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.

I love the look, feel and ease-of-use to PrintMedia Management’s new eZine.

They print a lovely periodical as well, but the digital version supplements the print edition very nicely. For instance in this case, for on page 12 you can read about Markzware’s MarkzTools 8 and PasteBoard 8 for QuarkXPress 8!

Link to e-Zine:
http://www.fcm-ezines.com/pmm/pmm-apr09/

Wow — it has been over 15 years since I worked as a print production manager for a large advertising agency in California. Computer-To-Plate (CTP) was starting to garner industry buzz, and in my role, I had to best determine how to take digital creative files, produce them internally and ensure that once they were sent off to the printer or a publication, for example, they would work — meaning, they would render on press the way we expected them to and our clients, the advertisers, were pleased with the results.

Seemed like a simple enough challenge at the time, but what I soon discovered was that it was anything but.

It wasn’t as though the process was any more difficult than it was back in the “days of film.” At the agency, we had art directors who were mocking up layouts on boards that were turned over to me for recreation in QuarkXPress. After working with the art directors and others within the agency to make final tweaks to the ads, I then had to provide them with the assurance that what I was creating digitally would reproduce in the manner they expected, having the best print quality  and would result in quality image printing.  Read more... (1248 words, estimated 4:60 mins reading time)