The printing industry rarely has the opportunity to set its own direction to the future. This has been the case for at least the last 50 years ever since the widespread use of litho printing brought affordable colour to magazines and the advertising industry. Print, and cinema, were the only channels for messaging in colour and print was somewhat more convenient. Printers enjoyed a 30-year halcyon period when good money could be made and what they produced, for lack of rivals, was very much in demand.
But since the turn of the century and especially since the Lehmann Brothers crash, printers have been battling head winds. The internet, smartphone technology and more recently 5G and the Internet of Things and most recently Covid-19. All these have had a huge impact on print without printers being in control of these developments.
It was ever thus. Outside the development of lithography and laser imaging, print has been driven by wider developments. In the nineteenth century increasing literacy prompted demand for newspapers and novels, the development of laser diodes coincided with the creation of CTP technologies and latterly digital printing. New engineering techniques developed for the microchip sector is today allowing mass production of inkjet printheads. Inkjet technology is still in its infancy and its potential largely untapped.
Very few printers think of these longer term shifts. We feel the earthquakes but do not recognise the tectonic movements underneath that create the earthquakes. When we do, there is opportunity to be had. Robert Keane, for example, recognised this while completing a thesis at one of the top business schools in France. Drawing inspiration from Jeff Bezos at Amazon, then in its relative infancy, he realised that the internet could be harnessed to enable the purchase of print and that by consolidating hundreds and thousands of orders for the humble business card along a highly automated production process, a decent margin might be made. Vistaprint was born and launched the online print sector. More than 20% of print is being ordered this way already and there is no end to this growth in sight. Keane, of course, was not a printer and did not think like a printer.
That is important because those of us with our heads down at work, stuck to the day to day of finding orders, filling presses and managing staff, rarely have the opportunity to look up or to feel the shift of the ground beneath our feet. This is where outside help may be needed. This is the role of a show like Drupa. This is why understanding what technology can do and how it works will help process the implications and discover opportunities.
Drupa, like so much else, was forced to close its doors and go online this time around. While we all missed the conviviality, the ability to smell and touch new equipment and see new applications being demonstrated, some of the key messages came though loud and clear in the presentations over the four days it lasted.
First AI is coming. We can argue whether this represents artificial intelligence, machine learning, pattern recognition or artificial ignorance. But we cannot argue about the effects in the wider world. Decisions are being taken by software, programmed by humans. This means printers have to be linked into the broader Network, to be able to deliver shorter runs, faster turnarounds, bespoke products and probably taking on management of distribution.
Keynote speaker Michael Gale outlined some of ways that the shift to limitless computing and communications capacity is going to change the way that the world operates. His questionnaire to discover whether your business is AI ready, may not be definitive. But it is a good place to start.
There are implications for the types of skills that printers need, and moreover the skills that will not be needed. We support the drive to recruit apprentices for the operational tasks that still exist and will continue to exist for a transition period. However, we also need to recruit a different type of person, one that is savvy with these new technologies, programmers and data scientists. Go Inspire CEO Patrick Headley tells us that around 25% of the company’s staff are now data scientists. That is a strong investment in the future of that business.
Everyone has felt the impact of Covid on their businesses. This will drive automation of tasks where it has previously not been worth the investment. It is. And it is propelling a rapid increase in online ordering, affecting even those businesses that have prided themselves on personal relationships. I
n the last year many of these companies have managed without the traditional press pass. They are unlikely to come back into the factory now restrictions are ending. Kelvin Bell, director of Vpress, predicts that without an online presence for taking orders, printers will be out of business within two years.
At a higher level these changes in technology are why Precision Proco has appointed Steeve Roucaute as its first chief technology officer. His task is like the guy climbing up to the crows nest with a telescope to get advanced warning of pirates on the horizon or to spot land before those on deck.
It is a shift too from the fundamental operation of a litho press which most in print understand. Lithography is at its heart a chemical process. Oil and water do not mix, and many problems can be solved through chemistry – wetting solutions, different blankets or roller coverings, changing development solutions, pH and more. In the inkjet world chemistry remains important, but physics is even more important. The developers of the technology spend months perfecting signal wave forms, compensating for electrical interference and understanding the impact of orifice geometry.
In order to be on top of this coming world, education is needed if nothing else to be better equipped to judge whether the transition of offset pages to inkjet makes real sense and that the technology offered has the capability claimed by the enthusiastic salesperson and whether the sales message makes real sense. Inkjet is a new way of doing things that has tremendous potential yet few understand the fundamentals of what might become an expensive mistake.
Virtual Drupa also pointed to another tectonic shift that will shake all printers: the climate crisis. Print has a tremendous record of environmental improvement over recent years and is one that we can justifiably be proud of. But the rate of change needs to accelerate. The use of carbon balanced paper is a start, becoming a carbon balanced printer is the logical next step, but is only the beginning. UK printers have been among the most enthusiastic adopters of ISO 14001, so some understanding of how to measure, assess and implement change exists across the industry. However, ISO 14001 alone is not going to be enough to satisfy print buyers who are working for companies that are implementing zero carbon policies, circular economy principles and need to know from the businesses that supply them that they also adhere to these principles.
These are still early days for sustainability and the early adopters have an opportunity to differentiate themselves in a market where one print business can look very much like another. For those that do not make this shift, the receiver’s office awaits.
The industry no longer has the luxury of time to ponder these decisions and to implement them in a leisurely way. As it is said of the failed millionaire, at first he went bankrupt slowly, then suddenly. Printers may easily find themselves in this position as policies at their customers can swiftly shift.
We have already seen magazine publishers drop polywrap as fast as possible. Two years ago the Periodical Publishers’ Association was still defending the material claiming that it was widely recycled. Today magazine printers have experienced a precipitous drop in the demand for the plastic material in favour of paper wrap or even, as we have, in favour of naked mailing. We can hope that large format printers experience the same collapse in demand for PVC, a material that is almost completely unnecessary in the printing industry because valid alternatives exist. Printers need to be leading these changes or they will find themselves overwhelmed by them.
And beyond this the next shift is already building. It is not visible yet, at least not our eyes. To quote cyberpunk novelist William Gibson, “The future is already here, it’s just not widely distributed”.
Just as Robert Keane identified before starting Vistaprint, there are opportunities out there for a print business.
What is certain is that we will not find them if we stay within the confines of the business as it is today. The very best printers will this with their sensors out in all kinds of directions; they will be seeing to understand new technologies. The future is out there. Our job at Print Business is to try to explain it to you.
The future is out there
The printing industry rarely has the opportunity to set its own direction to the future. This has been the case for at least the last 50 years ever since the widespread use of litho printing brought affordable colour to magazines and the advertising industry. Print, and cinema, were the only channels for messaging in colour and print was somewhat more convenient. Printers enjoyed a 30-year halcyon period when good money could be made and what they produced, for lack of rivals, was very much in demand.
But since the turn of the century and especially since the Lehmann Brothers crash, printers have been battling head winds. The internet, smartphone technology and more recently 5G and the Internet of Things and most recently Covid-19. All these have had a huge impact on print without printers being in control of these developments.
It was ever thus. Outside the development of lithography and laser imaging, print has been driven by wider developments. In the nineteenth century increasing literacy prompted demand for newspapers and novels, the development of laser diodes coincided with the creation of CTP technologies and latterly digital printing. New engineering techniques developed for the microchip sector is today allowing mass production of inkjet printheads. Inkjet technology is still in its infancy and its potential largely untapped.
Very few printers think of these longer term shifts. We feel the earthquakes but do not recognise the tectonic movements underneath that create the earthquakes. When we do, there is opportunity to be had. Robert Keane, for example, recognised this while completing a thesis at one of the top business schools in France. Drawing inspiration from Jeff Bezos at Amazon, then in its relative infancy, he realised that the internet could be harnessed to enable the purchase of print and that by consolidating hundreds and thousands of orders for the humble business card along a highly automated production process, a decent margin might be made. Vistaprint was born and launched the online print sector. More than 20% of print is being ordered this way already and there is no end to this growth in sight. Keane, of course, was not a printer and did not think like a printer.
That is important because those of us with our heads down at work, stuck to the day to day of finding orders, filling presses and managing staff, rarely have the opportunity to look up or to feel the shift of the ground beneath our feet. This is where outside help may be needed. This is the role of a show like Drupa. This is why understanding what technology can do and how it works will help process the implications and discover opportunities.
Drupa, like so much else, was forced to close its doors and go online this time around. While we all missed the conviviality, the ability to smell and touch new equipment and see new applications being demonstrated, some of the key messages came though loud and clear in the presentations over the four days it lasted.
First AI is coming. We can argue whether this represents artificial intelligence, machine learning, pattern recognition or artificial ignorance. But we cannot argue about the effects in the wider world. Decisions are being taken by software, programmed by humans. This means printers have to be linked into the broader Network, to be able to deliver shorter runs, faster turnarounds, bespoke products and probably taking on management of distribution.
Keynote speaker Michael Gale outlined some of ways that the shift to limitless computing and communications capacity is going to change the way that the world operates. His questionnaire to discover whether your business is AI ready, may not be definitive. But it is a good place to start.
There are implications for the types of skills that printers need, and moreover the skills that will not be needed. We support the drive to recruit apprentices for the operational tasks that still exist and will continue to exist for a transition period. However, we also need to recruit a different type of person, one that is savvy with these new technologies, programmers and data scientists. Go Inspire CEO Patrick Headley tells us that around 25% of the company’s staff are now data scientists. That is a strong investment in the future of that business.
Everyone has felt the impact of Covid on their businesses. This will drive automation of tasks where it has previously not been worth the investment. It is. And it is propelling a rapid increase in online ordering, affecting even those businesses that have prided themselves on personal relationships. I
n the last year many of these companies have managed without the traditional press pass. They are unlikely to come back into the factory now restrictions are ending. Kelvin Bell, director of Vpress, predicts that without an online presence for taking orders, printers will be out of business within two years.
At a higher level these changes in technology are why Precision Proco has appointed Steeve Roucaute as its first chief technology officer. His task is like the guy climbing up to the crows nest with a telescope to get advanced warning of pirates on the horizon or to spot land before those on deck.
It is a shift too from the fundamental operation of a litho press which most in print understand. Lithography is at its heart a chemical process. Oil and water do not mix, and many problems can be solved through chemistry – wetting solutions, different blankets or roller coverings, changing development solutions, pH and more. In the inkjet world chemistry remains important, but physics is even more important. The developers of the technology spend months perfecting signal wave forms, compensating for electrical interference and understanding the impact of orifice geometry.
In order to be on top of this coming world, education is needed if nothing else to be better equipped to judge whether the transition of offset pages to inkjet makes real sense and that the technology offered has the capability claimed by the enthusiastic salesperson and whether the sales message makes real sense. Inkjet is a new way of doing things that has tremendous potential yet few understand the fundamentals of what might become an expensive mistake.
Virtual Drupa also pointed to another tectonic shift that will shake all printers: the climate crisis. Print has a tremendous record of environmental improvement over recent years and is one that we can justifiably be proud of. But the rate of change needs to accelerate. The use of carbon balanced paper is a start, becoming a carbon balanced printer is the logical next step, but is only the beginning. UK printers have been among the most enthusiastic adopters of ISO 14001, so some understanding of how to measure, assess and implement change exists across the industry. However, ISO 14001 alone is not going to be enough to satisfy print buyers who are working for companies that are implementing zero carbon policies, circular economy principles and need to know from the businesses that supply them that they also adhere to these principles.
These are still early days for sustainability and the early adopters have an opportunity to differentiate themselves in a market where one print business can look very much like another. For those that do not make this shift, the receiver’s office awaits.
The industry no longer has the luxury of time to ponder these decisions and to implement them in a leisurely way. As it is said of the failed millionaire, at first he went bankrupt slowly, then suddenly. Printers may easily find themselves in this position as policies at their customers can swiftly shift.
We have already seen magazine publishers drop polywrap as fast as possible. Two years ago the Periodical Publishers’ Association was still defending the material claiming that it was widely recycled. Today magazine printers have experienced a precipitous drop in the demand for the plastic material in favour of paper wrap or even, as we have, in favour of naked mailing. We can hope that large format printers experience the same collapse in demand for PVC, a material that is almost completely unnecessary in the printing industry because valid alternatives exist. Printers need to be leading these changes or they will find themselves overwhelmed by them.
And beyond this the next shift is already building. It is not visible yet, at least not our eyes. To quote cyberpunk novelist William Gibson, “The future is already here, it’s just not widely distributed”.
Just as Robert Keane identified before starting Vistaprint, there are opportunities out there for a print business.
What is certain is that we will not find them if we stay within the confines of the business as it is today. The very best printers will this with their sensors out in all kinds of directions; they will be seeing to understand new technologies. The future is out there. Our job at Print Business is to try to explain it to you.
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