The future is short-run printing; Gareth Ward

Gareth Ward, Editorial Director of The Print Business reports:

“The recession and the possibilities of developing technology are combining to drive print runs lower and lower. It is a trend that has been underway for many years. This how sales of he Radio Times have fallen the last 30 years for example, but with marketing departments looking to save money and to buy effectively, it has taken on more urgency and gained a lethally sharp edge. No sector of the industry is immune. From direct mail to magazines and newspapers, print runs are tumbling. A new book today may have an initial print run of the like not seen since Gutenberg’s day.
Article continues here (The Print Business).

Source: http://www.fcm-ezines.com/tpb/tpb-may09/

We once had the honor, oh I guess it was drupa 2000, to have Gareth stay with us on a Rhine river boat we hired. Basically, when Gareth speaks, the print industry generally listens and his editorial piece here seems to be spot on.

Shorter print-runs does not have to mean less profit and even could offer more opportunity by offering better quality (nudge, nudge; preflight!), coupled with more services. A print document is only one form of the content used in that file.

Callas Software used Drupa 2008 in Düsseldorf, Germany to highlight it’s new version of pdfToolbox. As their RSS feed reads;

“pdfToolbox 4 is a major upgrade for callas’ print production toolset. It is going beyond regular preflighting and fixing to offer functionality that just gets the job done.”
SOURCE: Graphicstart.com

By-the-way, you can now view Drupa, the world’s largest printing and graphics show on your own computer desktop. Check out the link here.

I am saddened by todays news of David Watsons death.

David was a visionary and a gentleman. He always made it a point to visit me at all the GraphExpo and other tradeshows to share a word or two with me.

I have known David personally since 1996. He was a typesetter from the old days. We both shared an affinity with each other as I was a typesetter and we could relate to each other.

Not too long ago, shortly before drupa he gave me another one of those [out of the blue] phone calls. It was to invite Markzware to demonstrate our wares at the Hewlett-Packard booth. 

I will miss David.

Click here for the full press release

This Drupa may prove nothing else than the show where they all just got along. Take this example, which includes some form of preflighting (Let’s call that postflighting maybe.); Xerox’s FreeFlow workflow collection of approved vendor solutions and products which now includes FUJIFILM Workflow XMF and Heidelberg Prinect as possible connections to the extended Xerox flow.

The FUJIFILM Workflow XMF has some interesting possibilities, as this article on WhatTheyThink.com highlighted;

“XMF provides pre-flighting, native file conversion to PDF, color management, single-click imposition, and job management capabilities. It also enables electronic proofing with a three-dimensional view of the job, permitting the proofer to flip through virtual pages to check flow and alignment as well as color.”
SOURCE: WhatTheyThink.com

It is good to see major, competing vendors working together to help provide a link between all of these various tools in use at any given shop. This spirit of cooperation is exactly what JDF needs to finally succeed… maybe. In any event it is announcements like these that give promise to truly automated workflows. Now, how to we ensure that everything that is fed into these workflows is print-ready? FlightCheck.