Report from GOA – Helios

I was pleasantly surprised at the high number of resellers / VARs / System Integrators attending (all from Latin America). The attendees knew what they were looking for and were prepared to place orders on the spot. The products from HELIOS Software that generated the most requested demos were HELIOS WebShare, for remote file access, transfer, viewing, and hot folders (e.g. for PDF preflighting), and HELIOS PrintPreview, for web browser based certified monitor proofs.

Tom Hallinan
HELIOS Software GmbH

What Bob Dylan Can Teach Us About The Future Of Media

Dan Blank wrote this back in August, but we think it’s a great way to usher in the New Year of 2011. Thanks for sharing, Dan!

by DanBlank 

My life as I know it will soon disappear. Everything I have created in the past 37 years will cease to exist in a few days.

And I couldn’t be happier about it.

This has me considering how media is changing, how businesses are being run, and how we see opportunities and threats. There is a phrase in business I have never been comfortable with: “disruption.” To me, it focuses too much on the negative, too much on what was, not what will be.

Sometime this month, my first child will be born. And when this happens, in many ways, my life begins on that day. For one, I will change. I had dinner last night with someone who mentioned that when you walk out of the hospital with a newborn, the air is different, the sky is different. Every priority changes.

And for my child, everything I have done prior to the day he or she is born is simply a preface – that part of the book you skip over while getting to the meat of the story. Like when you watch a documentary about The Beatles, and they first review the economic status of Liverpool, England in the years before John and Paul met. You are just waiting for them to meet.

For those of you in media, in publishing; for the content creators and writers; for the marketers and business strategists, I wonder:

Are we so busy looking backwards at where we’ve been, that we aren’t focused on what we are becoming?  CONTINUE

The New Lay of the Land

by Jerry D. Simmons

Surviving and Thriving the Changes in Book Publishing

On April 3rd, 2010 book publishing changed forever. Apple launched the iPad, a digital reading device that officially heralds the dismantling of the big publisher model that has been dominant for more than sixty years. A new bench mark has been created and a universal platform is now established that allows every writer, publisher and business to profit without having to rely on a major publisher.

Jerry D. Simmons, a 32 year veteran of publishing, offers some very telling insights into the changes that are in store for the publishing industry.

Welcome to the new world of electronic publishing! There are three important trends in publishing today.

The first is that you no longer need a major publisher to be successful. You can be small and independent. You, the author, can retain all rights, ownership and control over your content and make a conscious choice to publish on your own.

The second is digital publishing is coming of age. eBooks are here to stay and their numbers and proliferation growing exponentially.  Writers, publishers and businesses finally have an open and level marketplace for their content.

Finally, the days of traditional publishing are numbered. Another giant industry that dominated the 20th century is about to bite the dust.

From the day the first mass-market paperback rolled off the presses in the early 1950’s book publishing has followed a very simple path, print and ship. The business evolved from paperback in supermarkets, to hardcover in mega bookstores. Nothing really changed in the way the publishers conducted business for almost 50 years. Terms of sale, discounts and distribution remained fairly static and print on paper for mass consumption and entertainment was the cornerstone of traditional book publishing.

The first inkling of change came with the introduction of computers in the workplace in the early 1970’s.  This was when people first started reading electronic files on computer screens and the first electronic books were produced. By the 1990, people were sending email and file attachments with tens and even hundreds of pages in length. And along came the Internet and graphical interfaces. By the year 2000, millions of people became adept and ever more reliant on computers and the Internet and document transmittal got easier and faster.

Electronic books (eBooks) broke on the scene in 2006 when Sony introduced their eBook Reader. Amazon launched the Kindle in 2007 and as the market for eBooks began to take shape as more and more independent publishers made significant inroads and achieved sales and financial success.  In 2008 and 2009, the major publishers started paying attention and getting concerned in earnest as electronic publishing and eBooks began to occupy a significantly greater role in the publishing picture, so significant that they even began to pose a perceived threat to the traditional publishing business model.

The tectonic shift in the marketplace occurred when Apple released the iPad, remarkable and elegant book sized machine allows people to see books in color with ease and crystal clarity.

Suddenly the publishing world is turned upside down. With the Internet, marketing can be readily done by anyone. Big publishers and bookstores are no longer the only way for authors to reach the masses. In fact, they may no longer even be needed at all.

What will publishing look like in the next ten to twenty years?

Will bookstores disappear? Are the days of traditional publishing with paper books being sold in bookstores numbered?

Digital book publishing is going to change the dynamics of the industry forever in five major ways. The big publishing companies may not survive because the new technologies allow little people, the writers, the small publishers and the individual creative businesses to create value packed products, communicate and market directly to their target audiences, and profit handsomely from the change.

The marketplace for distributing and selling eBooks is wide open and not restricted by the largest players in the world. Distribution to large numbers of eBook buyers and sellers online is accessible to everyone and not currently limited nor restrained by a dominant group of traditional big publishers.

The cost of entry into the digital marketplace is a fraction of the cost of print and is affordable by just about anyone who owns a computer. Converting content to an eBook format compatible with all the leading eBook Readers is a tiny investment considering the possible return. While global distribution may require translation into foreign languages, there is no cost associated with printing, warehousing, shipping and handling of paper books.

Author royalties and publisher products are substantially higher than is possible if a writer were under contract to a large publisher and significantly more than what is possible as an independent author with a distributed print book. The Return-On-Investment for any eBook is a fraction of what it costs compared to print. The potential profit margin for digital content makes this an exceptional investment for the creator and provider of content.

eBooks can be created with rich interactive multimedia content. This expands the entertainment potential and possible enjoyment people can experience and opens up the realm of publishing in ways that have yet to be defined or imagined. The same technology will support a sixty or seventy thousand word text as readily as a 100 word children’s book filled with pictures and illustrations. Animations, video, or dynamic entertainment of any type that can be designed to be published, marketed and delivered on wireless communications systems anywhere in the world.

Pricing for digital content is more dependent on volume than margin. Print books must maintain viability as a single unit for sale and be priced to cover all fixed and future expenses. The pricing for eBooks and digital content is simple and basically just focuses on the upfront creativity and production costs. There are no future reprint, shipping or handling costs associated with the production of eBooks and digital content.

To date, the major publishers have argued that the economics have not been right for a major shift to the digital world. In fact, the fear of lost print sales have stymied the widespread introduction of older titles for release as eBooks. This fear is important and real. The big publishers are worried. As well they should be.

eBooks and digital publishing threaten traditional publishing and the survival of the
the six largest world-wide publishing concerns, like nothing they have ever seen before. How will they survive?  Time will tell.

Going Digital

The digital market offers tremendous opportunities for independent writers, publishers and businesses large and small to profit from a digital publishing model that in effect becomes an extension of their own marketing.

However to succeed in the new world is not simply a matter of throwing content together and converting it to an eBook. Quality matters. Content matters. Value and the customers experience matters.  There is a right way and a wrong way to proceed.

Until April few businesses had any opportunity to utilize publishing as a mechanism for marketing. But now, the digital world has provided a new and exciting way to market the product or service of any company, publisher and writer. The shift in the marketplace and technology makes quality eBooks and quality digital content by quality people and organizations the most sought out commodity that the industry will make available.

A quality reading and entertainment or knowledge experience is what will attract customers and solidify the brand of the publishing companies of the next decade and beyond.

Those that short change the quality element of publishing are the ones who will fail.

Those that focus on creating and delivering superb quality are the ones who will distinguish themselves, attract the public interest and the sales that go with it.

For any individual or company to survive and thrive in the new digital marketplace they will need to utilize the skills of book publishers and work to create eBook and digital content that delivers notable satisfaction and personal enjoyment. Nothing less will survive the scrutiny and instant communication that exists in the world of today.

The changing landscape poses big problems for the print-on-demand publishing companies that are proliferating across the landscape today.

Paper is getting to expensive to offer and deliver. The writing is on the wall.  The book printing costs are reaching levels that people will not accept. Environmental impacts and waste disposal costs will eventually be deemed unacceptable. The days of unrestricted book printing are numbered.

The Apple iPad offers a suite of standardized formats for eBooks and rich multimedia content. The barriers to creation are diminishing with the relative ease with which eBooks and digital content can be created. The marketplace allows for such a quick and easy dissemination of ideas among people that quality creative works can be shared and delivered to the masses virtually overnight.

With the ever increasing sales of iPads and devices like it, the flow of electronic content will increase. The possibilities are endless and while the eReading devices continue to improve and drop in price the more widespread the market and potential for success. A critical tipping point is coming soon. The market potential is enormous.

The opportunity that exists for widespread market penetration via eBooks and digital publishing has never been greater. Some writers recognize this fact, few publishers and virtually no businesses understand the market in a way that easily indentifies the possibilities. For a small investment a company has the potential to reach hundreds of thousands even millions of customers.

There is phenomenal opportunity for individuals as well as business and companies to take advantage of digital publishing as long as they start soon and make it a part of an overall marketing strategy.  Those that seize the moment will be able to take part in the future.

For more information visit www.WritersReaders.com

Toolz – Only as Good as the People Who Use Them

by Mary Beth Smith

Consider this fair warning – this is a true rant. Make of it what you will…

We’ve all had this customer. You know…the well-educated, competent professional person who can figure out the basics of how to move around in their desktop publishing software, and then assumes that’s all there is to unleashing the creative genius within, and forever after doing all their own marketing materials. After all…how hard can it be? I’m a (pick one) lawyer, doctor, professor, physicist, composer, engineer, inventor, and on and on. And the obvious…I’m smarter than most people I know, so again…how hard can this be?

I walked in the shop this morning to see a stack of the ugliest brochures that have rolled out our door in a long, long time. Looking through one as it came off the folder, I asked if the customer had approved a hard copy proof , and was assured that she had. (This from the bindery operator who grinned and rolled his eyes as he watched my face.) It was obvious without even asking that the customer had created the file, so I didn’t bother.

The piece was an 8.5 x 11 information piece to explain to patients what a particular certification in the medical field entails, and why the person who attains that certification on top of their years of higher education can be trusted with virtually every aspect of your health care. The highly experienced and well-educated certificant included several photos showing her personal activities in the practice, laid it out herself, and generally had a high old time playing designer in her MS Publisher program.

So what was wrong with it? Well, if you’re in the industry, you can probably tell me without having seen it. Fuzzy photos with funky color, poor color choices with bad contrast, painfully awful typography, clumsy layout, a BLEED, no titles, no subtitles, and to top it all off, this 6-panel brochure was a Z-fold. Let me tell you – a Z-fold brochure with no title is one of the more confusing pieces of communication you’ll ever pick up. You can’t tell the front from the back, and with all the other layout sins in this one, you don’t CARE – because you don’t want to subject yourself to looking at it long enough to figure it out!

For a very reasonable amount of money (a lot less than I have spent on dental work this year…) you could have had a work of art, created by educated, certified professionals. What a concept… Leave the expensive toolz to those who are trained in using them.

Here’s my pledge: I will not operate on your body, extract your tooth, defend you in court, launch your space ship or write your text book. In return, I ask that you refrain from surgically destroying or otherwise circumventing all known rules of design, color, layout and typography. It makes my shop look bad, when all we did was output what you created.

Seems simple enough, don’t you think??

Rant over. For now…

The Real Reason the iPad Will be a Smash Hit

I got my iPad because I won it in a contest sponsored Agency Creative in Addison TX, North of Dallas. That is not to say I did not want an iPad: I certainly did. But I would probably have waited for the second generation version. I had considered a Kindle, and then I considered the Barnes and Noble Nook, which by the way I think is the best answer out there if all you’re looking for is a black and white e-reader, since it comes with free wireless and 3G connectivity and has some very nice navigation features.

I’ll hold off on the real reason I think the iPad will blow away all of the critics’ concerns for a minute and make a couple of comments first.

e-Readers will certainly dominate the publishing scene in short order. It’s easier, faster, cheaper and much more convenient than a hard copy book. Folks who say they wouldn’t dream of giving up the touch and feel of a real live book either haven’t held an eReader in their hands or simply are waxing nostalgic. For a student, eReaders are a no-brainer. Why lug 20 pounds of books around all day when a two pound eReader can hold them all? Magazines, books and newspapers will all benefit from the multimedia capabilities of the newer eReaders.

As for the environmental argument, I think the impact of eReaders vs hard copy books has to be somewhere along the lines of a draw. And lack of availability issue will rapidly become moot. Publishers are hopping on eBooks much more quickly than printers jumped into offset and then digital print.

Apple has once again introduced a product that just works. It’s the right size and shape, the right ease of use and the right blend of applications. It will surely evolve over time to add the missing features critics say it lacks. But it works extremely well just as it is.

But what is that real reason I was talking about? The reason I think the iPad will be a resounding success? It’s not because Apple sold 2 million of them in 60 days, though that’s pretty solid evidence. It is because when my mother-in-law saw my iPad, she wanted one. Not only did she want one, she gave me a check and sent me off to the Apple store to get it for her.

My mother-in-law is 84 (most folks call her “Grammy”), and the iPad does everything she needs. Her email, her web browsing and her word processing. And yes, she’s also on Facebook. More important is the iPad has a Scrabble and Pages apps for $9.99 apiece.

Admittedly, she did not want to mess with configuring everything and her old G4 Powerbook wasn’t up to syncing with the iPad (Snow Leopard required). But I bit the bullet and updated my MacBook Pro and gave her my old one. Poor me! (I was thinking about doing that anyway). So if anyone is looking for a G4 Powerbook, let me know.

She is having a ball with her new iPad. And she’s only asked me once how to use it. There’s a video on You Tube of a three year old using one and just figuring out what she needed to do to make it work. My mom-in-law cannot be considered a computer geek, but she’s having no trouble at all figuring out the iPad with almost no coaching from me. Apple has made a product that’s joy to use for young and old, and that’s rare in any market, let alone the tech world.

That’s why the iPad is going to be a smash hit.

“The Times, They are A’Changin…”

by Mary Beth Smith
Girls Who Print

I was a teen-ager when Bob Dylan released his sense-shattering song detailing the societal and cultural woes of the 1960s.  My white-bread world in a small college town in Central Texas seemed a universe away from the turmoil and upheaval he sang about. To me, the world didn’t really seem to be changing much at all.

Flash forward a few years to 1968. October 1, to be exact. Etched in my mind is the memory of climbing into bed that night, “great with child” as they used to say, and thumbing through my new edition of Reader’s Digest. I was horrified and frightened as I read the articles about the violent campus activites as students protested the Vietnam “non-war”. During the 9 months of my pregnancy, I had watched Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King be horribly assassinated, witnessed the out-of-control riots at the Republican convention, and listened to a steady barrage of nightly news coverage of the Vietnam debacle. I genuinely wondered if the world was ending. What hope for a good life could I give my yet unborn baby?

Well, guess what – She jumped into the fray the very next day, not afraid, not nervous – just noisy and hungry! She turned 40 last year, and is doing quite well, thank you very much, and so is her younger brother. It seems that in spite of the high profile and noise surrounding the upheaval AND my fear, the world didn’t end. Hmmm…

I’ve lived long enough to have seen turmoil, war, conflict, riots, massacres, political dirty tricks, and shameful corporate behavior before. The first few times, I let myself buy into the cultural anxiety that accompanies the wall-to-wall media coverage that drums the negative images and actions into our brains day and night. One of the big differences now? There are more avenues for the bad news to be shoved in our faces – louder, faster, more graphic – than there ever have been. Does it make it harder to not be swayed by it? Of course, it does. I have to consciously choose every day whether or not I’m going to sell out to fear. I choose not to.

OK – what does this have to do with Girls Who Print?  Well, all the bad news is affecting our industry, too. I’ve been hearing from women and men over the last year who have either been laid off, or are waiting for it to happen. Eveyone says the same thing: “It’s tough out there”…And so, I’m reminded of the 1960s, when we were overwhelmed with change and turmoil, and genuinely afraid for the future. Yes, the times, they ARE a’changin’…and we have to change with them. Because it’s highly unlikely that the world is ending – it’s just changing.

Maybe you need to do your work differently to make it accommodate the changes in your company. Maybe you’re faced with taking a job that’s NOT what you love to do. I know we’ve certainly had to tighten our belt at home to offset my husband’s (Guy Who Sells…) inability to work during a serious illness.

The thing is, though…we DO it. We change, we adjust, we modify. We bob and weave as needed to get through the rough spots. Because they WILL end…and before we know it, we’ll be 40 years older again. And still wondering how we listened to Bob Dylan’s scratchy vocals!

Meet Mary Beth, and the rest of the Girls Who Print:  http://www.linkedin/in/printwithmarybethsmith

So Much Blogging, So Little Communicating

Many are commenting about the demise of Graphic Arts Monthly and Graphic Arts Online. We will miss them, and I have trouble acknowledging that they are gone for good. Part of that is a sense that the parent company abandoned a child that was healthy, and left all the friends and followers of GAM in the lurch.

Of course many people are saying it’s no huge loss: that GAM and other print publications were not meeting current needs in the marketplace anyway, so “no big deal.” So what are the current needs?

Again and again I have heard that one thing folks think is missing is a place where folks can go to find out about (and discuss in a free and open atmosphere without a sales pitch) the various products that exist to help us automate the production process, eliminate errors and logjams, help us interface with our customers, process and transfer files and general make our lives easier and out bottom line better.

There is some truth to the accusation that most publications and web sites are underwritten and therefore controlled by vendors. Then again, someone has to cover the cost of putting up the site, producing content and so on. Users all want the information to be freely available.

There was a time when the VuePoint conferences met some of this need for information. They were designed to give voice to the folks in the trenches: the ones dealing with the everyday nitty gritty job of managing, RIPping, storing, exchanging and troubleshooting files for print production.

But VuePoint is long gone.

One other important element that needs to be considered is the plight of small vendors who can’t get information about their products to the folks who can use them. There are a lot of great products out their that few people know about. The idea of serving those vendors and providing a forum for discussion of print and multimedia products is the basis for the Printoolz web site.

Launched nearly a year ago and relaunched in May 2010 with a totally new interface, the site has just recently opened up a Forumz area to allow users a voice. Frankly, we wanted to do the Forums earlier and in fact had a section for forums in the early versions of the Printoolz site.

But now they have been totally revamped in light of the huge increase in traffic since the site was relaunched a couple of weeks ago. As a GAM writer and GAO forums manager, I know what a struggle it is to get a forum going online and getting folks to use it, post comments, and keep the conversation going. GAM had said they wanted to expand the forums and we did quintuple the number of forum users, but they never made the promised changes to the antiquated user interface. RBI simply did not want to make it a priority. Thus the forums never got the use they should have gotten.

Printoolz has nowhere near the 65K/month site visitors that GAM online had. But we are pleased to report the numbers have skyrocketed in the couple of weeks since the new interface when live. We looking at about 10K visitors in May if the trend holds. That seems like enough eyeballs to get a conversation going. We hope so.

We will allow vendors to participate in the forums, but only if they clearly indicate that they are vendors. Posts by vendors who do not identify themselves will be deleted whenever discovered. For one thing, we want to give the small vendors an opportunity to be heard, and the voice of all vendors, big or small, can certainly be helpful. We just don’t need another sales pitch.

LinkedIn has proven to be an exceptionally fertile area for getting conversations going in the area of print and multimedia production. Many of the LinkedIn groups have thousands of members (the Printoolz group has about 600 LinkedIn members at last count). But what we have found is that there are so many groups and so many areas where the interests of their members overlap, the conversation becomes a bit disjointed.

We very much believe LinkedIn is a huge part of the puzzle of connecting printers, designers and print providers to one another. There are many LinkedIn groups that deal with very specific aspects of the industry. Moderators in general do a good job of keeping the conversation going, eliminating spam and prohibiting vendors from taking over the conversation.

Whether it’s on the Printoolz site or a LinkedIn group, I hope everyone will make a real effort to participate in the conversation. Your voice is important and your stories and experience may be of immeasurable help to someone who is struggling with a problem or concern.

New Pantone Plus Improves on an Industry Standard

When Pantone came out with the new improved GOE system, which was a start-from-scratch rethink-the-whole-approach and reformulate-the-colors approach to color matching, they had an excellent idea: better control, more colors, closer matching and many other features designers should have liked. But they didn’t. As good as the GOE system is and as big an improvement over the old Pantone Matching System is – for so many reasons – designers and printers thought there was no need to change. It was not a resounding success even though it’s an excellent color matching system.

The users of Pantone’s color swatch books had a point. Printers have been using the PMS color guides for decades and they are clearly an industry standard. There is hardly a printing company or design studio that does not have a few Pantone Swatch books lying around. And even though many of them are old enough not to be terribly accurate, they are still used every day. So why switch?

We could give a slew of reasons to switch, not the least of which is you really should replace anything that is color critical every few years: inks fade, paper yellows, ink gets dropped on them and so on. Add to that the fact that the GOE color science and matching ability is better. But the point is that printers had something they were used to and that worked for them and printers only change if they really have to. The middle of a global recession is probably not the best time for reinventing the wheel.

So instead, Pantone went back to the system everyone knows and loves and instead of radically changing it, they simply improved it. If I tell you GOE is better, you might believe me, but chances are if you’re a buyer for a design studio you are going to order what your people are comfortable and familiar with. That’s really the essence of Pantone Plus.

What they have done is add 224 new colors and some neon, pastel and metallic chips and improved some of the paper and printing specifications for creating the swatch books.

I’m glad Pantone is not dropping the GOE line. They have built the new Pantone Plus specs into the slick Color Manager they created when GOE was initially released. And it is hoped that users will use the two matching systems as complementary to one another. In the meantime, the folks at Pantone are giving their users what they want – more colors and some other improvements, without giving them the headaches of switching the way they think about color matching. It’s a lot easier for printers and designers to wrap their heads around. That’s not a slight to the intelligence of printers and designers, it’s simply an illustration of just how complicated the art and science of matching colors is.

Here’s what’s in the new Pantone Plus Swatch books:

PANTONE PLUS SERIES FORMULA GUIDE and SOLID CHIPS
The FORMULA GUIDE and SOLID CHIPS introduce 224 new solid colors for a total of 1,341 colors, offering designers more options and flexibility in the creative process. The new colors are formulated with the same 14 ink bases that were the foundation of the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM, ensuring that printers worldwide can reproduce the new colors when specified. Consistent ink film thicknesses make the new colors easier for printers to match on press.

PANTONE PLUS SERIES COLOR BRIDGE
After extensive technical research, development and testing, a single version suitable for worldwide use is now available. The new COLOR BRIDGE guide has been printed within today’s ISO specifications and G7® processes, with the exception of a more desirable, optically brightened paper.

PANTONE PLUS SERIES CMYK
The new CMYK guide offers a smoother progression of 2,886 CMYK colors for four-color process printing. The guide is printed with bio-friendly ISO-certified inks using a digital workflow within ISO specifications and G7 processes, but on optically brightened paper, allowing for a single version that is suitable for worldwide use.

PANTONE PLUS SERIES PREMIUM METALLICS and PREMIUM METALLICS CHIPS
The PANTONE PLUS SERIES provides significantly enhanced tools for working with specialty colors that add flair and pop to any design. PREMIUM METALLICS includes 300 new, non-leafing metallics that have been formulated for greater brilliance even when coated.

PANTONE PLUS SERIES PASTELS & NEONS and PASTELS & NEONS CHIPS
Neon colors have been gaining popularity in print, spurred by the sportswear, swimwear and footwear markets. To satisfy this increasing demand, PASTELS & NEONS offers a broad collection of 154 pastels with 56 neon colors.

Send Us your Samples of Re-Defining Print

My recent post about adding dimension to Print has brought some intriguing responses, including several examples of printers leveraging the 3D nature of print. Folks are enhancing their offerings with die cuts, embossing, unique folds, metallic inks and much more. One print provider advocates magnets for helping the message of print to – quite literally – “stick.”

Gateway Press offers “MAGbooklets” which are sized at 3 1/2” x 8 3/8”, and available in 8 or 16 page format. The company calls it, “A print format that has staying power for your current customers.” The lightweight, 8-page format keeps the postage cost at a minimum for direct mail, and of course the company also offers targeted mailing for the finished product. They tout the product as being great for newspaper inserts, inclusion with regular mailings or even as solo mail pieces. But Gateway is also aware of the power of the Internet, and suggest customers, “Use MAGbooklets™ to support the building of your text/offers, mobile & on-line/email marketing initiatives.”

So what are you doing to help redefine print as a more powerful method of communicating in an age of digital media?

Send us samples of how you are making unique statements with your printed products and we just might post them on Printoolz. Email us at info@printoolz.com., or hit the comment button.

Adding Dimension to Print

The onslaught of digital print, e-paper and e-publishing have already put a heavy hit on the commercial print market. Small and large printers alike are seeing a serious drop in orders and profits. Small printers are shuttering their doors, medium size printers are being gobbled up by bigger printers and newspapers and magazines are folding.
It’s not pretty, but it’s not the end of print. It is the beginning of the next evolution. If you remember the evolution from letterpress to offset, you know there are still a few letterpress machines around being run at a profit, but very few folks who know how to run them. And cold type? It might be good for boat anchors. The evolution from offset to digital took a similar course. Where are the Compugraphics, the typesetters, the halftone cameras, the strippers and the color keys? Gone, along with those operators who didn’t learn so play nice with computers.
But even though pre-press is pretty much entirely digital, heavy iron is still churning out millions of tons of printed paper. Yes the capacity is shared by digital presses of all manner.
What seems clear is that simply applying ink to paper is not going to keep printing companies in business even for the short term. Instead, print providers are learning to do what only they can do: what no hand-held digital device will ever be able to do. They are leveraging their finishing capabilities to produce products only they can produce.
We’re talking metallics, varnishes, die cuts, embossing, textured papers and the like. Print providers have suddenly realized they can operate in three dimensions: something digital devices can only approximate. Print has touch and feel and depth.
Expect to see a huge surge in the percentage of printed materials that take advantage of the dimensionality of print. That will be great for the producers of specialty inks and varnishes and folks who know how to work minor miracles with complicated die cuts and fancy embossing dies. And it will be good for paper companies who can come up with unique textures and colors for their products.

Printers who want to succeed in a bad economy where digital media is diluting the market at a rapid pace need to do what they do best: be creative. It’s true that some forms of print will be around for decades to come, but to truly differentiate yourself from every other printer, offer your clients what no other form of media form can offer. Take print into a new dimension: literally.