Printing for events agencies in London

An agency orders print for somebody else’s event, which changes the job: the artwork comes from the client’s team, often in another time zone, the venue is run by a third party, and the plan moves while the print is on the press. A supplier that suits an agency is one that takes a brief in a single email, can begin once the order is confirmed without waiting for the final delivery plan, and delivers to a venue or a hotel against a named contact. This page sets out how that works in four real jobs. Our London print shop runs through the night, so an evening brief is a normal brief.

What should an events agency send in the brief?

The format and finish (mock-ups are fine for that), one print-ready PDF per design with the copies of each, the delivery named by date and venue, and a request for a quote including production and delivery. That is exactly what the Kensington banner brief carried, in a single email.

• One PDF per design, copies stated beside it — six banners were three files, each needed twice; a design is one file, and the number of copies is said alongside it.
• Mock-ups for format, artwork for printing — a mock-up shows the size and finish but is not the file that goes to press; a roller banner rescued and delivered a day early shows the difference.
• The finished size, if it is not A4 — the NVIDIA flyers were US Letter, and Letter is printed as a finished size in its own right when the brief says so.
• The deadline the event has — the quote for the NVIDIA flyers showed Wednesday while the need was Tuesday, and the client repeated the Tuesday deadline before accepting.
• The venue, the hall or room, and a named on-site contact for the courier — the Star Wars plan A was the ExCeL loading bays with a named contact.

What happens when the delivery plan changes after the print is done?

In one recorded job nothing had to restart, because the only thing still in motion was a van; a new address or time is confirmed against the courier available, and the delivery is quoted for it. For Star Wars Celebration, 4,000 posters and 4,000 QR cards were printed by 15:55 on the Saturday. The client’s delivery plan was set at 19:01 — the venue loading bays at 8am the next morning — and changed at 19:17 to the team’s hotel in E14 that night, with the hotel address following at 19:23. The case study records that neither change cost a minute, because the print was already done. Starting the print on the artwork once the order is confirmed, rather than on the final delivery plan, is what lets the plan move afterwards.

How does the print reach the venue?

By a same-day courier who drives directly and has both our contact details and yours, or by a next-day carrier; the difference is how much control remains once the parcel leaves. Once a parcel is handed to a national carrier we cannot guarantee when it arrives or step in easily if there is a problem at the delivery address, so a fixed event date usually points to the direct courier. Delivery is quoted against the postcode and the courier available, not priced from a fixed list; how printed work reaches you in London sets out the three routes, and printing for events and conferences maps the print an event itself needs. Same-day printing has a page for ExCeL, Olympia and Kensington.

After the event, a copy of the invoice for the company records is a normal request; in the Star Wars job it was the quiet ending of the thread.

Send the brief as one email: the designs and copies, the finished size, the venue and the hour. The quotation comes back with a ready time and a delivery plan, and the case studies record the stages and the outcome of each of these jobs.