A Few Trends that Got Us to Where We Are
By Frank Romano

There is no better word than "printer." It tells you exactly what a company does. Or does it? Look at the many new services that printers are providing, from database and digital asset management to web- and CD-based conversions, plus digital printing and even mailing services. Printers are providing more value-added services that go beyond paper. They are evolving into new kinds of companies. Here are some of the steps that got us to this point.

1. Digital links to customers
There was one trend that profoundly changed to the printing industry-electronic delivery of files. In the past, the originator delivered manuscript and then saw hot metal proofs; later they delivered mechanicals and then saw film proofs. The printer controlled the pre-press process and then desktop publishing became mainstream and the printer lost that control.

This loss coincided with the evolution of personal computer "shrink-wrapped" software and standardized page description languages. Jobs could be designed and produced by the oroginator and then sent to literally any printer. In the past the printer controlled the metal and later the film; the printer essentially "owned" the job. Today, the customer owns the job.

Once the job was in standardized form, it had to be delivered to the printer. We evolved from messengers and overnight delivery services that delivered disks of all kinds to telecommunications. Today, jobs are entered electronically and sent over high-speed telecommunications lines-Internet or Intranet -and within a few years we will be completely diskless. The ex-Fed-Ex age is moving us closer to delivery of jobs . . . yesterday.

Today, 8% of all print is delivered within a day. By 2020, 30% of all print will be delivered within a day.

Telecommunications allows the originator to deliver the job at the last moment. Now they expect printing at the last moment as well.

Of all the trends, this is the one that has affected all other trends. Once jobs are in electronic form, new methods of printing and publishing become possible. New approaches to job management and job tracking become possible. All jobs become digital and that ushers in a new age for printers.

2. Color is hot
Only a decade ago most pages were black and white. But now almost all newspapers have shifted to color reproduction, primarily for advertising. Color is also splashed on every page of magazines and catalogs. It is hard to find a page that is not color. Full color is growing: from 48% of all pages today, it grows to 75% of all print pages by 2020.

There is a projected increase in 5-color printing or more-mostly for brand (spot) colors like Pantone. We will need better ways of managing color as print competes with electronic media. There will be increasing opportunity to add color to the black and white pages that remain.

3. Digital printing
Toner- and inkjet-printing require no makeready and are thus almost instantaneous in production. Over the next decade ink-based printing will yield some volumes to new printing technologies. Hot metal/letterpress printing was wiped out by offset lithography, but digital printing may not completely wipe out offset.

4. E-business or Web To Print
There is good e-commerce and evil e-commerce. The evil e-commerce tried to insinuate itself between the printer and their customers. But print jobs are too complex to specify only in electronic form. The sales professional is an important part of the print buying process. However, simple print jobs lend themselves to web ordering.

Almost half of all printing is purchased by so-called "large" companies and they will be prone to automating the print buy. This can be aided by the good e-commerce, which is essentially a new way of communicating. We use cell phones and pagers to track jobs and communicate changes. We foresee the role of the Internet in improving that communication. 37% of all print is purchased by the 1,000 largest U.S. companies and we expect that they will apply various approaches to e-commerce.

5. Computer-to-Plate on- and off-press
It was not CTP that changed the world. CTP is merely the tip of a giant iceberg called "workflow." CTP includes

1. Elimination of the problems caused by film-to-plate.
2. Faster registration because CTP places dots more accurately.
3. Elimination of steps to get jobs on press faster.
4. Improved quality.

CTP required that the entire job was in electronic form. It comes down to process automation which allows faster makeready and faster production. At the same time, run lengths are tending downwards. By 2012, 43% of all print will be in runs under 2,000 copies. This means that new and more efficient methods will have to be applied.

6. Digits to dots to dock-workflow
We now have a production continuum from the digital page to the finished product. Files include electronic job tickets for automatic processing through various steps in the digital workflow, as well as linking customers and services like never before. The result is automation from start to finish.

The reason has to do with the nature of jobs-many are complex, with specialized coating or imprinting requirements. Print is not all flat sheets and complex and very complex jobs account for 32% of job volume, but 60% of job revenue. Printers can add value to complex jobs because there are so many production steps. Most importantly, we use the process that is appropriate to the job. Gravure may print the editorial section of National Geographic, but offset is used for covers and advertising sections. Look for more activity in "hybrid" presses-offset and digital.