Received this InMail from a connection on Linkedin, one of the many in response to our popular post on the history of desktop publishing late last week and wanted to share it with you all… Congratulations Mike!

Re: Desktop Publishing turns 25…
From: Mike Hilton
Date: January 24, 2010
To: David Dilling

Hi David,

And so too is Graphic Repro – having launched in SA in 1985 – the year everything started to move from Electronic Publishing…

Best regards,
Mike Hilton

>> Regarding David Dilling LinkedIn Status:: David Desktop Publishing turns 25 ? Aldus-Adobe-Macromedia-Quark. Timeline: http://bit.ly/8xo3EA (Fitting w/ Apple tablet on way)

This is shared with Mike’s permission and he added that one can learn more about the history of Graphic Repro magazine and it’s present day online site and thus printing via the hyper link.

Personally I will add that his weekly email newsletter is a must-read. I like the jam-packed format filled with the latest news from not only the South African print, prepress and publishing market, but really from the world. The “Technology-related articles” near the bottom is nice to keep an eye on as well!  Read more... (202 words, 1 image, estimated 48 secs reading time)

Found this article via a Tweet from @driessen over at Océ and just had to share it. The death of print (Link to an actual study.) has always been exaggerated, but in all seriousness, outputting onto new and exciting (yes, this may be on the exotic side of glossy) materials will likely see the printing industry “growing” again one day…

New Device Prints Human Tissue

Invetech has delivered what it calls the “world’s first production model 3D bio-printer” to Organovo, developers of the proprietary NovoGen bioprinting technology. Organovo will in turn supply the devices to institutions investigating human tissue repair and organ replacement.

Keith Murphy, CEO of Organovo, based in San Diego, said the units represent a breakthrough because they provide for the first time a flexible technology platform for organizations working on many different types of tissue construction and organ replacement…. Article continues…
Source: http://www.livescience.com/technology/091229-3d-bioprinter.html

Sure hope they heard of the concept of preflighting before output… heck, got me thinking, do they use PDF/X-1a or  PDF/X-3 PLUS? They most likely in this case, print right from the native application!

Just also read today that the Five-year forecast predicts high growth in digital textile print. So it is clear, certain segments of the printing market will “grow.”

How do you plan on profiting from your online content? Here is an interesting development:

Wikipedia founder ties with HP to add magazine printing platform to Wikia site

Tim Sheahan, printweek.com, 26 October 2009

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has revealed a new tie-up between user-generated information site Wikia and HP’s MagCloud service that will allow users to create and print magazines.

“We are doing all kinds of things like that to think about ways to sustain this idea of participatory culture. We have no idea if this will be popular,” Wales told news agency Reuters.

Users can source content to print from the 3m web pages and more than 50,000 communities presently on Wikia, which is now making a profit for the first time since it was founded five years ago.

MagCloud enables user to produce bespoke glossy, full-bleed, full color magazine printing through a web interface that allows them to select content and do online magazine printing.

HP has also announced it is using its BookPrep digitizing and printing service with the University of Michigan Library to make 500,000 out-of-print books available for on demand digital printing.  Read more... (304 words, estimated 1:13 mins reading time)

by Stephen Beals

I have been reading many written views by pundits about how print will survive because it’s something you can touch and feel: that it gives the reader a sense of interaction with the words and a feeling of control. All of which is true.

They also say printed products do things online products cannot. You can clip a coupon from a magazine: although you can also clip coupons online, you still have to print them out…for now.

I’m speaking of general commercial printing. Package printing, wide format and certain types of print, such as thermography, foil printing are products e-print can’t really replace.

Still, things are changing and they are changing rapidly. Kids are much more comfortable reading from a screen than most adults. Older folks (like me) still print out long documents because we want to hold them in our hands and underline things with a highlighter.

Electronic media delivery is developing rapidly, and if we think print will forever allow people to “do things you can’t do electronically,” think again. iPhone apps are a perfect example of using new media to do things that are intuitive, interactive and involve touch and feel: just like print only different – and in some ways better.  Read more... (693 words, estimated 2:46 mins reading time)

This is a cool site for those in the printing industry in the UK, but useful for anyone that uses the English language really, PrintSpeak.

“Print is not dead, but circulation and readership of printed publications are falling fast“, says Karen Charlesworth. It is Karen’s honest reporting and fairness to both vendors, as well as the users alike, that makes this site a must visit, in my book. The site is like a portal for both print news, but also informative links on prepress software, hardware, as well as editorial views that are up to the moment. They even have a nice Pre-flighting software (stand-alone) category. Check it out:

http://www.printspeak.co.uk

They also have a great and easy to read print industry newsletter which you can subscribe to. Print’s one-stop product information shop • printing products directory, video library, product news and more..

Markzware most recently gave a sneak preview of our new technology of PageZephyr at Print 09 in Chicago last month.

While at the show Stephen Beals, who has spent more than 30 years in the industry as a pre-press manager and has written hundreds of articles for several print and computer publications over the years stopped by the Markzware booth to check it out and has written a post about it sharing his thoughts….

Making a print-ready Acrobat 9 or similar PDF file can be tricky. Naturally, quality control or preflight should be a key part of any graphic design or publishing workflow. This said, here is a good initiative I came across while cruising the Graphicstart collection of RSS feeds:

Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat Updates Require New GWG Guidelines for PDF Creation from Office Applications

To make it easier and faster to get quality results in PDFs created from Office applications, the Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG) has issued new best practice process guidelines. The new guidelines were developed in response to recent changes made to Office applications and the Adobe Acrobat family of products.

The new Office Printing PDF Creator Guidelines are available for free download at: http://gwg.org/Office_Document_Printing_-1.phtml

Says Menno Mooji, co-chairman of the GWG Office Document Printing Subcommittee and a founder of ISI Publishing Innovators, “With the software changes in Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 and Adobe Acrobat 9, new ways of creating predictable PDFs are now possible. As a result, we’ve released a document outlining best practices that cater to the new developments.
Source: http://www.quickprinting.com/web/online/Industry-News-and-Trends/Microsoft-Office-and-Adobe-Acrobat-Updates-Require-New-GWG-Guidelines-for-PDF-Creation-from-Office-Applications/1$10765  Read more... (217 words, estimated 52 secs reading time)

Here was a great piece from MarketWatch.com, which I think many of us in print and publishing would agree on; but fantastic to see such balanced articles out in the main stream business media these days:

Are magazines dying? The Atlantic looks ahead

Commentary: Editor James Bennet refuses to be trapped by the past

By Jon Friedman, MarketWatch – Jun 12, 2009, 12:01 a.m. EST

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — To James Bennet, editor of The Atlantic, it must seem like he’s surrounded by a sense of the past everywhere he looks.

Bennet edits a magazine so steeped in history that it was founded in 1857, and five years later it published Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” If that wasn’t enough of a reminder of a legacy, The Atlantic has its headquarters in the infamous Watergate complex — a stone’s throw from the origin of the nation’s most notorious political scandal, as well as its greatest journalistic triumph.

Shrugging off the burden of history, Bennet gave me his explanation for the mission of his well-regarded magazine and Web site: “We’re not running a museum here,” he said.  Read more... (537 words, 1 image, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)

I was only kinda kidding and not expecting to become part of the United States bail-out when I said, like many others, “hey, where is my bailout.” Yet it looks as if things are coming closer to home after all, as we read in this report:

Washington Governor Chris Gregoire today approved a 40% tax cut for that state’s newspaper printers and publishers.

The Seattle Times buried the news in a tiny, seven-line item on its local news page. It’s not prudent to gloat, after all.

The Washington law follows a hearing held by Senator Kerry on the “Future Of Journalism” and the President’s remarks during the annual White House correspondent’s dinner that “a government without newspapers, a government without a tough and vibrant media of all sorts is not an option for the United States of America.”
Source: http://newsusa.myfeedportal.com/item.php?&itemid=1058640

Although we may be in the print, publishing, web and graphic design sector, these sort of “rewards” cannot be good for true innovation nor the reality of what the future may hold. I personally think print newspapers will be here; If they innovate and reduce newspaper printing cost. (Give me a bar-code after each article and by each advert, you know real small like and let my iPhone camera scan that puppy in and LINK me to the real-time, online content for that story- or to the advertisers web page/ landing page. Etc, etc.)  Read more... (294 words, 1 image, estimated 1:11 mins reading time)

Here is an interesting one to ponder, from someone in our industry who has been asking questions about this recent economic down-turn. The blogger over at AdTex Advertising wrote a long post about his frustrations in the manufacturing sector in America and in particular printing, as they are of course very familiar with print coming from the trade. He noted:

“The frustration with this situation recently hit the fan with my print partner, Mike. I believe the final straw was flipping to the backside of an American Automobile Manufacturer’s car brochure where he discovered “Printed in South Korea” in the small print. Mike works for a great, family-owned, 121-year old Visual Communications (read “printing”) company based in the same state as the “Big Three” auto manufacturers.”
SOURCE: http://adtexadvertising.com/blog/

It is kind of ironic, one has to admit. What will we outsource next, a printing job to print our United States dollar?
Outsourcing would have its limit, you would think…