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A year in print – PressOn’s printing figures, put into perspective

by Andy Wilson
on 28th February 2019

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When you work in print, you end up dealing with a lot of numbers. We’re constantly noting down data – the sizes of the printing for upcoming projects; the number of rolls of vinyl we need to order; how many gallons of ink we’ve gone through; the dates for our upcoming projects… The list goes on.

But we’re certainly not complaining – in fact, when we get to the end of the year, these numbers can become quite exciting. As we look back on 2018 (take a look at our yearly roundup for more information on what we’ve been up to!), a picture emerges – one that’s built up of the number of hoarding panels we’ve produced, the amount of taxis we’ve liveried, lifts decorated, and so much more besides.

But these numbers don’t mean much on their own. So we thought it might be nice to provide some context, and a bit of a frame of reference. What follows is a breakdown of exactly how much large format material we’ve printed, with some comparisons to put it into perspective…

HOARDING PANELS

We’ll start with hoardings, because in 2018 we sure did produce a lot of them. We’ve been working with some really wonderful clients on their construction hoarding graphics this year, and the result is we’ve printed rather a lot of hoarding panels.

To start with, the number of panels we’ve produced of the standard 8×4 feet panels. These are the panels that go into most projects, and are put together a bit like a jigsaw to form the finished hoarding graphic design.

In 2018, we printed:

1804 8×4 foot hoarding panels

That’s a total of:

14,432 vertical metres of hoarding

Which is the same height as:

1.6 Mount Everests!

This means we printed:

7,216 horizontal metres of hoarding graphics

Which is the same length as:

Running around the outside of Wembley Stadium just over 7 times

Large Hoarding Panels

But these aren’t the only hoarding panels we produce. Some jobs call for something a little larger, so we also print panels that are a whopping 2 x 4 metres. That’s considerably larger, and considerably more impressive to look at.

In 2018, we printed:

290 2×4 metre hoarding panels

This is equivalent to:

580 horizontal metres of hoarding graphic

1,160 vertical metres of hoarding graphic

Or – 672,000 square metres of hoarding graphics

Fun Fact:

This is enough hoarding graphics to brand the entire Great Pyramid of Giza 7.8 times

TRUCKS PRODUCED

Vinyl graphics for trucks - Sky cinema

We’ve been busy printing the graphics for plenty of vehicles this year, too. In particular, trucks have made up a lot of the vehicle livery work we’ve undertaken, and this means we’ve printed quite a lot of vinyl…

In total, we’ve printed:

471 truck sides

Which equals:

12,571 linear metres of vinyl

This is roughly the same as…

Enough vinyl to run the length of Heathrow’s biggest runway – three times over.

Truck Rears

This is just the sides of the trucks though, we’ve also printed plenty of truck rears too:

In total, we’ve printed:

113 truck rears

Which equals:

618 linear metres

Which is about the equivalent of…

11 of the Angel of the North stood side by side

TAXI LIVERIES

Trucks aren’t the only vehicles we’ve been printing the graphics for – we’ve dedicated a lot of time this year to printing and installing the liveries for all kinds of taxis, too. Taxi advertising remains one of the most popular forms of outdoor advertising, and the total figures are as follows…

In 2018, PressOn printed:

613 taxi liveries

Which is the name as…

The number of times the Beatles mentioned the word ‘Love’ in their lyrics

This equalled:

12,873 linear metres of vinyl – or just under 8 miles

Fun Fact:

It would cost you roughly £17 to pay a taxi to drive the length of all the taxi liveries we’ve printed this year

LIFTS

On the retail side of things, lift graphics have made up a significant part of our printing work. These graphics sometimes involve printing for the doors of the lift, and sometimes even the inside walls as well. Across all the different clients and accounts we’ve printed lift graphics for, the total figures amount to:

PressOn printed:

1981 lift graphics

Fun fact:

1981 was the year of the first London Marathon (and we’ve printed more than enough material this year to cover the track!)

As we were totting up the total figures for the year, we also noticed a strange occurrence… Our print room, like any print room, can be a tiring place to work. Our printers never give anything less than their best, and that can be an exhausting undertaking. Operating everything from our printers themselves, to our cutting machines, to moving all the hundreds of rolls of vinyl around the facility – it’s all pretty physically taxing stuff.

To keep up going, our team get through an abundance of tea and coffee – and this year, we noticed something that we think might be our favourite fact of them all.

In 2018, we drank 71 bottles of squash.

Here’s to a fantastic remainder of 2019, with even higher figures than the last 12 months have given us. We look forward to filling you in on the details next year!

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Written by
Andy Wilson Managing Director