About us

Thanks for stopping by to find out more about us. Seeing as you have taken the trouble to look this deeply at the site we thought we might as well tell you about how all of this got off the ground.

It would probably be fair to say that Graphic Display World was founded more by a happy accident and good fortune rather than any deep rooted strategic plan. Co-founders Mat Thompson and Colin Gillman have been friends for many years and had previously worked together at the same publishing house. Therefore it was inevitable that two such like minded people would eventually look for ways to forge a stronger business pairing, and over the years a varied array of publishing concepts had been discussed with nothing of any real tangible strength coming to the fore.

Fast forwarding to the back end of 2009, one of the darkest years for conventional magazine publishing and the two friends discover that they share the same ideal. Why bother trying to publish magazines that nobody had any budgets to support? Why not become electronic publishers instead? An e-publisher has no major overheads to speak of and has no real pressure to rake in top dollar advertising in order to make everything work. Let’s be honest, trade magazines don’t turn up at your premises by happy accident. They have to be designed, developed, edited, and most importantly they have to be sold. Publishing is a business just like any other business. Without advertising a trade publication cannot survive. It becomes a symbiotic relationship between the publisher and those wanting to promote their products and services to a captive, but nevertheless willing readership. And in a financial recession on page advertising becomes even harder to find. Therefore last year we saw many magazine publishers cutting back, reducing costs, reducing staff, printing fewer copies, combining issues, and some even closing their magazines entirely. This spells disaster for those still needing to communicate on a frequent basis with their industry.

Therefore our idea is simple. We aren’t re inventing the wheel. We are just making it smaller and more adaptable to the ever changing terrain. Our aim is to provide an engaging experience for everybody involved in printing, be it the buyer, printer or the supplier. We passionately believe that there needs to be a stronger element of transparency in the way that we begin to interact with one another as we move deeper into the twenty first century. This means that if you join our social networking community you will be completely at liberty, unlike sites such as LinkedIn for example, to contact people that you think that you would like to get to know better and to engage with them in a well managed, open, friendly and thoroughly professional business environment. The same goes for the forum too. So if you want to get right to the heart of your industry, you have come to the right place.

Please also join us at the global independent community Wide Format World - It's all about wide format.

Please join here - www.wideformatworld.com