Print isn’t dead: How a Singapore printer is keeping paper relevant in a digital world

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A publisher once came to Allegro Print with an unusual request. “I want a book that looks like a dog bit into it,” recalled founder and executive director Merlyn Tay.

Most printers would have turned down the request. Instead, Tay’s team went to hardware stores, looking for tools that could cut into a finished book to resemble teeth marks. They eventually found a way to make the effect look artfully deliberate.

Unconventional as this was, it was hardly the strangest job the team has taken on. At the creative print house’s headquarters in Tai Seng, Singapore, staff have done just about everything imaginable to paper, from tearing pages and burning edges to ageing cards and boxes by hand, making new books look as if they have spent decades in a dusty attic.

This ingenuity, along with a willingness to push the boundaries of print, has been key to the company’s longevity. For 27 years, Tay, later joined by her husband Ho Yeow Liang, has run Allegro Print in an industry that has spent much of the past two decades being declared doomed.

The business has survived by moving away from scale. Instead of chasing mass volume, Allegro has built its reputation on niche, creative work that many other printers would rather avoid. Today, designers, artists and independent publishers approach the company to produce some of Singapore’s most inventive and tactile indie art books, magazines and zines, including titles such as Meantime, Rubbish Famzine and Eastside.

The same sensibility extends beyond books. Allegro also produces distinctive printed collateral that stands out in a digital-first world: creative calendars, design-led annual reports, small-batch invitations and business cards that resemble old-school calling cards rather than afterthoughts. For the Lien Foundation’s annual report George’s Anatomy, the team developed an unconventional binding method to achieve a rounded spine. Some pages were printed with glow-in-the-dark ink, while each copy was housed in its own acrylic folder.

For Mount Elizabeth Hospital’s 45th anniversary commemorative publication, a project that took almost two years to complete, the covers and cases were made from actual medical scrubs, doctors’ gowns and old hospital curtains. Each copy also contained a tile from the old building.

In some ways, the company’s bet on the physical has come full circle. Even though screens dominate everyday life, printed books have found fresh cultural currency, helped along by BookTok, celebrity book clubs and a new generation of readers drawn to the social and sensory pleasures of books. At the Singapore Art Book Fair, Ho has observed young visitors queuing for more than an hour to buy publications they are unlikely to find in mainstream bookstores.

For Tay, this renewed appetite for print feels like an unexpected affirmation of a career that began almost by accident. She entered the trade through a colour reproduction company that worked on museum and gallery projects from Europe.

It was there that she discovered a love not specifically for books, but for paper itself. “I like paper, to be specific. I am endlessly fascinated by the different types of paper and print material,” she said.

She went on to launch Allegro Print in 1999. Ho joined as executive director in 2010, leaving a corporate career in telecommunications to help steer the company through a period when the print industry was already being forced to reinvent itself.

The couple had even discussed shuttering the business, which was struggling as clients increasingly favoured digital formats over print. But they also felt a responsibility towards the long-serving colleagues who had been with the company since the early days.

Ho’s outsider perspective proved useful. Having seen how digitalisation had disrupted the telecommunications industry, he understood that Allegro could not survive by doing business as usual. “We had to evolve and reposition ourselves as a printer,” he said. “That’s how we became where we are today, with the different brands that we have developed over the years.”

That pivot has since led to the creation of several offshoots: the award-winning Offcut, which transforms leftover paper from the printing process into design-led stationery; LayerPlay, which specialises in murals, wallpapers, decals and art prints, including collaborations with artists; and Oolors, an e-commerce platform that sells stationery, books and other design-led products.

Through All-Book-S, which is available on Oolors, Allegro also gives independent publishers another route to market beyond launches and fairs, helping to make small print runs more viable.

In January 2027, the couple will showcase a selection of Singapore-made publications at the Tokyo Art Book Fair, their first overseas art book fair.

This shift has been central to Allegro’s long-term survival. Tay and Ho recognised early on that while print was not disappearing, the kind of print people valued was changing. Commodity jobs such as flyers, brochures, coupons and mass-produced marketing collateral were declining sharply as clients moved those functions online. Tay recalls the moment this became clear: “I thought our competitors took our business away, until I visited the shopping centres and everything literally became LED.”

Rather than compete on volume, Allegro Print has carved out a more specialised role as a print consultant and creative production house, partnering with designers, artists and independent publishers on smaller, more considered projects where paper stock, colour, finishing and form are scrutinised down to the smallest detail. “Print is now about creating niche projects with low volume and a high mix of options,” said Ho.

This is also why Allegro has become a valued collaborator for creatives whose ideas do not fit neatly into a standard print order. The company has taken on projects that require not just printing, but problem-solving, experimenting and a tolerance for trial and error – essentially tasks that most volume-driven printers would turn down.

For one project, Tay was asked to produce an effect that went against every instinct of the trade: ink that smudged. “For a printer, when we print, the ink cannot smudge. That is a printing error,” she said. She initially rejected the idea but eventually accepted the job after learning that it was part of a research project. It took more than six months to achieve the desired result.

Other experiments have found unexpected second lives. Ho originally bought a UV printer to print on phone cases, golf balls and other small objects, but the idea never quite took off. Rather than write off the investment as a white elephant, the team found another use for the machine, printing on acrylic, wood, leather and other materials that designers could incorporate into their publications.

That willingness to experiment has also led Allegro to projects such as Rubbish Famzine, the cult independent publication by Singaporean family art collective Holycrap. Some issues require 14 or 15 colours, making them technically demanding and expensive to produce in small quantities. For Tay, however, such projects are an opportunity to showcase the company’s capabilities. “Their concepts are so unique that I am willing to do it to stretch our ability,” she said.

Ultimately, there is no denying this simple truth: print endures by offering what screens cannot – objects worth touching, keeping and sometimes even biting into.