History and Future

My 5 print related thoughts for 2008

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- Print providers will consider to recruit more knowledge workers next to craftsmen. As a consequence of that they will realize that differentiation is necessary.

The print industry is known as a slow mover, when it comes to technology and innovation. Despite that, 2008 will sure be the year to officially start playing the card of the knowledge worker. Print providers tend to hide themselves, fearing competition and suppliers. Blogs like http://printceoblog.com , http://lifeofprint.com , http://www.pixus.com/blog/, http://printfuture.ingridszurowski.de/, http://www.unioncopy.com/, http://projectcenter.wordpress.com/, http://blog.postful.com/, http://www.iheartprint.com, are proving that it’s worth to share knowledge and engage conversations.

That doesn’t mean we need to forget the operator and labor intensive jobs.

The ongoing pricing battle in the printing industry is perhaps due to the fact that we all do and think the same: putting ink on paper as cheap and fast as possible. In that thinking process we are cutting on budgets and employees, without being innovative. At the end we will lose all.

- Printing will shift from the product ‘ink on paper’ to ‘virtual content materialization’ and will shift from authority to experience.

Printing was for more than 100 years the king of content. Newspaper and magazines were considered as being trustworthy and valuable. Who needed to influence used those media. That has changed and printers need to realize that we can’t claim authority anymore. Since advertisers prefer online, because of obvious reasons: cheaper, measurable and highly personalisable, we need to think of other models where printing has advantage. One of them is the experience of reading. Amazon launched the Kindle as a digital reading machine. Reactions where great but I heard a lot of people who preferred the experience of holding and browsing a glossy magazine.

All source for print is virtual, and exists in more than just plain text. 3D printing is another experience that will gain ground in 2008. Not only will we be able to order our materialized virtual object, we will be able to produce it ourselves.
Threadless and alikes, with personalized t-shirts is also a great example of materialized virtual content to serve an experience.

Print will be more personal, delivered through several services.

Taking benefit of digital print solutions, print buyers will start realizing that printing can be personalized without extra costs. They will also be aware of the fact that personalized is more than name and address.

Print providers will differentiate themselves from others with building specific print solutions. iStockphoto selected this year an exclusive print provider: www.myphotopipe.com. Google acquired a patent for “Customization of content and advertisements in publication”. www.PediaPress.com leads Wikipedia into the world of print. But one of the most beautiful examples, for me this year, was www.postful.com.

- Standardization and measurement in (small) production.

Not only the manual process, but the workflow needs to be standardized. Perhaps JDF will gain more ground in small volume markets. I don’t know if it fits the needs for every case but it is a tool to start with. Workflows will function as frameworks for digital content printing.

Print providers will eventually see the benefit of production statistics, even in small volume printing.

Printing needs to be green.

Printing doesn’t mean delivering as much paper as possible. Printing needs to serve the need to inform, to entertain and to experience on the right material, in the right amount of that material.

The green thing isn’t a marketing tool anymore. It will become essential in surviving.
Machine suppliers are putting effort in waste collection, manufacturing bio degradable toners and ink, chloride free paper, … Print providers will start putting effort in educating their customers to buy green. Duplex printing and printing on recycled will be preached by providers.

What do you think of 2008 Feel free to add comments and remarks on thos five points. The print industry covers a lot, those thoughts are based on my experiences as a print provider.[/lang_en]

[lang_nl]De Nederlandstalige versie van deze post vind je op mijn persoonlijke blog.[/lang_nl]