Blu-ray, CD, DVD, USB and much more…

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See you there,

The Team

CD Team would like to thank all of you who took part in our survey.

The winner of the £20 Amazon Voucher has been contacted.

100% of you were either very satisfied or satisfied that:

• your enquiry was dealt with in a timely, professional and friendly manner
• your account manager was knowledgeable and helpful
• your order was well managed throughout and delivered on time
• our range of products and services met your requirements

99% of you were either very satisfied or satisfied that:

• the speed and condition in which your product was delivered met your expectations
• our technical support team was knowlegeable and responsive (when contacted)
• that every team member showed an interest in you and treated you as a valued customer

100% of you would recommend us and 96.4% would use us again

However, only 60% of you use our website
We hope this is because you think we’re a lovely bunch of knowlegeable people and prefer picking up the phone and contacting us directly for information. However, we really do make every effort to ensure our website shows the most up to date news items, product information and downloads and we want it to be a useful resource for you. Therefore, our main priority for the following year is to make our website even more informative and beneficial to you, our customers. We will be working on the site design, navigation and usability in order to attract more of you to the site and keep you returning.

Any suggestions on how we could improve the website or any other aspects of our business in order to better our service to you are greatly appreciated.

Optional Survey Comments included:

“In all dealings with CD Team, I am always left with the impression of a professional, well organised company, with a courteous and knowledgeable team.”

“You are always efficient and communicate well, which makes my job that bit easier since I know I can rely on you.”

You don’t have to wait until our next survey to make a difference… you can add a comment about your account manager or the products and services you receive from CD Team any time, just click here »

Thank you for your continued business and support

CD Team has been awarded ISO 14001 certification. This certification has only been achieved by less than 1% of UK businesses and this prestigious award is supported by the Government and recognised worldwide. Nigel Griffiths, who undertook the assessment for QMS Quality Management Systems, paid particular tribute to “the investment in people and training that enables CD Team to provide an efficient and environmentally friendly service to their customers”.

Hints and Tips for Designing Disc Artwork for Print
(Also Available to download as a 388Kb pdf - click here)

Designing your own artwork for print can be a daunting task. By following some basic guidelines, picking the right tools for the job and doing some simple preparation it can be a very straight forward and rewarding process.

Before you start your design on the computer, get a basic idea in mind. Things to consider include what colours and fonts to use, any images or logos to be included and the focus of the design e.g. brand awareness, marketing material, product catalogue etc

Which print method is right for you? This is a tricky question, and is where we come in. When it comes to disc printing there are many ways to go about it, each with their own Pros and Cons. Once we have discussed your design and know the quantities required, we can offer helpful advice to ensure you achieve the best print possible.

Thermal Printing – Short-run printing either for full colour images or plain black text using heat and pressure to apply the print from a CMYK or Black only transfer ribbon directly on to the disc surface. Provides high quality vibrant images with a durable glossy finish. Full colour thermal print is perfect for photographic images and vivid designs. It is not suited to very light tints and gradients. Black thermal print produces a sharp finish for plain text and simple logos.

Inkjet Printing – Short-run printing, full colour. Inkjet systems will sometimes use 1 combined CMYK cartridge or typically 4 or 6 seperate CMYK cartridges. Gives a high photo quality print which handles more subtle gradient images and skin-tones due to the mixing of inks directly on the disc surface. A glossy or matt finish will depend on the media used. Image is not physically fixed to the disc surface, so if moistened the print may smudge.

Litho/Offset Printing – High volume printing full colour. Four plates (CMYK) need to be manufactured from your original artwork. Each plate is used to transfer an inked image onto a rubber blanket that has been mounted on a cylinder. The rubber blanket then transfers (or offsets) the inked image onto the disc as it passes through the press. As the disc moves through the press, the four colours combine to create a high resolution picture on the face of the disc. With offset printing, the colour resolution is much greater. This printing process works best when using CMYK plates plus a WHITE base plate and will create the highest quality and most detailed print finish available. This process is therefore ideal for realistic photo images. Litho is a great alternative to Silk Screening for those highly detailed photographic artwork designs though this process does not lend itself to large block areas of solid colour.

Screen Printing – High volume printing using up to 5 Pantone, PMS or “spot” colours giving the advantage of an exact colour match to your corporate colour/artwork guidelines. This gives a high quality durable finish. In this process ink is pushed through a screen mesh so the print is made up of very fine dots. This is best suited to solid block colours, the lower the tint of a colour, the lower the density of dots printed. At very low tints the print may take on a spotted appearance. For this reason, light tints, drop shadows and gradients etc. are best avoided.

(Short run = Up to 1000 discs High Volume = 1000 discs and above)

How your job will be printed will affect how your artwork needs to be designed. You will need to know how your job will be printed before seeting up the artwork. If printing in CMYK, you must ensure your artwork is created using CMYK settings not RGB. If printing using Pantone (PMS or ‘spot’ colours) you must make sure that these colours are correctly specified within your file. A combination of both is often possible, but can be more expensive.

What colours to use? Most commercial print will use a CMYK ‘four-colour’ process (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black). This means that colours will be made by mixing varying amounts of these separations. These colours will NOT match those seen on your screen, computer monitors display colours in RGB and are backlit, meaning colours will appear much brighter than on the printed material. Print techniques using Pantone (PMS or ‘spot’ colours), which are standardised colours (a bit like those on a paint chart), allow for consistent results. Companies will often have strict corporate guidelines and specific Pantone colour references for logos or corporate colours.

Using the right tools for the job. There are a plethora of software packages out there, choose the most suitable for high resolution disc printing. For example, you can create effective and striking screen presentations in Powerpoint®, but it’s next to useless for creating artwork for print. Ideally use an ‘industry standard’ design software package like Adobe® Illustrator®, but not everyone has access to these tools. Speak to our designers and we will be able to offer you advice on the best way to create your artwork with the tools at your disposal.

Artwork Sizing. Create your artwork at the correct size from the start and include any bleed that may be required. This will avoid your artwork having to be re-sized, which may result in a loss of quality. If your artwork needs to be re-sized it can alter the scale, perspective and positioning of elements within your design and may also have detrimental effects on the print quality of your artwork. Use images of resolution 300 dpi (dots per inch) or more and try to avoid increasing the size of pixel based (raster) images such as JPGs and TIFFs. When you enlarge an image you do not increase its resolution. Think of it as only having enough paint to cover one wall, you could try to spread it thinly to paint the entire room, but it won’t look as good. Taking into account the finished size of your design, what to include will be limited by the actual space you have (on a CD for example). Think about the scale and don’t try and include too much. You may be able to fit a lot more into your design by making eveyrthing smaller, but will someone be able to see it easily? Rather than using tiny illegible text, consider adding a paperpart such as a DVD wrap or CD booklet to give more information. A design with a few, well proportioned elements will always look better than having too many elements ‘competing’ for attention.

Text/Fonts. Fonts come in literally thousands of different forms, but you don’t have to use them all at once. Often choosing fonts from the same family and using varying weights (Regular, Light, Bold etc.) will produce a more cohesive and attractive piece compared to one where many different font types are used. Due to the fact that so many different fonts are available across both Macs and PCs, we may not always have the same fonts as you. If we need to edit your artwork for you (to make colour/text changes etc.), we will not be able to carry out the necessary edits without the font. One way to ensure text compatibility is to select all text used within the design and select the “Create Outlines” option (usually found under the “Type” menu), this will convert the text into vector objects (graphic shapes) and eliminate the need for the font. Once this is done however, text is no longer editable, so it is wise to pre-save a separate copy with the text as fonts in case you need to edit the text at a later date. Very small font sizes and very fine text should be avoided wherever possible, particularly when against a dark background. Try to use a minimum of 6pt, also for crisp print results try to avoid drop shadows and gradients on text. If you are emailing fonts with your artwork, put them into a Zip file first. Fonts can become easily corrupted when being sent by email.

Whilst the tips and tricks given here will not cover every single aspect of designing your own artwork I hope at least some of the points will help. We have gathered a handful of handy tips and put them below, if you like you can cut them out and keep them by your computer!

You may also find our Artwork Guidelines helpful which can be downloaded here:
http://www.cdteam.co.uk/Assets/Downloadablefile/CD-Team-Artwork-Guidelines-15422.pdf

Submitted by Jamie Quinlan, Graphic Designer

CD Team Graphics Help Card

Yesterday, every member of CD Team lent a hand to pack an urgent project which needed to be despatched the same day. This is a service which is critical to many of our customers and vital to us. I took pride in seeing the couriers and post leave our building on time knowing it was a job well done and within the deadline, and I spared a thought for the amazing fulfilment I was priveledged to see in India a couple of years ago. If you have never heard of the incredible tiffinwallah courier service, it is Indian efficiency at its best…

These are the men who deliver 175,000 lunches (or “tiffin”) every day to offices and schools throughout Mumbai, the business capital of India. Lunch is transported in a tin container consisting of a number of bowls, each containing a separate dish, held together in a supporting frame. The meals are prepared each morning in the commuter’s home by their family once (s)he has left for his commute into Mumbai. It is then collected by the tiffinwallah later that morning and delivered to their place of work or study in time for lunch. Afterwards, the process is reversed and the tin container returned to the commuter’s home address.

The process is amazing despite the complexity. The 5,000 tiffinwallahs working today make a mistake on average of only once every two months, according to the President of the Mumbai Tiffinmen’s Association. That’s only one error in every 8 million deliveries, or 16 million if you include the return trip. “If we made 10 mistakes a month, no one would use our service” he says.

How do they do it?

The meals are picked up from commuters’ homes in suburbs around central Mumbai long after the commuters have left for work, delivered to them on time, then picked up and delivered home before the commuters return.

Each tiffin carrier has, painted on its top, a number of symbols which identify where the carrier was picked up, the originating and destination stations and the address to which it is to be delivered.

After the tiffin carriers are picked up, they are taken to the nearest railway station, where they are sorted according to the destination station. Between 10:15 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. they are loaded in crates onto the baggage cars of trains.

At the destination station they are unloaded by other tiffinwallahs and re-sorted, this time according to street address and floor. The 100- kilogram crates of carriers, carried on tiffinwallahs’ heads, hand- wagons and cycles are delivered at 12:30 p.m., picked up at 1:30 p.m., and returned whence they came.

The charge for this extraordinary service is just 150 rupees per month, enough for the tiffinwallahs, who are mostly self-employed, to make a good living. After paying Rs60 per crate and Rs120 per man per month to the Western Railway for transport, the average tiffinwallah clears about Rs3,250 a month.

Of that sum, Rs10 goes to the Tiffinmen’s Association. After minimal expenses, the rest of the Rs50,000 a month that the Association collects go to a charitable trust that feeds the poor.

Although we don’t have the same daily volumes, ours is a far more varied service. In any one day we might be producing 8,000 DVD’s, packing them into PVC wallets and dispatching those with letters into jiffy bags with labels to 8,000 destinations Nationally. The same day we could be packing promotional materials such as key rings, blow up chairs, t-shirts or books with, CD’s and Blu-ray discs, across multiple language skus and dispatched Worldwide. The complexity should not be underestimated and nor should the skills required to ensure we do an accurate job.

Every box and all packing material is re-cycled and re-used immediately on the same job where possible. Or, stored and re-used over the course of the next few days, or weeks. Our waste management processes are all measured and recorded for our ISO14000.

We can’t claim to deliver by bicycle to save on fuel, but our couriers and the postal service all work to ensure efficiency, and are measured against care for the environment too.

I’m certain there are still many lessons that can be learned from the Tiffinmen’s Association, perhaps I am just trying to convince myself that in name of commitment to continuous improvement I should visit Mumbai again.

Submitted by Jo Fone, Managing Director

tiffinwallah_bike

mumbai__tiffin_wallah

There are tens of billions of websites out there to choose from so we’ve saved you some surfing time and compiled a list of the lesser known sites that we find most useful with our 10 of the Best.

Most sites serve some kind of purpose but there are also those sites that seem to have absolutely no point at all, like those on our 10 of the Worst list. Despite being utterly pointless, The Sheep Market site does make me chuckle : )

Why not sign up to our blog and add your favourites to the list?

10 of the Best:

1. iStockphoto - Royalty free photographs, vector illustrations, video footage, audio tracks & Flash files to buy online with iStock credits. You’ll never be stuck for artwork ideas again www.istockphoto.com
2. DaFont - More than 7,500 free fonts for Mac and PC www.dafont.com
3. Whatsonwhen - Events, attractions, openings and exhibitions from around the world. Enter a location and dates and the site will show listings www.whatsonwhen.com
4. Sporting Life - Live scores and results from a UK perspective. All major sports including football, racing, cricket and golf www.sportinglife.com
5. Engadget - A (digital) finger on the pulse of the technology world. All the newest developments, discoveries, gadgets and toys before they hit the shops www.engadget.com
6. XE - Currency converter covering every world currency. Azerbaijan new manats to Cayman Island dollars? Just a click away www.xe.com
7. Kelkoo - There are plenty of price comparison sites on the web, but this one seems to get it right more often than most www.kelkoo.co.uk
8. COCO2 - Increase site visits and offset your website’s CO2. Make your website carbon neutral from only £6/annum www.coco2.org
9. GiftGen - Gift ideas for the hard to buy for. Just enter their age, sex and interests and how much you want to pay and it searches the net for ideas www.giftgen.co.uk
10. Zoopla - Zoopla gives sale prices of recently sold and rented homes and - the tricky bit - estimates the value of the rest www.zoopla.co.uk

10 of the Worst:

1. The Sheep Market - More than 10,000 sketched sheep to choose from www.thesheepmarket.com
2. The Dullest Blog - Who knew life could be so exciting, NOT! www.dullestblog.com
3. The Rolf Harris Jukebox - Listen to the musical stylings of Rolf Harris, an animated figure that sings (badly) while playing some kind of….saw? WARNING: has sound www.rolfharrisjukebox.com
4. Toilet Paper - Unroll a roll of toilet paper as long as you want without having to clean it up - no blaming the puppy this time! www.papertoilet.com
5. Purple - It’s purple. That’s it. Whatever this site is doing, it’s doing it RIGHT NOW www.purple.com
6. Human Clock - It’s a clock. A big clock. Made out of people www.billychasen.com
7. How to open a coconut - Neglects to mention you have to buy the coconut first unless you’re Robinson Crusoe www.howtoopenacoconut.com
8. David Bowie is… - Find out for yourself www.davidbowieis.com
9. A day in the life of… A MacDonalds Employee. How would you spend it? www.conceptlab.com
10. The End of the Internet - Somehow, against all odds, you’ve reached the End of the Internet. www.shibumi.org/eoti/

Submitted by Emma Freke, Marketing Manager with reference sources from The Telegraph and About.com

Is where you were born important to you? Does it really matter where you’re from? Or is it enough to be simply a “citizen of the world”? Why shouldn’t these same questions apply to a business? Whilst investigating our roots, we found out some interesting facts that even we didn’t know…

Question 1: What was the first audio title produced on CD and when did it go on sale?
Answer: ABBA’s ‘The Visitors’ released in 1982.

Up until this point, the discs most people were familiar with had been made of vinyl. The Abba CD was a pathfinder, the first disc to use the brand new format of CD. The members of ABBA and their personnel have memories of the recording sessions for this album being rather difficult. To begin with, their sound engineer Michale Tretow had to become accustomed to using the new 32-track digital recorder. He said, “Digital recording cut out all the hiss, but it also meant that sounds were sharply cut off below a certain level. The sound simply became too clean, so I had to find ways of compensating for that.” But all their hard work certainly paid off and Music Melody were quoted as saying “Music like this is a juke box dream, golden sparkle and inspiration that’s instantly singable yet lasts a virtual lifetime”.

Since then, more than 200 billion CDs have been sold throughout the world and the CD, along with it’s larger capacity product family of DVD and Blu-ray, have become the world’s most widely used method to store, transfer and play large quantities of data, images or music. The format continues to dominate with 36 billion units manufactured worldwide in 2008.

Question 2: Who invented the CD - Sony or Philips ?
Answer: Neither.

You may have joined me in thinking it was one or the other of these mighty corporations, but the actual answer is James T Russell. This name may be unfamiliar to most people, but back in 1965 he joined Battelle Laboratories of America. As a music lover he knew that each time he listened to a vinyl record, the friction from the needle degraded the recording material. Russell, a qualified engineer, knew the solution was to create a recording device that would never touch the playing surface and at the same time deliver great quality that would last and last. From a technological perspective he was successful and patented the first optical recording playback system in 1970. In spite of adding another 25 patents for himself and Battelle over the next 12 years the invention hardly progressed and they were unable to convince the market to listen to the possibilities offered by this new compact disc product.

A venture capitalist, Eli S Jacobs was intrigued and formed a company called Digital Recording Corporation (DRC) which continued to fund Battelle’s research and development and also, during that time adapted the technology to store and play video images. It was not until Philips and Sony got involved that credibility was added and an industry standard established around Russells CD format that extended the technology into the computer storage industry. Today the disc is in common use throughout our lives; not only in the home, but also whilst traveling and at work.

Submitted by Clive Wilkinson, with reference sources from IMD, Business Life and Wikipedia.

With the current economy the way it is, there is increasing pressure on businesses to cut costs at every opportunity and find better deals and bargains on required products. However, businesses should be aware that if they buy too cheaply, they run the risk of products failing and their reputation being at stake and will therefore be forced to spend more money in the long run. In my experience this has become more apparent with USB sticks than any other media storage device.

In recent months, I have seen an increasing number of USB production jobs where the customer has supplied us with their own USB media to copy on to. Although happy to duplicate onto pre-sourced USBs, there have been several jobs now where the supplied USBs were, shall we say, not of the greatest quality.

To give you a better idea of the effect this can have, one customer required us to upload company data onto 500 of their supplied USBs so that they could hand them out at an exhibition to promote brand awareness. During the duplication process, we found that 28% of the sticks had failed to upload (140 units total). Despite trying the sticks again they still would not duplicate as the chip inside them was of such poor quality.

As a result, the customer did not have enough USBs to hand out at the event and of those sticks that were handed out, they could no longer be confident that they would all work when these potential clients tried to use them.

So, as a lesson, businesses looking for bargains may indeed find products which are much cheaper than others on the market and they may think they are getting a great deal, however they could also be taking a huge gamble. For instance, if you make a 30% saving on the USBs and 28% of them fail and cannot be used, you haven’t saved any money. The cost cutting risk is apparent; you risk losing any possible saving you could have made and risk your reputation by handing out a branded product that just doesn’t work.

With reputation and word of mouth so vital in today’s world, paying out a little extra for good quality products from a reliable supplier will give you that vital peace of mind.

CD Team Account Manager

Investing in technology is an unavoidable cost for businesses today but also the means of gaining competitive advantage. Every week there are new machines, networks, software and systems out there that we need to get our heads around. Understandably businesses are inclined to shy away from new technology in current times, however whilst cost efficiencies can be derived from existing IT, with proper research and a long term plan, new systems can add value. Making effective and efficient technology purchases results in your business doing things faster, smarter and better in the long run.

We have devised a number of recommendations and questions to ask vendors when implementing new technology. The vendors should always be happy to answer any questions to help ensure a good return on your investment. Technology can, and should, help your business reduce costs and become more competitive.

Identify an area that needs improving
It is important to make sure your business is operating in the most efficient way possible, new techologies could improve production or administration processes so keeping an eye and ear out for ways to improve operations is highly beneficial. In the same breath, however, you must also make sure that you don’t pay out for systems that are not entirely necessary. Do your research beforehand and ask for impartial opinions.

Are you going to make me the systems integrator?
If you have made a decision to buy new machinery or integrate a new system, smaller organisations may not have the skills or desire to put together a complicated network so it is important to ask this question. A competent supplier will offer full integration and implementation as well as components. The idea is to make the business easier to run, not harder so this will ensure greater efficiency.

Have you any strategic partners?
This may sound like waffle but asking this question will help you find out, for example, whether the hardware seller has a direct relationship with the manufacturer and has tested their systems in a working environment. Certified that it conforms to recognised industry standards such as Recording standards e.g. ISO 9660.

Is there a product strategy?
Technology improves and speeds up all the time. You need to know whether the networking product you are about to buy is a “spot” product designed to be a one off purchase or whether a better option is expected to come along in a few months time. Depending upon the product, look for a solution which can be upgraded with a three year contract.

Can I see a reference site?
Vendors should be prepared to demonstrate their product in a working lab. They may also be willing to put you in contact with customers who have already bought the product and be able to provide case studies.

Research the vendor?
Any after sales service or warranty work is going to be honoured only if the company selling the goods or service is still in business. Are they a solid company?

Investing in new technology can, and should, help your business reduce costs and become more competitive. With thorough research your decision should maximise the company’s ROI on its technology investment but make sure you ask the right questions.

It was a successful night for the games industry. Nintendo walked away with a smile as Super Mario Galaxy was announced as Best Game.

Another big winner was Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare who collected awards for Gameplay, and Story & Character. Little Big Planet scooped the award for Artistic Achievement and Fable II came first in the Action and adventure category.

Other winners included Boom Blox, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, Left 4 Dead, Dead Space, Race Driver: Grid, Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution, Spore and Boro-Toro.

The games industry is set to be catapulted into the spotlight once again when the British Academy Video Game Awards holds a captivated audience on Tuesday 10th March 2009 from the London Hilton, Park Lane.

The Awards are a fantastic opportunity to show appreciation to an industry where so much hard work goes into creating original gameplay, advanced graphics and a smooth user experience which, more often than not gets taken for granted.

As such, all areas of expertise are acknowledged in the following award categories:
Technical Achievement, Best Game, Hand Held, Sports, Strategy, Original Score, Artistic Achievement, Multiplayer, Casual, Story and Character, Use of Audio, Action and Adventure, Gameplay, BAFTA One’s To Watch Award in association with Dare to Be Digital and the Game award of 2008.

Set to be an exciting awards ceremony with fierce competition, you can expect to see Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare up for no less than 8 awards, Grand Theft Auto IV up for 6 awards, and Little Big Planet up for 5 awards. Other popular games up for awards include Rock Band, Assassin’s Creed, Mario Kart Wii, FIFA 09, Ninjatown, and Wii Fit, to name just a few.

We enjoy working successfully with the games industry, providing services such as duplication, packaging and fulfilment so we will be following the awards with bated breath!

For more information and a full list of the nominees, visit the official website here…