Some of the summer 2011 signage from Imaging Specialists.
From Memorial Day to Labor Day, Imaging Specialists is your best value for summer signage.
ISI’s colorful, cut-vinyl banners and corrugated signs are an attractive, affordable, and durable way for you to get noticed!
You’ve worked hard to build your business. You trust professionals to help with accounting, banking, computer networking- even lawn care. Why leave your public image in the hands of anyone less than experts?
We can build a design from your idea or sketch- no matter how rough. We learned a long time ago that nothing matters but our customer’s satisfaction.
Colorful, corrugated plastic Quilt Guild signs for their Annual Quilt Show in July
What does your logo look like? Whether you need a resizable vector graphic for a van wrap, a cmyk version for print, jpgs for your newsletter or pms colors for a t-shirt design- whatever your need- ISI can give you the optimal color, resolution or format for your application.
Banners for the Alleghany Historical - Genealogical Society booth at the 2011 Blue Ridge Craft Fair
In today’s economy, advertising is essential, if only to keep your name in front of potential customers. With over 23 years of experience in graphic arts, ISI can give your marketing the professional look it deserves.
ISI’s latest project is a 280-page book titledDescendants of William Black & Nancy Allison. It is a family history of the Black family here in Alleghany County and our largest book-design project to date. The book features over 100 photographs, letters and information on William and Nancy’s family, gathered by Lorene Sturgill of Piney Creek, North Carolina.
The book is a marriage of experience and new technology. We input the entire family history, scanned and optimized the photographs, built an index of descendants, and, after the initial order, plan to print the casebound books on-demand.
Cover design by Imaging Specialists, Inc. for Descendants of William Black and Nancy Allison
You may or may not know we’re not new to book printing. Imaging Specialists has a long history in books, from humble phone directories at R.R. Donnelley in Portland Oregon, to high-end, leather bound, Easton Books at Nicholstone in Nashville, Tennessee, we’ve shot more book pages than most shops our size.
Thousands of titles passed through our lenses during our years in Greensboro.
We’re not even new at family histories, either. For years we shot pages to imposition for Craftsman, Delmar, Edwards & Broughton, and other North Carolina printers on our projection step-and-repeat systems. Sometimes it was the only way to copy them.
It’s this experience that helps us to anticipate many problems before they arise. This is the first of several titles we will be publishing this year.
Interested in producing your own book? You don’t have to go to the Triangle or even the Triad. Give us a call to find out how easy it can be.
The Descendants of William Black & Nancy Allison will be available later this month.
October 23, 2010 members of the Alleghany Historical-Genealogical Society traveled to Mooresville to receive a Joe M. McLaurin Newsletter Award from the North Carolina Society of Historians at their annual awards banquet.
This marks the second consecutive year AHGS has won the award. This year NCSH received over 700 nominations and awarded 95 winners.
Third consecutive Joe M. McLaurin Newsletter Award for AHGS and Imaging Specialists.
Members representing Alleghany included President Roy Hunt, Board Member Pauline Jolly, and Jeff and Claire Halsey of Imaging Specialists, who produce the quarterly newsletter.
NCSH Judges’ Collective Comments of the newsletter:
“This newsletter was interesting from cover to cover. It contains eye-catching vintage and current photographs that draw the reader toward the text; has a fantastic layout and design; is nicely published; and serves its membership well. We could find no fault with this publication which is slated to receive recognition via the unanimous decision of this panel. We found it to be both professional and informative. Editor Halsey is doing a tremendous job in every avenue of the craft and should be highly commended for his work.”
For information about how Imaging Specialists can help make your award winning newsletter, call Jeff or Claire at 1-336-372-3002 or go to imagingspecialists.net/marketing
Writing our book, coming up with that list of 75 business tips, and being interviewed on TV sure took a lot out of us. And we’re celebrating the Parkway’s 75th Anniversary.
But we wanted to focus on what’s happening next weekend in Sparta, the Mountain Heritage Festival. We’re sponsors of the event and we wanted to share our involvement with this year’s Festival.
20 foot 2010 Mountain Heritage Banner by Imaging Specialists
The Chamber originally asked for a banner listing the names of the MH Sponsors, but we thought we could almost as easily add their logos. So here is our contribution to the day, 46″ by 20′ and 9-colors- maybe the largest banner ever at the festival, certainly the largest out of our shop.
Heritage Day’s always a lot of fun. There are lots of food booths and craft vendors and all the shops downtown are open. Our prints at The Sparta Store will still be priced at 75%, in honor of the Parkway’s 75th. We’ll have the shop open all day (except for a little while in the middle of the day when we’ll close long enough to get ourselves some lunch. And hopefully a funnel cake. Or ribbon fries. or both.)
In between watching the bands and chowing down, come in to the store and say “Hey!” And be sure to stay till 3:00 to see the Possum Queen Contest at the Alleghany Jubilee.
If you need a 20′ banner with 21 local business logos or if you just need great yard-sale signs, stop by Imaging Specialists. Mention this post for a 10% discount on your next banner order through the month of October.
Recently, Roy Ackland and David Weatherly from Roy’s Folks at WGHP FOX8 in the Piedmont-Triad honored us with a visit. We had sent out a press release on our book Family Photos- Eli Hamilton Halsey and Lillian Blanche Smith and they were looking for a day trip to escape the hot weather, so they came to Sparta.
Kingsport Press
We were able to talk about the book, and our history in the printing industry. My dad told about his career in printing- in Roanoke, Bristol and in the photographic department at Kingsport Press. He eventually went to work for Opti-Copy, Inc. in Kansas City, traveling all over the world installing equipment and working with dealers. I went to work with Opti after school and traveled extensively in installation and service of the step-and-repeat cameras we built.
Opti-Copy, Inc. in Lenexa, Kansas in the eighties.
When the Japanese company, Polychrome, bought the company, Dad and I moved to Greensboro where he co-founded Imaging Specialists, Inc. with partner, Gerry Foss. ISI was a prepress trade shop supplying printers with one piece, plate-ready film. We produced film for books, publications, ads, and labels and worked with offset, roto-gravure, flexo and even silk screeners.
Since we had contacts at printing companies across the country, we were well positioned for farm-out and overflow work. My brother, Alan, (also an ex Opti-Copy employee) and I redesigned the drive systems on our cameras and successfully marketed that idea and imposition software to other Opti owners. Eventually, we were able to buy out Mr. Foss’ half of the business and the company was truly then a “Mom & Pop” organization. My mother, Eloise, had been working with us since we started in Greensboro and my wife, Sharon, had joined us in 1994.
Ron Halsey with one-piece, plate-ready, final film, Imaging Specialists’ main output for years.
Desktop publishing and the digital revolution finally killed our part of the prepress work flow and Dad decided to retire in 2000. We knew we had to reinvent ourselves, so Sharon and I also moved the business to the mountains in 2003.
Our experience in graphics and printing has helped us in the digital age. We run Adobe Creative Suite on Mac and PC platforms. We have expanded into the internet and now build and host websites. Our daughter, Claire, has joined us, now, and handles the web work.
We think our prepress experience coupled with on-demand printing makes a perfect fit. We offer services that include page layout and design, photo optimization, illustration, and e-commerce and marketing websites.
These turn-key book assembly services we perform are much like the days when we would accept a stack of pages (literally, a basket-case) correct and assemble them into what the printer needed to produce a book. And with on-demand, self-publishing is very reasonable. Contact us if you have an idea or a book that you want to discuss.
And check out our story on television, next week. Thanks Roy and David. I can’t think of a better way to wrap up Dad’s birthday present.
