Digital Printing-Toner - Cut Sheet (Color)

THIS ARTICLE will attempt to use the past, as well as the present, to get a clear look at the future of the printing industry. Predicting the future, however, is a slippery slope. Here are some of my favorite predictions, just so I can feel I’m in good company. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” —Western Union memo, 1876 (By the way, after 145 years, Western Union, has finally gotten out of the telegram business.) “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would

THE GRAPHIC arts market saw the need for industry standards and understood the growing XML (Extensible Markup Language) development when it supported the decision to create CIP4 (www.cip4.org). This association includes major equipment and software vendors in prepress, digital printing, offset and finishing. CIP4 created the Job Definition Format (JDF) as a standard way to exchange and understand job information. This process can begin to empower creative and production staffs to support an efficient manufacturing process. Tremendous efficiency can result from understanding the interdependence of each department. We largely still depend on paper-based processes that are isolated and disconnected with our current way

An in-plant can be much more than just an end-of-the-line manufacturing process. In-plants can refashion themselves into knowledge managers that support their parent organization’s strategic objectives and business goals. The challenge for today’s in-plant manager is to compliment and add value to specific print-related skill sets by providing an information-rich environment integrated into the organization’s information systems. Rather than a unidirectional “island of information” that has just print output as its objective, the modern in-plant must become both an institutional repository and a multi-channel publishing entity coexisting with the organization’s total information environment. The modern in-plant must be both a contributor to, and participant

I SUBSCRIBE to an electronic mailing list for in-plants, and lately I’ve noticed a number of postings regarding various aspects of purchasing a digital color printer. One recent posting asked a very astute question: are you planning to produce digital color for existing customers or do you plan to cultivate new customers? This is exactly the kind of question we pondered long and hard prior to our purchase of a Xerox iGen3 last December. Where would the business come from for our new machine? Would we be “robbing” color work from our offset presses? Is there some big pocket of business out there waiting for

Ted Bailey didn’t need a crystal ball to know that changes were coming. “We saw the trend moving not just to more color, but to more sophisticated variable data campaigns,” says Bailey, manager of Printing and Graphics Services at Boise State University. The 15-employee western Idaho in-plant had done some simple black-and-white variable printing jobs, and its 32-ppm Canon printer was doing its best to meet color demands. But clearly the busy shop needed a faster, more variable-data-friendly color printer. So this past summer, after a lengthy bidding process, the in-plant installed a Xerox iGen3 digital production press with an EFI Fiery server. “I

THE MARKETING budget in corporate America typically falls victim to intense scrutiny. In a results-driven age, the chief marketing officer feels intense pressure from executive officers, boards, shareholders and customers to deliver measurable results. As a consequence, marketers are always asking questions like these: • How can I be as efficient as possible in my marketing efforts so I don’t waste time and money? • How can I make sales personnel more productive in prospecting and closing business? • How do I keep the sales funnel filled with qualified leads? • How can I more effectively get clients to come to me instead of

A glimpse of the excitement and bustle of Graph Expo, with interviews of some of the in-plant managers in attendance.

Xerox recently teamed up with the Rochester American Marketing Association (RAMA) to bring best-selling author Seth Godin to Rochester to speak about his new book about the realities of spreading ideas in today’s marketplace. Those who registered in advance received a personalized copy of Godin’s bestseller “Small is the New Big.”  Printed on a Xerox iGen3 110 Digital Production Press utilizing Xerox FreeFlow Web Services software, each dust jacket was personalized with the recipient’s name on both the front and back covers. Attendees also received personalized bookmarks and stickers. Using the iGen3 press and FreeFlow software, the seamless personalization of the 1,500 four-color pieces was completed

Xerox has invested $1 million in an innovative partnership with The Nature Conservancy to strengthen and advance practices used to conserve the world’s forests. The investment—the largest Xerox has ever made in an environmental partnership—will develop science-based tools, practices and systems that the paper industry can draw upon to better understand and manage ecologically important forest land. The grant, along with the support of Xerox people and its industry partners, will be used to enhance a forest data center for Canada’s boreal forest, the largest block of contiguous intact forest left in the world; to strengthen third-party forest certification standards that Xerox relies on to

The PIA/GATF Variable Data and Personalization Conference is slated for November 12-14 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Phoenix. The conference will feature three educational tracks: management, technical, and sales and marketing. Among the conference topics: profiting with digital printing, assessing customer needs, re-engineering database files, and liability/security issues. A Web-to-print symposium will be held in conjunction with the VDP Conference on November 12. Visit www.gain.net for more information or to register.