typing error, you basically had to start again. 

Changing font style and size was a major event; we basically had Times and Univers and about 15 display faces for headlines, and complicated forms and rule-ups had to be planned drawn by hand, using a pencil, ruler and the trusty leaking rotring ink pen, which had interchangeable nibs for varying thicknesses.

When the artwork was ready for proofing it had to be photographed and manually delivered either by hand or by motorcycle courier to the customer for checking. You have to remember this was before the days of photocopiers and fax machines!

We were one of the first independent print shops to open in the UK, the only other shops of this type were KallKwik and Prontaprint and they were American style franchises. Other than this new type of printshop, the only other way to get stuff printed was to find an old fashioned back street letterpress printer and the quality (and spelling) was really poor.

So here we are today, still going, and embracing the fantastic technology that’s at our fingertips. We thank you for your custom through the years and look forward to being of service to you again in the very near future - Vincent Goode, Speedprint