Print is dead! And other doomsday prophesies.
March 8th, 2007 by Ken DeNorscia
The Earth will be hit by a meteorite that will destroy all living creatures! Killer bees will decimate the state of Texas! Mixing Pop Rocks and Coke will make your stomach explode! We’ve all heard these incredible stories of impending doom, and hey, one day some of these may actually come true. So, a few years back when the Internet bubble was at its apex, I, being a print production professional, was quaking in my proverbial boots. Now that EVERYTHING was going to be online, what the heck was I actually going to produce? Was I going the way of poured hot lead type and acid-washed jeans? Well I’m here to tell you that print is in fact dead, at least as it was once viewed in the BtoB marketplace. Gone are the days of shotgun printing, where a mass distribution went out and covered a very broad spectrum of prospects. With today’s technologies in variable data print-on-demand (POD), coupled with an effective online program, a target can be so narrowly defined, it’s almost like shooting fish in a barrel.
The technology that enables this to happen, such as HP’s Indigo press, Heidelberg/Kodak’s NexPress, and Xerox’s DocuColor , are so refined that in some cases it’s difficult to tell the difference between the digital sheet and a traditionally printed lithograph. A few years ago, that just couldn’t be said. With digital print, what used to require a traditional print run, followed by a second run through an Ektajet machine or some other type of limited imprinting device, is now done in one pass. The digital printers work much like a color copier, essentially creating a one-off output, but at a much higher quality, thus allowing you to insert data, imagery, and versions within the same press run. Imagine that you have a great creative idea that, with slight modifications to text, imagery, and headlines, could become a much more targeted mailer. But the mail list that you have has only 20 directors of IT? In years past, they would have simply been lumped into the same generic mailer, with hopes that the message would resonate with the lowest common denominator. Now, you can cost effectively print one mailer if necessary.
It should be noted that in some areas digital still can’t compete with litho, such as higher volume print runs or printing large swatches of solid color, but the gap is closing. Even with some of the limitations of digital POD, the benefits far outweigh any negatives for certain types of collateral, especially if speed and turnaround time are critical. My rule of thumb is, under 1,000 units and smaller that 11” x 17”, look at digital. Once you move beyond that threshold, lithography becomes the more cost-effective option.
So in retrospect, maybe the news of print being dead is a little premature. Maybe the better phraseology is that print is evolving. Like everything has to do in order to survive….
