Managing Director, Colin, was a co-founder of B&V over 22 years ago and is the driving force in B&V's success. He is a qualified Graphic Designer, Fine Art Printmaker, Photographer and Marketeer who leads the company with a constantly creative eye.

This ambitious Leo set out to create a company where teamwork is essential and every member of the 'pride' is equally valued.

Born in Yorkshire, but of Scottish descent, Colin married into Hampshire - even becoming a Saints supporter (but never wearing the shirt!)

Posted by Colin at 2:44 PM

Each month we will be breaking through the jargon so you can make sense of it all. This month we are going to be looking at file types.

.pdf – 'Portable Document Format' is a file type that can be opened whether you are on a PC or Apple Mac. From an original use of mainly proofing artwork it is increasingly becoming used for press output.

.pps – 'Power Point Show' is a Microsoft PowerPoint file which can be emailed around in place of the original .ppt file. They normally contain a slide show presentation that will automatically start and become full screen on a double click.

.tif or tiff – 'Tagged Image File Format' are generally used for print ready files. This format contains all high resolution data necessary for final output. It can also be implemented for on screen use.

.jpg or jpeg – 'Joint Photographic Experts Group' is a image file type that has a built-in compression. The higher the compression level the more detail in the image that is lost. .jpg is the format of choice for quality web images.

.gif – 'Graphic Interchange Format' is an image format with built-in compression commonly used in web pages. This format is limited to 256 colours so is not suitable for photography or press output.

.eps – 'Encapsulated PostScript' is a file format for pictures which can then be conveniently imported into a page layout.

.html – 'Hypertext Markup Language' is the coding behind every web page. HTML is text based and uses a system of naturally worded tags to produce web links, picture handling and page layout.

.doc – This file type is one used and created by Microsoft Word for word processing.

Posted by Colin at 2:43 PM

The Christmas Cracker
Before you start to create your cocktail you will need the following implements and ingredients:

• 1 wine glass


• 1 measure orange juice


• 1 measure lemon juice


• 1 measure pineapple juice


• 1 measure grapefruit juice


• 2 dashes of grenadine


• Soda water to top up

Shake the ingredients well with ice and strain into a wine glass. Top up with soda water and decorate with fruit slices. Now sit back and relax with this stress–relieving creative cocktail from B&V.

Posted by Colin at 2:42 PM