October 2014
A Friend of the Court
Growing up in Missouri with an interest in art and history, Michael Jaffe admits a career in the Northern California graphic arts scene wasn't his original plan.
"I just kind of fell into printing," quips the supervisor of the General Services Unit for the Judicial Council of California, in San Francisco.
A Web-to-print Dream Fulfilled in Boise
Sylvia Marmon says she and her staff have wanted to get a Web-to-print system for about 15 years, but they could never justify the cost. Then last year a consultant reviewed all of the City of Boise’s printing and copying activity and recommended that Print & Mail Services add online job submission software, along with some digital printing upgrades. The mayor’s office approved it in a heartbeat.
Best Practices: Photo Printing Takes Off
A little creative thinking and a small compromise can sometimes lead to unsuspected revenue. When a previous state commissioner placed a request to the State of Tennessee’s Division of Printing and Media Services for matted and framed photographs to be hung in the commissioner’s suite, Director Tammy Golden had to get creative.
Best Practices: Planning in 3D
The in-plant at American River College produces one to two million impressions per month and serves a community college campus of more than 30,000 students. It does all this while constrained to 900 square feet.
Big Value in Big Sky Country
Deep inside a nondescript, two-story brick building in the center of Helena, Mont., Ryan Betcher ruminates about the days when the state’s Print & Mail Services Bureau was filled with printing presses, running eight hours a day.
Chemistry-free in Anchorage
Like the pure, glacier-fed mountain streams flowing down from the nearby Chugach Mountains, the Anchorage School District’s Publication Services group is now chemistry free. Since transitioning to an Agfa Azura TS chemistry-free computer-to-plate system, the in-plant has seen noticeable improvements in both the quality and efficiency of its work.
Crucial In-plant Metrics
When pricing their wide-format digital printing services, more than half of in-plants surveyed say their number one challenge is "determining real costs and overhead." This detail was discovered in a recent research study conducted by InfoTrends and In-plant Graphics. The study was designed to produce benchmarks and gather insights on how in-plants are operating along with the challenges they face in pricing wide-format services.
From the Editor: A Memorable Show
Graph Expo seemed to be bursting with in-plant managers this year. I saw hundreds of them, not just at the events we organized, but walking the aisles, checking out equipment, hanging around the IPMA's "In-plant Place" networking lounge and attending the evening activities hosted by vendors.
In-plants Meet in Australia
In Australia last month, dozens of in-plant managers flocked to the coastal city of Cairns, not far from the Great Barrier Reef, for the NIPPACON 2014 conference—the annual meeting of the Network of In-house Print Professionals Australasia (NIPPA). They were joined this year by two U.S. in-plant managers, Cathy Skoglund, manager of Operations and Business Development at Arizona State University, and Lisa Hoover, director of Publications at Bucknell University.
Liza's Glass Eye
I can't remember who it was, but someone in my family once told me that Liza Minnelli had a glass eye.
As a child, this fascinated me. I spent countless hours wondering how she lost her eye and how she acquired her new one. Whenever she came on television I would look very closely to see if I could tell which one it was. I never could.
Minnesota Gets Greener
Known for its “10,000 lakes*” and vast tracts of forest land, Minnesota is an outdoorsman’s paradise. So where better to make a stand for sustainable forestry than in the state’s largest city, Minneapolis?
Peer Advice Helps with Folder Choice
Randy Patrick was fed up with wrestling with a folder that had been at his in-plant longer than he had. The rollers and wheels were worn, there were feeding issues and it was creating static on digitally printed jobs.
Serving San Francisco With Pride
Salla Vaerma-Jadlos has helped lead ReproMail for the City and County of San Francisco through good times and bad. She's been at the in-plant for 21 years and has seen the department achieve success in uncertain times for the printing industry.
Wide-format Ingenuity
Often when wide-format printing is discussed, the immediate connotation is of posters and banners. But a little creativity can go a long way, and with advancements in printer, ink and substrate technology, in-plants around the country are finding innovative ways to serve their parent companies with wide format, beyond posters and banners.
