When I joined Hybrid Services a year ago, I had only just submitted my dissertation for my degree at Manchester Metropolitan University. It was safe to say that I had hardly any knowledge of the brand we represent, let alone the powerful impact of the print and signage industries. Within my first few weeks, I quickly learnt what it actually meant to be the UK and Ireland’s exclusive distributor for Mimaki. I was surrounded by vibrant applications, expert colleagues who know the industries inside out, and a showroom filled with Mimaki technology that could do things I didn’t even know were possible. There’s something exciting about diving head first into an industry that’s constantly evolving. From studying Digital Media and Communications for the previous three years, I had come from a world where the main focus was digital, from storytelling to web development. Suddenly, I was working with physical outputs that you could hold, wear, or walk past anywhere you go. Seeing how those two worlds connect was a lightbulb moment for me. Print doesn’t just support marketing, it is marketing! It’s the logo on a shop window, the wrap on a commercial van, the garment that makes a brand feel premium. If you told me a year ago that every sign and lightbox I walked past I’d stop and appreciate, I wouldn’t have believed you. From Pixels to Print: The Shift in Perspective It still makes me laugh how little I appreciated print before I joined the industry, considering it’s literally everywhere. I come from a digital-first background, where everything I worked on lived on a screen. It’s easy to get caught up in that world and forget about the power of the physical. But once I started to really look, I couldn’t stop seeing print. From supermarket signage to branded packaging, window graphics to floor stickers, it’s all around us, shaping how we interact with brands without us even realising. What has struck me most is how much of this is experienced passively when you’re not in the industry, but yet it plays such a huge role in how we experience the world. It’s made me appreciate how essential print is, not just as a tool to support digital marketing, but as something that can make an instant, real-world impact in a way digital alone can’t. Within my first month, I had visited a Hybrid customer, where two Mimaki industrial UV printers were proving to be powerhouses for the company’s production team. Watching those machines in Jude Corless, digital content and marketing executive at Hybrid Services, Mimaki’s exclusive UK and Ireland distributor, tells us about the difference in opinion she has had one year after joining the print and signage industries Finding My Feet in a Fast-Moving Industry ▲ Jude Corless alongside a Mimaki UJF MkII e flatbed UV printer FRESH PERSPECTIVES | JUDE CORLESS 56 email: editor@signlink.co.uk Issue 260 - August / September 2025
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