A 7 Minute Read About What iQ Digital House Does
Most people find our website when they’ve searched for a specific service. While it’s great to welcome them to a specific page, they can miss the opportunity to navigate around the rest of our website to discover how comprehensive our services are; from design and setting up artwork, right through to storing and distributing clients’ printed collateral all around the world. So, grab yourself a coffee, settle down, and take 7 minutes out of your day to find out all about us.
We launched iQ Digital House 19 years ago in Farnham. When the business grew, we moved to larger premises in Guildford to accommodate the expanding range of equipment needed for customers’ work, before moving to our current base in Aldershot, Hampshire.
Across the years we’ve built a talented team of graphic designers, specialists in small format digital printing, experts in large digital format printing and installation, and attracted creative marvels who find the best solutions for all sorts of design and printing challenges.
Our customer and client base has expanded quite a lot during that period. International companies and corporations across the U.K. now use our comprehensive range of services, alongside the many local businesses we help throughout North Hampshire and Surrey (within the small, medium, and large-sized enterprise sector).
Self-employed individuals use our services too, especially when they start out on their business journey (or need to take things to the next level as they expand). Working with people in this sector to help them find their voice and market their services is incredibly rewarding, especially when we see how they have grown over the years.
Community groups, clubs, organisations, and individuals also use us for all manner of printed collateral, including leaflets to promote charity or fund-raising events, sports’ club banners and signage, wedding stationery and table plans, programmes for shows, festivals, and amateur dramatic productions, and Order of Service booklets for funerals (and lots more besides).
We’re immensely proud of our place within the North Hampshire/Surrey border community and manage to combine being everything you’d expect from a local printer, alongside our services as a commercial graphic design and print company for businesses across the U.K.
Graphic Design Services
Our graphic design team bring clients’ ideas to life
Our inhouse graphic design team drive so much of what we do. They are the starting point for the majority of our print work, developing ideas with customers and clients to bring their ideas into printed being through stunning artwork and applied brand guidelines (where clients have these).
They also develop amazing digital content for customers and commercial clients to use in this ever-changing and rapidly developing part of our business. Digital publishing and the creation of digital content first became part of our graphic design team’s work nearly 10 years ago. This typically includes the design of items such as infographics, eBooks, online newsletters, and eBrochures. It’s a useful service for clients, particularly those that combine printed collateral with digitally available versions of the same content.
Small Format Digital Print Services
User Guides are just one example of our small format print work
Our small format digital printing work covers much of what people see and use every day.
Flyers, leaflets, all sorts of brochures, user guides and instruction manuals for domestic white goods and commercial equipment, business cards, company stationery, and even direct mailshot letters that are posted to peoples’ homes, have all became a mainstream element of the items we produce for members of the public, self-employed business individuals, and small, medium, and large companies.
We’ve developed specialist services through our print work and have become an important provider of printed collateral for universities, colleges, schools, and Learning & Development/Training companies (particularly for training manuals and guides, alongside prospectuses and student workbooks). In fact, over 30% of our annual business is generated by the Education and Learning & Development industry.
Large Format Digital Print Services
Large Format Digital Print work can often add fun to projects
One of the fastest emerging areas of our print capabilities quickly became Large Format Digital Printing.
This opened up a wide-ranging area of the business world for us. High visibility items, such as shop fronts and banners, Roller banners and or A-Boards for cafes and restaurants, car parking space signs, direction boards in schools, shopping malls, business premises, and business parks, event signage, and wraps for commercial vehicles, became part of our everyday workload (we even developed wraps for yachts and motorboats).
We’ve invested in innovative technology and modern equipment as this part of our business has developed which has enabled us to assist all sorts of companies, including those that need exhibition stands designed and built.
Working with external graphic designers
An essential element of our business has been the development of close business relationships with self-employed graphic designers, graphic design agencies, and the graphic design teams who work for our commercial clients. We even developed a link on our website so they can upload their files more quickly to speed up processing of print orders.
Storage and Distribution Services
Our business offers clients a comprehensive “artwork to storage and distribution” service
As our clients’ needs have changed, we’ve adapted our business to cater for that. One aspect has been the development of our Storage and Distribution Service.
Some of our larger corporate clients were struggling for space to store their printed collateral and we had 200 m2 of spare space at our Aldershot base. So, we set about developing this as a storage facility that could incorporate a distribution and collection service too.
Technology was introduced to ensure items were logged and recorded on a stock control system and customers were provided with an online portal (so they could check stock levels and re-order printed collateral, when needed).
We now store pretty much everything from brochures, leaflets, and manuals, to branded clothing, promotional merchandise, and exhibition stands. One client even stores a couple of Arcade Machines with us for use at their events.
Customers simply contact us whenever they need anything despatched and our Distribution Team arranges for delivery in the U.K. or internationally (we arrange collection too). We offer an “out of hours” service for both distribution and collection, which can be useful in situations where an exhibition venue needs exhibitors’ stands and collateral collected on the final day of an event.
iQ Cards and Gifts Service
iQ Cards has helped UK schools raise an astonishing £1.5 million
One of our proudest achievements has been the introduction of our annual fundraising scheme for schools in the U.K. which has seen almost £1.5 million raised for schools to use on their projects.
This started in 2009 when we launched iQ Cards as a community-focused scheme. Its aim was simple: to provide creative and easy fundraising for schools by introducing a service that enabled the children to design their own Christmas cards (which could then be sold to generate funds for their school).
Each year we’ve added new Christmas-themed goodies to the range, including Christmas wrapping paper, postcards, sticky gift labels, magnets, keyrings, notebooks, and even chocolate bars (which always seem to be popular with grandparents!). In a typical year over 950 nurseries, infants, junior, and primary schools take part and that number is growing year-on-year.
You can find out more about this service and even register your child’s school to take part in the 2024 scheme by reading this article on our website: www.iqdigitalhouse.com/making-it-fun-to-raise-funds-for-schools (or visit the iQ Cards website: www.iqcards.co.uk). Don’t forget to contact the school or their PTA first, as they will be the people we will need to deal with.
Doing our bit for the environment
Sustainability is particularly important to us and forms a significant part of our company’s ethos. We continually research and implement recycling options, such as the active reduction of plastic in our packaging. We also ensure our printing paper comes from responsibly managed forests.
Paper and cardboard waste from our production runs is recycled as part of our everyday management and the carbon from our paper supplies is offset using schemes such as Carbon Balanced Paper (in partnership with the World Land Trust).
Last year, we embraced a new initiative with Switch2Zero and introduced their Planting Trees Initiative to several clients. You can read more about this scheme on our website:
www.iqdigitalhouse.com/carbon-offsetting-through-our-planting-trees-initiative
Saplings being nurtured as part of the Planting Trees initiative
Sustainability and Offsetting Carbon has become an increasingly essential element for businesses, companies, and organisations. To link with our company ethos, we developed an advisory service to provide clients with advice about Sustainability and Climate Risk (SCR) policies and how to use greener materials for printed collateral. It’s been extremely rewarding to see how this is making a difference to the environment for future generations.
Dean Larkham, Production Director at IQ Digital House comments: “So much of our success is attributable to the amazing team we have created at IQ Digital House. Our employees make this place buzz every day and they contribute enormously to help the company succeed and grow. Even Haggis, our cheeky office pup and Happiness Ambassador, does his bit to keep everyone smiling with his antics.”
So, that’s us in a medium-sized nutshell. Here’s to 2025, when we’ll be celebrating our 20th Business Birthday. It’ll be quite the party.
If you have any questions about our services, please contact our Production Director, Dean Larkham, on 01252 319691, or email [email protected].
Published May 2024
Categories: Graphic Design, Small Format Digital Print, Large Format Digital Print, Storage and Distribution, IQ Cards
