52-53.qxp_Grid 13/01/2022 14:00 Page 2
Behind The Scenes
The BBC’s Festive Greetings The BBC delivered a wonderful Christmas gift to the whole greeting card industry, dedicating a major chunk of its popular Inside the Factory Christmas Special episode to showing just how much thought and care goes into the making of a Christmas card. The TV programme (which is available on IPlayer for a year), that was shot at Woodmansterne Publications’ Watford HQ as well as the publisher’s Milton Keynes warehouse, tracks the impressive journey its Red Stag Christmas card design from creation to being packed and shipped to retailers and distributors all over the world with viewers treated to engaging and insightful dialogue between presenter Gregg Wallace and various members of the Woodmansterne team along the way. PG snuggled up on the sofa and pressed the ‘replay’ button to relive the whole televisual celebration of our industry.
Left: BBC’s Inside the Factory presenters Gregg Wallace and Cherry Healey in the Woodmansterne Publications’ showroom. Above: The Red Stag Woodmansterne Christmas card, based on a design which started with a pencil drawing by Amy Eastland that was the star of the Inside the Factory Christmas special.
Right: Having been challenged to a drawing competition by Amy, Gregg admitted: “I have never ever considered how my Christmas cards were made. I have never considered there would be an Amy here drawing them!” Far right: Filming underway, focusing Amy sending The Red Stag design files to production.
“Spread it like jam across a piece of toast,” said Gregg as his added the ink to the printer rollers.
52
Left: (left) Seth Woodmansterne, md of Woodmansterne taking delivery of the Fedrigoni board on which The Red Stag is printed. Right: Having gone through creating the four etched ‘plates’ Gregg moved into Woodmansterne’s printing press area delighting in spreading the four different ink colours onto the rollers under the direction of press operator Rod Clark. Gregg described the “the Rolls Royce of printing presses” as a ‘monster of a machine, more than eight metres long” weighing nearly as much as two double decker buses, and able to print more than 10 cards a second. PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
