“Global Print Monitor” is an interesting site, acting not only as an news aggregator, which communication consultants, prepress, CSR’s (Print Customer Service Representatives) and printing executives should check out, if not daily at least today, but is much more. This resource is also providing in-depth editorials, blog posts and white papers on technology which directly effects our print workflows and bottom-line:

http://gpm.tecsa.com

Founded in part by Juan Diaz, former editor in chief from Pressgraph and Tim Coldwell from Tecsa, founder and ex-CEO from Xenotron, the site had this to say to me:

“As print changes and evolves so do trade magazines. Global Print Monitor is a new kind of trade magazine striving to help printers evolve from the traditional definition of print as “ink on paper” towards a new future-oriented “communication service provider” concept. Printers and print service providers nowadays cannot be defined as pure printers anymore. Print and its processes, services as well as results and output are part of the huge communication portfolio that marketers and brands require.  Print cannot be seen as a single industry anymore. In turn this affects printers as they are seen as communication consultants by their clients.  Read more... (327 words, 1 image, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

The iPad has been talked about from creatives to pundits and everyone in between the last week now. Google has even appeared to enter the tablet market. This video brings up a review for publishers and what it might mean for print-media and printers. They bring up the question on everyone’s mind; how will a daily newspaper be sold and downloaded on the Apple iPad? (More below)

Apple iPad to boast print media industry: IBNLive.com > Videos

When have you ever know Steve Jobs to just place his hands at his side and accept failure? Well, I guess he does not or at least rarely from what we hear. This in mind, the fact that there was no iMag store or iSubscribe like iTunes app where readers can easily get the latest edition of the NY Times or TIME Magazine with a simple click leaves me with a suspicion.

That is, between now and then (Then being the day the iPad is actually in stores.), do not be surprised to be surprised. I would not be the least bit shocked if Apple comes out with a subscription model or iTunes for newspaper and magazine publishers that will rock the multi-tasking Google Android tablet device, quietly slipped out in typical GOOG fashion…  Read more... (288 words, estimated 1:09 mins reading time)

I have been monitoring the Adobe blogs for a while and never have a seen a post generate so many comments and excitement than this one from Jack Nack:

If Adobe made an iPad app…

“…or apps for other tablets and/or smartphones, for that matter, what would you want it to be?”

Source: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/

We reported last week that we should not count out the iPad just yet (iPad iFail). The iPhone should have provided us with a good lesson. And if I see these enthusiastic comments, then surely the iPad has an interesting future amongst creatives, a market many see as key for a launch of any Apple product:

“…Adobe Creative Suite is another app I would like to see (on the Apple iPad), but only Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and InDesign. These four application makes mobile print production absolutely possible on the go, and provides the ability for company and clients to make print production on the fly, on the go...”
Kento Ito — 7:01 PM on January 29, 2010 Reply to this comment
Source: http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2010/01/if_adobe_did_an_ipad_app.html  Read more... (284 words, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)

I read an interesting article on MarketWatch.com some time back (Digital business cards move networking off paper) proposing that traditional business cards may be under threat from some new kids on the block – digital business cards and their associated networking services. Check out mine from BusinessCard2.com:

Yes, my BusinessCard2 card would look nice on my email attachment and handy for social networking, Tweets and the likes. But… yes, the but word; how about at a trade show? What about in the elevator? Or at my boys football (yes, soccer) matches?

There is work being done where these can be zapped from one cell phone to the next. But till all cell phones can communicate equally, the printer need not worry about printed business cards with fancy color graphics, maybe even made with Publisher software (!), going anywhere, anytime, soon.

This said, Stephen Beals gave us some stark warnings in this recent post, titled, “Don’t be too Certain About Print’s Future“…  Read more... (256 words, 1 image, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

Jon Warner from Trade Press Media Group talks to us at PRINT 09 in this video on how he uses FlightCheck Professional AND Adobe Acrobat to preflight his incoming files for their print workflow. He uses both; but prefers FlightCheck (for everything first) due to it’s ease-of-use and support of more than 50 file formats such as InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, PDF and others. Much more effective to preflight before outputting to PDF:

In the last segment, you see Doug Rosen, Markzware project manager, going into some advanced details with Jon on font search paths for helping optimize your font preflighting in FlightCheck. FlightCheck Professional v6.5 is now shipping with CS4 and Quark8 support. See:
http://www.markzware.com/flightcheck_…

The reason it was so great to hear Jon’s comments, is that some out there in the graphic arts industry, or what is it called now, “print media“, like to think that it is best to funnel this multi-step process called preflight to the very end of the workflow and even some are trying to automate preflight checking. It is however, largely a human process which requires a simple checklist to work best and should be done at every step in the graphics workflow where the layout file switches hands or is due to be output (see preflight defined). As Dr. Demming said on quality assurance,

“Quality is everyone’s responsibility.”

Color management is like colour management only spelled differently. That about sums up color for many in print media; it is the same color on that screen as on my printed brochure, only it looks different, cries the corporate customer, to the prepress operators dismay. In this tutorial video we get into the deep details on how FlightCheck Professional (Out any day now with CS4 and Quark 8 support) can help you in preflighting color …

… and for that matter preflighting colour (ok, enough jokes with words, but some do call it color preflighting) in a detailed fashion -

a full transcript is below: In this movie I would like to address some problems you might encounter when you work with InDesign layouts QuarkXPress, Adobe Illustrator (YES, FlightCheck does preflight Illustrator files and package all fonts and images too! Video: How to preflight Adobe Illustrator files…) or any other layout application in which you are able to use colors. Let’s dive in…

 Read more... (980 words, estimated 3:55 mins reading time)

While reading, “Symbols: the alphabet of human thought” I came across an interesting one regarding printers and publishers from hundreds of years ago. The orb and cross was the symbol most used by them to leave their mark (aka a “printers mark”* or logotype*; as in the colophon), in the days just after Johannes Gutenberg founded moving type and the modern printing press:

This semester we will be looking at printer’s devices (symbols) used to identify the printer or publisher of a book. Many early printers use the orb and the cross which signified the earth and Christianity, shown above left. This particular version is the mark of Joannes de Colonia of Venice, 1481. Image source orb

On the right is a contemporary printer’s mark by Paul Moxon for his Fameorshame press. He explains, “A related sign the orb and cross, ‹literally the earth surmounted by the cross› is also the alchemical symbol for antimony an ingredient in type metal. Long before the development of printing, the 4 had been a mark of merchants to identify their wares. … 20th century master bookmen who have adapted the orb and four include: Warren Chappell and Fritz Kredel, Koch, & Giovanni Mardersteig, among others, chose the orb and cross. Moxon quote and image source
Source: http://www.designhistory.org/symbols.html  Read more... (415 words, 1 image, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

When reading a status update from Scott Abel (ContentWrangler.com) on Linkedin.com, I came across this headline, “[Publishing] The Printed Blog is dead (already)” which naturally caught my attention. We can read more about why ThePrintedBlog.com stopped here:

“It is with great sadness that I must report that, due to a lack of outside investment capital, The Printed Blog is ceasing publication….

Last year, I had an idea. I wondered what would happen if some of the business model principles that work online were applied to the troubled newspaper industry. The more I thought about it, the more the curiosity got to me. So I registered a domain name, developed an action plan, and started the process of building a new kind of newsprint publication.

Everyone said I was nuts, but I did it anyway.

Creating a new breed of newsprint publication from scratch was an amazing experience, and it was humbling to have been so prominently included in the global discussion on the future of journalism and the print media….
Source: http://graphicstart.com/viewarticle.php?articleid=367  Read more... (293 words, estimated 1:10 mins reading time)

Here is an interesting and seemingly smart move by Google, to help them find the ‘next big thing‘ out there…

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Google Inc. (GOOG) said late Monday it’s launching a new venture capital fund. The Mountain View, Calif. Internet search firm will commit $100 million in the first year, The Wall Street Journal reported. “We think the current downturn is an ideal time to invest in nascent companies that have the chance to be the ‘next big thing,’ and we’ll be working hard to find them,” Google said on its official blog. The posting on the blog was authored by Rich Miner and Bill Maris, managing partners, Google Ventures. Google joins other big cap companies such as Intel (INTC) and General Electric (GE) in funding smaller companies.
Source: MarketWatch.com

What is the ‘next big thing‘ in print-media? Will it be PDF/VT or a new way to share, manipulate and use your content? What are your ideas? Oh yes and of course moving ink- that sure is taking it’s time though… My personal favorite is the printed blog!

Updated with formatted table of Twitter Listing:

Printers who Twitter (version 2)
Prepress, print-shops and industry associations or professionals in print media who are active on Twitter.com
(Want it as a formatted Excel sheet? Tweet us; or comment below..)

Based on popular demand, we have expanded this list of print-type people on Twitter with those that RT (Re-Tweet), DM  (Direct Message) on Twitter or commented on our blog. We can always do a v3, so let us know if you are a graphic layout printer or prepress professional and not on this list!

NEW ENTRIES:
(Added locations, as requested by some.)
PRINTERS, PREPRESS – shops and individuals:  Read more... (1366 words, estimated 5:28 mins reading time)