Here is an interesting piece from Dr. Joe of WhatTheyThink.com titled, “June 10 Economic Webinar Q&A.” This bit on the average number of employees at a printer and it’s potential relation to graphic designers taking on more of the role of prepress is what I wanted us to zoom in on here:

Q.  Is the average size of successful printing companies increasing or decreasing? Sales volume and or employee count as a measure.

A. Sales are down and our industry has a habit of calibrating itself by adding or shedding businesses as needed. The inflation-adjusted sales per employee is actually remarkably steady, which indicates this. The average size of a commercial printing business has been on a very slow decline for decades. It was around 26 employees in the late 1980s and was just above 19 by 2006. That says more about desktop publishing replacing prepress than it says about anything else.
Source: http://members.whattheythink.com/home/drjoe269.cfm

Adobe’s push for creators and creatives to send in print-ready PDFs (Adobe Acrobat PDF files) and other industry bodies marketing the so-called Certified or cPDF and PDF/X-1a (etc) has made the graphic designers job not only a creative process, but also a technical, prepress function. I’m not so sure that it is desktop publishing that has lowered the number of prepress people at print shops, as it is the push to creating the PDF at the print-buyers, advertisers or creators side.  That is why desktop publishing software and tools, such as Markzware’s FlightCheck Professional, are so vital to the greater print-production workflow, or generically said; preflighting. This is a long and detailed article, via the link to it provided above and it is a great read for any business owner in general, yet alone print-shop operators. On that note, here is one last bit to share from the excellent interview:

Q.  Should printers invest in technology that will create efficiency throughout the shop?

A. It’s hard to make a case for not investing. The industry often has very efficient press and production floors but with serious problems outside of that. One way to look at it is that they’re really great in the costs of goods sold items on their income statement, but when it comes to sales and administrative, it’s another world. Technology can be put into costs of goods sold, and the only approach to sales and administrative is austerity, it seems. A reason for this is that technology investment in production is viewed as increasing sales, but technology investment in sales and administrative functions does not create new sales or new markets, so it’s not worthwhile. That’s really an unfortunate misperception.
Source: http://members.whattheythink.com/home/drjoe269.cfm

Anyone need any preflight or conversion tools for Adobe InDesign, Quark XPress or Microsoft Publisher? Have a great Monday.

Tags: acrobat pdf, Acrobat PDF files, adobe acrobat, Adobe Acrobat PDF, Adobe Acrobat PDF files, Certified PDF, commercial printing, commercial printing business, cPDF, Desktop Publishing, Desktop Publishing Software, FlightCheck, pdf files, PDF X, PDF/X-1a, preflight, preflighting, prepress, print-production workflow, print-ready, printing companies, Publishing Software, WhatTheyThink.com

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