A quarter of the way into the first century of the second millennium Gareth Ward takes a deep breath and gives his view of how far print has come and where it is going.
We are a quarter of the way through the 21st century, 25 years after what we can now see was the apogee of Drupa. That show came at the point when the printing industry was in its pomp, when digital printing knew its place as a technology to extend print’s footprint into the shortest print runs and opening the potential to personalised printing, but not to mount a serious challenge to litho printing, to Heidelberg, KBA, Manroland, Komori and all.
Personalised printing has still not made the impact that it was expected to have, though the market has shifted away from print runs where litho is essential to shorter runs where there is much less clarity.
Even in 2000 digital printing could produce the print run of one, though not at speed nor at a sensible cost. Moreover the infrastructure needed to exploit the capability of the print technology was simply not ready. The finishing and workflow technologies were not up to the job and the sort of data needed to drive the presses was just not in place.
The promise, often made by consultants with a vested interest in supporting the technology of those paying for their insights, remains unfulfilled. Making predictions can be a thankless and futile business.
However, it demonstrates that whatever the breakthrough that the scientists, engineers and developers have achieved, success can depend on matched technologies, on demand for capabilities that have not existed previously (and are a challenge to the existing order of things) and on shifting the inbuilt inertia of human nature.
Nevertheless Drupa 2000 was full of hope and expectations, full of excess even. The technology seemed to be running in favour of printing: PDF meant that files could be transferred and printed out with the expectation that the job would print; computer to plate was making litho presses a step change more efficient; the first shoots of digital printing were pushing upwards, though not without criticisms.
Heidelberg occupied two halls and showed a concept for how it saw inkjet printing; Xerox had its own ‘special’ hall adapted from a warehouse where its portfolio included two offset presses; Indigo, 18 months before its acquisition by HP, showed a B2 concept press rotating above the main stand.
In the background the Dotcom bubble was bursting. At this point there was no advertising on Google, Amazon was a loss making start up business and all was well in the world of print. Even newspapers were having a good time: Newsprinters was on the point of building new sites to replace Wapping.
Today that seems like a lifetime ago, belonging to sepia tinted films where Morris Marinas and Ford Cortinas roamed the streets, where bobbies kept the peace and pubs shut before midnight.
Today we are frequently told by commentators that ‘print is dead’, replaced by digital communications, video and social media communications. Five hundred years after Gutenberg, print is on its death bed. There might be something to this when discussing newspapers, magazines and the long run catalogues that were thriving 25 years ago. But it is far from an accurate description of today’s print landscape where books are more than holding their own, where there are more and more uses for large format print, where digital print on textiles for apparel is only at the beginning of its journey.
Where that journey ends can only be guessed at. Consider what printing might look like in 25 years’ time when we are mid way through the century. This is going to be shaped by the world at the time: the dystopian view being that climate breakdown will be in full swing and creating unprecedented and uncontrollable changes in society. In this scenario, print will do well to survive beyond printing packaging, posters and some books.
The utopian view will in contrast have print as a desirable, luxury item, highly bespoke and frequently embellished through varnish and foils, beyond the constraints of four-colour process inks and highly cherished by those with the time and space to read and enjoy it.
Print will be capable of doing far more than at present. Experimental work in printing electronics and solar panels will have become mainstream allowing suppliers that have depended on a slowly shrinking commercial print market to find a new lease of life.
Print though will be changed by advances in computing power, particularly in artificial intelligence, digital data flows and databases with vast amounts of personal data. The barriers that prevented the development of personalised printing in 2000 will no longer be a constraint. Society may be though, if sentiment turns against the holding and use of personal data more than in the present day.
Algorithms will be able to pull together and create bespoke products that go well beyond promoting a hero product in a catalogue tailored according to past purchases. This is the sort of application that high speed inkjet printing presses are crying out for, something that is impossible using toner or analogue printing.
Litho presses will be around, though essentially completely autonomous from changing plates and paper, checking and monitoring quality and making any required adjustments on the fly. The mountains of data that AI systems can access and understand means that printing can move beyond four-colour process printing to expanded gamuts through the use of additional colours. The AI will take care of managing the colour separations, avoiding any screen clashes or similar artefacts and delivering a perfect match to the paper being used.
Algorithms will be able to handle the process side of printing to a far better degree than has been possible with human oriented systems. Manufacturers are already thinking about what a press optimised for robot operation rather than human operation would look like. It is coming.
The change means that the role of the printer is itself changing radically. People will be essential at the start of the process, consulting on the choice of substrate, the formats, the finishes, the timings – the decisions that are very human and will help the job achieve its aims. If print is to retain any functional role, which is unlikely, AI will talk to AI and people need not be involved. There will remain a role for print that needs an emotion led aspect and that will need humans to manage and drive.
Print though must fall into wider societal frameworks. The most obvious of these is the need for the nation to be at net zero by 2050. Many businesses are making great strides towards this destination, others pay lip service to the need for sustainability and others are yet to give the subject due consideration. By 2050 there will be no choice.
We will be close to achieving a circular economy by this point, with every action having an impact measure applied to it. This applies well beyond carbon emissions and zero to landfill policies, water consumption for instance.
Energy will not be the problem as renewables will be producing electricity in such abundance that its price will no longer be an issue, assuming that the fossil fuel lobby, like tobacco before it, cannot force delays. That will be a political choice. The direction of travel is set however.
Packaging will be changed by legislation designed to avoid waste and promoting the circular economy. It will continue to use print to differentiate between brands and products and as a marketing device. However, packaging may not be produced in the ways it is now where thousands of cartons are printed and shipped to a different factory for packing, or labels printed to be apply to a jar or bottle. The printer is likely to be eliminated from the supply chain as packages are printed at the point of filling using high speed inkjet printheads. Labels may disappear altogether.
The first steps in this direction are already in place, demonstrating that some are thinking in these terms. Demonstrating too that the seeds from which the future of printing will grow have already been planted and are poking above the ground. Just which of these shoots will eventually grow into flourishing plants and which will shrivel for lack of the appropriate nutrients is not really knowable. Twenty-five years ago, Landa Digital Printing and nanography was unknown, yet to become the most talked about development since four-colour litho. In another quarter of a century nanography may have become a forgotten technology, a footnote as the printing industry moves relentlessly forwards. Or it may be the technology that matches the requirements of a new age.
Printing on the precipice
A quarter of the way into the first century of the second millennium Gareth Ward takes a deep breath and gives his view of how far print has come and where it is going.
We are a quarter of the way through the 21st century, 25 years after what we can now see was the apogee of Drupa. That show came at the point when the printing industry was in its pomp, when digital printing knew its place as a technology to extend print’s footprint into the shortest print runs and opening the potential to personalised printing, but not to mount a serious challenge to litho printing, to Heidelberg, KBA, Manroland, Komori and all.
Personalised printing has still not made the impact that it was expected to have, though the market has shifted away from print runs where litho is essential to shorter runs where there is much less clarity.
Even in 2000 digital printing could produce the print run of one, though not at speed nor at a sensible cost. Moreover the infrastructure needed to exploit the capability of the print technology was simply not ready. The finishing and workflow technologies were not up to the job and the sort of data needed to drive the presses was just not in place.
The promise, often made by consultants with a vested interest in supporting the technology of those paying for their insights, remains unfulfilled. Making predictions can be a thankless and futile business.
However, it demonstrates that whatever the breakthrough that the scientists, engineers and developers have achieved, success can depend on matched technologies, on demand for capabilities that have not existed previously (and are a challenge to the existing order of things) and on shifting the inbuilt inertia of human nature.
Nevertheless Drupa 2000 was full of hope and expectations, full of excess even. The technology seemed to be running in favour of printing: PDF meant that files could be transferred and printed out with the expectation that the job would print; computer to plate was making litho presses a step change more efficient; the first shoots of digital printing were pushing upwards, though not without criticisms.
Heidelberg occupied two halls and showed a concept for how it saw inkjet printing; Xerox had its own ‘special’ hall adapted from a warehouse where its portfolio included two offset presses; Indigo, 18 months before its acquisition by HP, showed a B2 concept press rotating above the main stand.
In the background the Dotcom bubble was bursting. At this point there was no advertising on Google, Amazon was a loss making start up business and all was well in the world of print. Even newspapers were having a good time: Newsprinters was on the point of building new sites to replace Wapping.
Today that seems like a lifetime ago, belonging to sepia tinted films where Morris Marinas and Ford Cortinas roamed the streets, where bobbies kept the peace and pubs shut before midnight.
Today we are frequently told by commentators that ‘print is dead’, replaced by digital communications, video and social media communications. Five hundred years after Gutenberg, print is on its death bed. There might be something to this when discussing newspapers, magazines and the long run catalogues that were thriving 25 years ago. But it is far from an accurate description of today’s print landscape where books are more than holding their own, where there are more and more uses for large format print, where digital print on textiles for apparel is only at the beginning of its journey.
Where that journey ends can only be guessed at. Consider what printing might look like in 25 years’ time when we are mid way through the century. This is going to be shaped by the world at the time: the dystopian view being that climate breakdown will be in full swing and creating unprecedented and uncontrollable changes in society. In this scenario, print will do well to survive beyond printing packaging, posters and some books.
The utopian view will in contrast have print as a desirable, luxury item, highly bespoke and frequently embellished through varnish and foils, beyond the constraints of four-colour process inks and highly cherished by those with the time and space to read and enjoy it.
Print will be capable of doing far more than at present. Experimental work in printing electronics and solar panels will have become mainstream allowing suppliers that have depended on a slowly shrinking commercial print market to find a new lease of life.
Print though will be changed by advances in computing power, particularly in artificial intelligence, digital data flows and databases with vast amounts of personal data. The barriers that prevented the development of personalised printing in 2000 will no longer be a constraint. Society may be though, if sentiment turns against the holding and use of personal data more than in the present day.
Algorithms will be able to pull together and create bespoke products that go well beyond promoting a hero product in a catalogue tailored according to past purchases. This is the sort of application that high speed inkjet printing presses are crying out for, something that is impossible using toner or analogue printing.
Litho presses will be around, though essentially completely autonomous from changing plates and paper, checking and monitoring quality and making any required adjustments on the fly. The mountains of data that AI systems can access and understand means that printing can move beyond four-colour process printing to expanded gamuts through the use of additional colours. The AI will take care of managing the colour separations, avoiding any screen clashes or similar artefacts and delivering a perfect match to the paper being used.
Algorithms will be able to handle the process side of printing to a far better degree than has been possible with human oriented systems. Manufacturers are already thinking about what a press optimised for robot operation rather than human operation would look like. It is coming.
The change means that the role of the printer is itself changing radically. People will be essential at the start of the process, consulting on the choice of substrate, the formats, the finishes, the timings – the decisions that are very human and will help the job achieve its aims. If print is to retain any functional role, which is unlikely, AI will talk to AI and people need not be involved. There will remain a role for print that needs an emotion led aspect and that will need humans to manage and drive.
Print though must fall into wider societal frameworks. The most obvious of these is the need for the nation to be at net zero by 2050. Many businesses are making great strides towards this destination, others pay lip service to the need for sustainability and others are yet to give the subject due consideration. By 2050 there will be no choice.
We will be close to achieving a circular economy by this point, with every action having an impact measure applied to it. This applies well beyond carbon emissions and zero to landfill policies, water consumption for instance.
Energy will not be the problem as renewables will be producing electricity in such abundance that its price will no longer be an issue, assuming that the fossil fuel lobby, like tobacco before it, cannot force delays. That will be a political choice. The direction of travel is set however.
Packaging will be changed by legislation designed to avoid waste and promoting the circular economy. It will continue to use print to differentiate between brands and products and as a marketing device. However, packaging may not be produced in the ways it is now where thousands of cartons are printed and shipped to a different factory for packing, or labels printed to be apply to a jar or bottle. The printer is likely to be eliminated from the supply chain as packages are printed at the point of filling using high speed inkjet printheads. Labels may disappear altogether.
The first steps in this direction are already in place, demonstrating that some are thinking in these terms. Demonstrating too that the seeds from which the future of printing will grow have already been planted and are poking above the ground. Just which of these shoots will eventually grow into flourishing plants and which will shrivel for lack of the appropriate nutrients is not really knowable. Twenty-five years ago, Landa Digital Printing and nanography was unknown, yet to become the most talked about development since four-colour litho. In another quarter of a century nanography may have become a forgotten technology, a footnote as the printing industry moves relentlessly forwards. Or it may be the technology that matches the requirements of a new age.
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