The contract, worth “many tens of millions of pounds per year”, according to HH Global chief marketing officer Tony Massey, encompasses all marketing, corporate and operational print and builds on an existing relationship, with the German firm already using HH Global’s asset management services. He added: “We will work downstream of their creative agencies around the world to manage their print supply chain, which incorporates technical print advice, print sourcing and print consumption guidance.” According to Massey, Siemens’ print management was previously managed on an ad-hoc basis by a range of agencies around the world. “We are seeing a trend at the moment, with some of the bigger organisations, to take a more global view. Obviously they have more leverage if they have all services under one agreement,” he explained. Under the terms of the contract, HH Global is responsible for tracking Siemens’ carbon usage as part of a strategy by the German firm to become carbon neutral. Massey said: “We will calculate the CO2 on every single estimate and regularly advise the firm on their footprint to enable them to move to carbon neutral status.” To fulfill the contract HH Global will expand its global team by around 20 people, Massey said, with new local representatives being appointed to North and South America, the EMEA region and Asia Pacific. “Siemens covers 50 or 60 key markets so this really is probably the most global contract that we have embarked on. It presents an opportunity and a challenge because the logistics in some markets can be tricky, so it needs serious planning,” Massey said. “It certainly is an interesting time because we are exporting a concept that was founded in the UK almost 20 years ago, as of course are some of the other players in the market. “It is definitely a UK success story.”...

Version 10 features 300,000 lines of new code and 500,000 lines of updated code. However, one of the most significant changes has been a switch from the Carbon programming environment to a native Cocoa app, which the company describes as the “pre-eminent application environment for Apple’s OS X”. Other enhancements include support for HiDPI and Retina displays, a new graphics engine, Xenon, which features “native understanding” of all industry standard image file formats, dynamic rendering of PDFs and adaptive resolution that enables real-time image processing “to deliver designers the most appropriate onscreen resolution with maximum performance”. “This has been a monumental undertaking by the development team to thoroughly modernise QuarkXPress in terms of the application environment, architecture, user interface and graphics engine,” said Dave White, chief technology officer for Quark. “We’re excited not only for this release, but also for the foundation that has been put in place for future QuarkXPress features.” The software’s user interface has also been overhauled and now features “next generation” palettes, with new shortcut keys to simplify the user experience. Other changes include a one-click full-screen view and enhanced multiscreen functionality. Building on the package’s cross-media credentials, this latest version continues support for ePub and HTML5 authoring tools for App Studio and can now also create colour vector QR codes directly within QuarkXPress. System requirements for QuarkXPress 10 are Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) or OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) as well as Microsoft Windows 7 and 8. According to media reports, it will only be able to open ‘legacy formats’ going back to QuarkXpress 7. QuarkXPress 10 will begin shipping in mid to late August. UK download-only prices begin at £799 for the full version, compared with $849 (£552) in the US, or £299 for an upgrade version. For a limited time, Quark is also offering a 20% pre-order discount on both versions....

Version 10 features 300,000 lines of new code and 500,000 lines of updated code. However, one of the most significant changes has been a switch from the Carbon programming environment to a native Cocoa app, which the company describes as the “pre-eminent application environment for Apple’s OS X”. Other enhancements include support for HiDPI and Retina displays, a new graphics engine, Xenon, which features “native understanding” of all industry standard image file formats, dynamic rendering of PDFs and adaptive resolution that enables real-time image processing “to deliver designers the most appropriate onscreen resolution with maximum performance”. “This has been a monumental undertaking by the development team to thoroughly modernise QuarkXPress in terms of the application environment, architecture, user interface and graphics engine,” said Dave White, chief technology officer for Quark. “We’re excited not only for this release, but also for the foundation that has been put in place for future QuarkXPress features.” The software’s user interface has also been overhauled and now features “next generation” palettes, with new shortcut keys to simplify the user experience. Other changes include a one-click full-screen view and enhanced multiscreen functionality. Building on the package’s cross-media credentials, this latest version continues support for ePub and HTML5 authoring tools for App Studio and can now also create colour vector QR codes directly within QuarkXPress. System requirements for QuarkXPress 10 are Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) or OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) as well as Microsoft Windows 7 and 8. According to media reports, it will only be able to open ‘legacy formats’ going back to QuarkXpress 7. QuarkXPress 10 will begin shipping in mid to late August. UK download-only prices begin at £799 for the full version, compared with $849 (£552) in the US, or £299 for an upgrade version. For a limited time, Quark is also offering a 20% pre-order discount on both versions....

Jamie Taylor and Dominik Czerwinke of Begbies Traynor’s Southend office were appointed joint administrators on 9 July. Wren was founded in 1972 and specialised in food and cosmetics packaging. A statement from the administrators said: “Auctioneers and valuers have been engaged to find a buyer for the business and/or assets of the company and there has been significant interest so far”. According to the company’s website, the Southend-based company had in-house CAD facilities, an undisclosed number of litho presses, including a six-colour B1 press, two coating lines, a B2 die-cutter and two folder-gluers. Clients have included Boots, Costa, Morrisons, Parker, Stanley and WH Smith. Neither Taylor or Czerwinke were available for additional comment at the time of writing....

Businesses that use catalogues as sales and marketing tools say they are directly responsible for 30% of sales, according to Channel Vision – Version 2.0, a report published by design, marketing and print specialist Catalogues 4 Business (C4B). For those employing e-commerce as well, a further 29% of sales were driven by the catalogue through their website. C4B surveyed more than 100 UK organisations, both B2B and B2C, from a wide range of sectors and industries to assemble the study. According to the report, 33% of respondents also said that sales through their catalogue for the past year are up on the previous year. C4B managing director Ian Simpson said: “It’s great to see so many companies’ sales figures increase from catalogues, they are an incredibly powerful marketing tool. Like most marketing activities, there must be a strategy in place to ensure that both sales and marketing are working together to maximise the output.” However, only 34% of respondents said that they used a catalogue as a sales channel. Of the companies that don’t use a catalogue, 53% said a catalogue wasn’t appropriate for their business. The report suggests that this shows that more work must be done to encourage the take-up of catalogues. The report also highlighted the growing importance of digital marketing and social media, with 26% of businesses adding it to their marketing activities over the past year. The report found that companies which sell via a catalogue are far more likely to have a website with e-commerce, which in turn makes them more likely to deploy SEO and pay per click. Simpson said: “Within today’s digital era, people get fixated with the online world and forget that having something physical is a novelty and sometimes even preferred. Catalogues are one of the best ways to drive online traffic. It’s about integrating offline and online tactics.” The report also found that while B2B businesses might be expected to favour sites such as Linkedin for promoting their services, YouTube also featured highly among their preferences, with 46% saying it was relevant, compared with just 24% of B2C companies....