Why inkjet?

Drupa’s ninth Global Trends Report predicts a five per cent lift in print volumes produced by high speed colour inkjet printers.

IT Strategies projects that by 2029 continuous feed inkjet pages will account for about 12.5 per cent of total worldwide volume of output at 800 billion pages.

In comparison offset document and publishing pages are declining about four to five per cent annually.

Book manufacturers and consolidation of transactional page volumes on fewer but more productive machines accounts for part of this market outlook.

As does strong growth in the graphic arts segment due to the technology replacing offset, and existing users adding second or third units to drive print volumes and high margin revenue in direct mail and specialty applications.

They are capitalizing on these opportunities:

What’s the potential for PSPs?

Charging more for less – tailored and personalized content achieves greater return on investment. It also helps reduce the cost of paper and postage on items that will not obtain optimum results. It is measurable too – JICmail figures found 40 per cent of website visits prompted by mail converted into online purchases in the fourth quarter of 2023. More than six per cent of mail (including direct mail, business mail, partially addressed mail and door drops) encouraged Christmas purchases, with half completed online. It was also reported that 95 per cent of mail was engaged with, 30 per cent of mail promoted a commercial action, and five per cent of mail prompted a purchase.

How to benefit!

Focusing on higher value pages – a business model of fewer pages, but at higher value per page, if done well, can result in significantly higher revenues for commercial printers. This fits in with trends for magazine publishers to focus on high quality, low volume run publications or hyper-personalized marketing campaigns.

Being at the forefront of growth – few print markets offer such high growth rates. Now is the time to explore how inkjet technology can help transform your print production model to produce high return applications. One area is book production. IT Strategies reports it is the second largest application for continuous feed inkjet output. Key drivers are re-shoring from Asia to Europe and America, due to cost savings, and the growing number of short run titles printed on demand. In fact, these have enabled many book manufacturers to double their revenues during the last four years. The report states that “the convenience provided by production inkjet of nearly ‘instant manufacturing’ and local delivery is unlikely to ever disappear.”

Capture the online growth – as businesses move to more sustainable procurement, the growth in online printing continues to drive more opportunities for inkjet pages. Automated job submission from web to print to pack will allow PSPs to redefine their sales approaches to capture new markets for print.

Sander Sondaal is director of Commercial Print Sales, Ricoh Europe.

The availability of higher volume production DTF technologies opening up market opportunities is just one of the reasons it is making strong gains in the global market for direct to garment (DTG) printing that is predicted to reach nearly US$1.9 billion by 2032.

As well as the impact the latest technology is having on DTF‘s growth, predictions for its continued upward trajectory are being fuelled by these five drivers:

1. Quality – The process can be used to produce high quality prints on a variety of surfaces, including dark and light fabrics, non-cotton fabrics, and hard surfaces like metal and ceramics. It can reproduce intricate designs and exceptional images.
2. Sustainability – The ability to cost efficiently deliver multiple run lengths enables operations to move towards a more responsive print on demand approach that reduces waste. DTF can also support responsible production processes that achieve Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) and Oeko-Tex Standard 100 certifications.
3. Flexibility – There are multiple application possibilities, including typically T-shirts, hoodies, sportswear, promotional items, and interior décor. Adoption of the relative newcomer technology will enable print service providers (PSPs) to continue to capitalize on consumer desire for customized products. The Future of Digital Textile Printing to 2026 report from Smithers found more than a third of consumers are interested in personalized products commonly made with textiles. Customers are also happy to pay a premium for their customization. The report forecasts digital printed textile volume will increase significantly up to 2026, reaching 5.531 million square metres annually.
4. Speed – DTF is more time efficient than traditional methods of printing on textiles. As a result, it is suitable for creating custom designs for clients on demand. Once the film is printed, it can then be stored and applied quickly when needed.
5. Easy technology adoption – Simple to use, plug and play systems mean any PSP looking to explore DTF can implement the technology quickly and effectively.

Axel Stuhlreiter is head of Textile Solutions, Graphic Communications Group, Ricoh Europe

Hosted by the Independent Print Industries Association (IPIA) and media and marketing forum the Debating Group, discussions were held on the motion that “Printed paper is the preferred medium of record, whilst also a sustainable marketing communications format”.

Of course, most of us are already aware of the many reasons why print is consistently chosen and for the majority it will be no surprise that the room unequivocally found in favour of the motion.

The debate covered the most widely acknowledged reasons why print is trusted and valued. They included:

• Engagement – Richard Pepper, founder of greetings card service Funky Pigeon, said human beings simply engage with the medium better than they do with the digital word. Deep learning comes from reading books.
• Sustainability – Digital media is often considered to be consequence free by consumers who are often encouraged to go paperless for environmental purposes. Jonathan Tame, managing director of Two Sides, pointed out paper’s high European recycling rates and that pulp is grown in expanding European forests. This compares to electronic devices that are rarely recycled and rely on extractive mining of non-renewable materials as well as the ICT industry which accounts for five to nine per cent of energy use globally. The latter could rise to 14 per cent of global emissions by 2050. Emma Newman, chief revenue officer, EMEA of digital advertising firm PubMatic, responded that while nearly 90 per cent of PubMatic’s energy usage is from its data centres, U.K. data centres and all global collocation data centres are powered exclusively by renewable energy. She added the transparency of data-driven marketing operations, where every process can be logged, allows for proactive action to drive carbon reduction.
• Highly targeted marketing – This was acknowledged by John Booth, data centre expert and founder of sustainable IT consultancy Carbon3IT. Highly customised communications see the greatest return on investment.
• Tangible impact – Booth also recognized how print’s success can be measured. There are numerous studies that show how effective print is in driving action and achieving return on investment.
• Near-universal deliverability – Booth accepted print’s ability to reach a wide and varied audience. Combined with the ability to deliver consistently interesting and engaging content enables the creation of desirable, and as a result, successful communications.
• Medium of record – Booth agreed that historically, printed paper is the preferred medium of record in some sectors, such as legal and banking.

The last four points, Booth said, were also possible with digital media with many business environments digitalizing content, from internet banking and libraries to legal papers. He said this allowed for real time updates, helped keep users informed of latest news events and developments and ensured information is up-to-date and relevant.

IPIA general manager Brendan Perring defended the printed word too. He said print, being static, is a strength for a medium of record, while digital’s weakness is that it can be changed and edited. He concluded that in a world where moral integrity and the meaning of truth is under threat, digital needs an ally.

Print and digital can be combined to deliver powerful, memorable, and hyper personal messages that can be delivered in highly sustainable way.

Erwin Busselot is director, business innovation and solutions, Ricoh Graphic Communications, Ricoh Europe

While familiarity can be comforting it breeds complacency and diminishes excitement. In fact consultancy Accenture reports a YouGov survey found that 45 per cent of global respondents find shopping experiences dull. Accenture’s own Life Trends 2024 survey reported 35 per cent of respondents consider app designs to be indistinguishable across brands, with the sentiment rising to nearly 40 per cent among 18 to 24 year olds.

Customers yearn for the thrill of newness. In response brands should respond with a mix of familiarity and innovation. Whether in the form of cutting-edge products, immersive campaigns, or unexpected collaborations, novelty delivers sustained interest and emotional connection.

Generative AI is increasingly being deployed in creative processes to strive for new ways to be seen. But there is the danger that this novel approach quickly becomes commonplace. It could then become more difficult to stand out, as competition for attention increases due to the volume of content being created. On the other hand, differentiation could become easier because, as organizations lean heavily on generative AI, human creativity could set others apart.

Where there’s a void of novelty, there’s opportunity – in a sea of familiarity, originality truly stands out. This is true for all forms of communication.

Creativity can be expensive, but the investment usually pays off in the richness of the quality of results. Accenture makes these recommendations:

• Make friends with risk – rather than sacrifice quality for speed, reintroduce craft, creativity, fun, and attention to detail.
• Break the technology templates – to avoid bland, recycled, templated design content, skilled creatives should be involved in the use of generative AI to deliver something truly creative that breaks through.
• Know thyself – a deep understanding of the brand’s identity and culture makes it possible to take creative risks and to focus on the right metrics.

Employing fresh ways to differentiate is a key challenge for businesses and one that print can help meet.

Industry leaders such as Peter Field, Tyler Brûlé and Sonoo Singh agree. They applaud the effectiveness of print in capturing attention in advertising. Kevin Longhurst of IPG media company Magna adds that whether through direct mail, newspaper adverts, catalogues, magazines, or door drops, print media consistently proves its power to enhance other channels. There is a very good reason why digital giants like Amazon, Disney and Netflix include print advertising in their media mix.

Print can also drive up client engagement (79 per cent of mail is read) and prompt a commercial action (41 per cent) as discussed here. Digital print supports the creation of targeted content that is delivered to a pre-determined select group. Action can be encouraged by QR codes that also aid accurate measurability with for example UTM tracking codes, which can be used to report KPIs, or power seamless collaboration of physical and online channels.

Unleashing a more imaginative approach doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming. Attention grabbing and attention holding communications can be curated to hit the mark and drive interaction. Discover how you can transform the bland into brilliance to enthral and captivate.

Ambitious print service providers (PSPs) will want to improve on both. They will recognize there is a need to continuously be innovating and to offer clients new opportunities to amplify their communications.

They will be looking to do the same for their own business to affirm their capabilities while expanding their own client base.

They will need to identify clear goals such as the three below.

1 Create targeted and impactful personalized communication campaigns

Software tools can support increasingly complex scales and levels of automation that were not previously possible. This means PSPs can do more without increasing labour. Images, text, and colour can all be customized and adjusted directly in the file – both for their clients and their own messaging. And most importantly provide a service which allows clients to use valuable customer data effectively across all their marketing activities.

2 Enhance production flexibility

Automating print workflows as a print job is being onboarded can extend production capabilities, save time, increase throughput, and reduce manual errors. This results in higher client satisfaction.

3 Achieve higher client satisfaction

Clients who receive more work, faster, with fewer errors, and without additional costs are happy clients. Automated print workflows help deliver a client friendly service by speeding up the entire process from input to finished production.

To help respond to growing client needs and continued pressure on margin and profit, print marketing automation is no longer optional. It’s essential.

PSPs risk being separated by what they can do, how efficiently they can do it, and at what price and profit margin. Digital transformation, aided by intelligent software solutions, can assist their seamless shift toward operational versatility.

Print is still a highly effective marketing tool, but speed is vital in today’s world with companies required to react quickly to changing circumstances. Therefore, the turnaround time of producing print marketing materials needs to match the speed of digital communications to provide cohesive messaging across the customer journey.

Juergen Krebs is software sales manager, Ricoh Graphic Communications, Ricoh Europe

Mail continues to be one of the most viable ways to reach consumers since it is tactile and stands out when compared to the hundreds of emails clogging our inboxes daily. In fact, most consumers have banner blindness with 58 per cent of people ignoring most online ads, according to Two Sides UK. According to the 2023 The State of Direct Mail report by Lob and Comperemedia, nearly three-quarters (74 per cent) of marketers agree direct mail delivers the best ROI, response rate and conversion rates among all channel options. All that to say, mail is still an important marketing channel.

Which is why, if given the opportunity, our knowledge as print purveyors, graphic designers, creatives, etc. means we can offer advice to clients and marketers. 

First, mail as a medium introduces limitations: size, weight, material, and required postage (the conditions change between different postal systems). It is important to know and understand the different specifications. For example, the smartmail marketing solutions offered by Canada Post neighbourhood mail (one to many), postal code targeting (one to few), and personalized mail (one to one) all have their own guidelines. Knowing the creative limits helps us plan and design mail that will be deliverable. 

Second, at our fingertips is a wealth of knowledge about paper weights, types and brightness, envelopes of every size and colour, inks that span a rainbow of opportunities, and a wealth of finishing techniques (diecut, foil, emboss/deboss, etc.).

All this knowledge can be put to good use in creating mail that stands out. Whether it is producing a short run of PR packages or large mailings for non-profits we can create quality, eye-catching print materials at a variety of price ranges that get attention in the mailbox.

Go beyond the conventional #10 white envelopes and perhaps use a handwritten invitation for better response rates. Photo © alswart / Adobe Stock

Is standing out enough?

Getting eyes on the mail is only half the battle as, arguably, many companies want to see a return on investment. John Lepp, author of Creative Deviations and an expert fundraiser with over 20 years of experience, would argue action is the key differentiator of effective mail. To get a consumer to act requires excellent storytelling and copywriting, along with meaningful design choices.

In 2022, Good Works released, Changing Tides: The Evolution of Giving Behaviour in Canada, stating that “33 per cent of Canadians polled reported that they made a donation in response to a fundraising letter they received in the mail in the past year.” The Time We Spend With Mail (2023) report by the Joint Industry Currency for Mail (JICMAIL) showed a strong connection between mail attention and commercial effectiveness. According to their research, spending more time with direct mail items can result in a x2 to x3 increase in effectiveness, leading to more purchases, footfall, discussions, and voucher redemptions. 

Additionally, mail generates significant digital attention for brands’ owned channels. A mail item that prompts visits to advertiser websites keeps users engaged for five minutes per session on average.

Studies have shown direct mail marketing delivers the best ROI, response rate and conversion rates. Photo © Joshua Resnick / Adobe Stock

Commercially effective mail triggers action

Think back. If it comes in a #10 white envelope with a logo in the top left corner most can predict what’s inside—bill or appeal. While the contents might be printed on a beautiful gloss stock with colour pictures and a solid brand campaign, is that enough to get us to act? To my earlier point I have lots of mail samples, but I can count on one hand the number of times I have acted.

Lepp uses the term, ‘doormat dominance,’ to explain our need to dominate a prospect’s mailbox. When he’s at conferences, he will show the conventional #10 juxtaposed against a handwritten invitation envelope with stamps and invite readers to contemplate, “Which would you want to open?”

Our focus on cosmetics or esthetics in print means we may blind ourselves to the end user’s experience. The need to create something that stands out can be our own downfall. For example, coated stocks are harder to hold, read and write on. Grey text and small point size have legibility issues. The use of colour or expensive finishing techniques can have the opposite effect. 

Charities struggle with threading the needle between compelling design and not appearing to be squandering funds. Their audience knows print is expensive and expects non-profits to use their gifts meaningfully; expensive appearing print may alienate donors.

Lepp makes the following suggestions for achieving compelling personalized persuasion at a commercial level.

Change the envelope

A white #10 is expected and boring. Try a 6×9 envelope or change the envelope’s colour. Taglines or pictures on the exterior, while attention getting, immediately indicate it’s marketing. Create curiosity by inverting normal mail expectations.

Make it human

Handwriting, mistakes, stamps; things that are not ‘commercial’ break up the monotony of mail and get people’s attention. To create this appearance consider using the ‘stamp-like’ indicia and a legible handwriting typeface while pre-sorting your mail to follow Canada Post standards. 

Consider how you can add ‘more’ human elements like organic lines or hand drawn arrows. Informal and fun tone, voice, and visuals make the content more approachable. Personal and impactful stories make it less clinical and can connect deeply with audiences.

Match the scope to the audience

In our quest for segmentation the cost of the mail should relate to the values of the audience. 

The average customer may be skeptical of flashy or over-the-top designs and materials. Consider what a piece of mail for Ferrari versus Honda Civic prospect looks like; these are varied groups with different expectations around marketing materials and messages.

Say thank you no matter how small

Admittedly, Lepp is a fundraiser, but he emphasizes how much impact a thank you can have.

“I went through 500 pieces of mail that my mother-in-law got from charities last year…through all of those she got only one thank you card. Although it was all automated, she still indicated she would give again because of that card,” he said.

A culture of gratitude is appreciated, and it matters. Encouraging clients to also print some thank you cards they can personalize could make all the difference.

Simple may seem boring, but there is a need to strike a balance in both presentation and content, so it resonates. Pretty marketing is definitely one way to be persuasive, but Lepp offers another perspective—break the rules.

“The more personal a piece of mail feels (like something that I sent to you), the more likely it’s going to get opened, and looked at, and hopefully acted upon. It feels weird in our roles in the professional world to be imperfect and personal but that creates action…You’re still a human being trying to talk to other human beings about something they hopefully want. Just all these professional barriers get in the way of really good open communication,” he explained.

People are paying attention to their mail, so we have a responsibility to make sure it also inspires action. 

Olivia Parker, BTech, MPC, BEd, teaches visual communication and media production. Her areas of interest include omnichannel marketing and communication, direct mail, and personalization. She can be reached at olivia.ovp@gmail.com.

The largest Inkjet Summit yet hosted over 350 attendees and sponsors and delivered 34 hours of inspiring content spread across two-and-a-half days.

Attendees were energized with new knowledge and ideas of what next steps to take for the successful evolution of their businesses.

The summit began with this poignant quote from a commercial printer: “For decades we as commercial printers have been wishing for a stop to the race to the bottom. This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for…”.

This was an acknowledgement that, for the first time in decades, the American print industry has been able to raise prices. Increases in the cost of paper, staff, and consumables, have been passed onto the print buyer with a little extra margin for the commercial printer on top.

While price elasticity has been more flexible than anyone could have projected, at some point in the future print buyers will hit a ceiling in terms of what they are willing to pay for print. This, IT Strategies suggests, is when print will become a luxury product.

Impacting this is:

• paper costs, while down now after a 2022 high, will probably increase to even higher levels thanks to a widespread reduction in paper production capacity; and
• desire for employees to work in cleaner, more office-like environments;

At the summit it was also reported that IT Strategies found a high proportion of American commercial printers could have a better understanding of their total cost of ownership (TCO).

The reasons for this are:

• rapid shift in costs during the last 12 months – “little” price increases here and there add up to a big difference;
• lack of MIS/ERP systems that track and measure print from the moment it is ordered to the moment it is delivered (while offset and digital print costs are measured other areas such as finishing are often overlooked partly because finishing is mostly an analogue process and doesn’t connect to the MIS system used to track production); and
• commercial printers wherever they may be reviewing their TCO today could find the gap between printing offset and digital printing has closed, which makes longer runs more cost effective on digital printing equipment.

By 2028, an IT Strategies research shared at the summit, predicts more than 50 per cent of all print expenditure will be on digital printing. If inkjet print volumes that currently account for about five to 10 per cent of commercial and publishing print today, continue to grow between 10 and 20 per cent annually, by 2028 inkjet pages in America will account for over 30 per cent of all pages printed.

With a digitally printed page approximately four to 10 times more valuable than an offset printed page, the potential for future profitability is clear.

The summit suggested that this is the moment we have all been waiting for. It proposed that built up capital should be used to accelerate automation and enable a shift in business models supporting the move from print as a commodity to a high value product.

The well proven quality and value of inkjet technology, combined with automation and software solutions, can more effectively manage the fragmented, smaller print jobs that need to be delivered quickly and efficiently.

It can enable end-to-end automation and value creation as we head into a brave new world of print industry business models, one where print becomes a luxury product with prices and margins to match.

Sander Sondaal is director, commercial print sales, Ricoh Graphic Communications, Ricoh Europe

What if their attire itself reflects a commitment to a worthwhile cause? That is the mindset driving organizations like RCGD Global and its Red Carpet Green Dress initiative, which promotes eco-consciousness in global fashion design and production. With the support of celebrities taking to the “red carpet” each awards season, the initiative partners with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to spotlight the cause of making fashion more sustainable.

Celebrities may have the platform to model sustainably made apparel for the world, but making sustainable apparel accessible—or the norm and the expectation—for consumers worldwide is the true objective, and one that may be closer than many think.

Reconciling the fashion world with demands for sustainable practices is an ongoing challenge, and one that presents no easy answers. The World Economic Forum estimates fashion and textiles are responsible for one-tenth of the world’s carbon emissions, with more than 85 per cent of all textiles produced headed to the dumpster annually. The Harvard Business Review suggests there have been no significant gains for sustainable fashion since 2000, pointing to the increased overproduction of footwear as an example. It’s well-established that textiles are one of the highest-polluting, most wasteful industries in the world, and measures such as the New York Fabric Act and European Union Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles reflect the continued struggle to proactively drive the industry toward a more responsible, accountable state.

Some companies are breaking the traditional production models, eliminating dependence on complex and vulnerable global supply chains, and streamlining the journey from creative concept to wearable garment to make the textile more sustainable.

Consider what the traditional fashion production model entails. A concept may take more than a year to reach the runway, and to bring a garment to the marketplace requires building inventory. Building that inventory requires stable or cost-controlled access to the necessary raw materials—supply chains subject to bottlenecks, tariffs, human or labour rights concerns, pandemics, acts of God, you name it. You hope to break even by selling enough merchandise to justify that inventory. When the fashion cycle turns, you’re marking down that inventory, with unsold goods ultimately being written off, donated, scrapped, or even burned. Essentially, you’ve gambled on the popularity of your creation, and losing means not only dwindling profit margins, but also, in many cases, a reputation for being a wasteful contributor to the problem. Ask Shein, H&M, or Burberry what that means. Overproduction isn’t sustainable as an environmental model, a business model, or a public relations model.

Digital on-demand production technology is already solving this problem for creators, brands, and fulfillers throughout the world, and that new reality is about to burst into the mainstream. E-commerce has long created a nearly unlimited array of options for the consumer, but a maturing ecosystem of digital technologies is doing the same for designers looking to fulfil their visions without compromise, brands looking to capture and capitalize on social trends the moment they’re perceptible, producers looking to create new products and tap new markets at will, and more. Virtual reality, augmented reality, and the Metaverse are giving designers and consumers alike new ways to engage each other, model concepts in real time, and “try on” any apparel virtually before committing to any one piece.

In addition to using pigment-based inks that meet several rigorous environmental standards (such as GOTS, OEKO-TEX Eco Passport, and Bluesign), on-demand print systems empower designers to bring their creations from concept to runway in mere weeks, with custom fabrics ready to use in minutes—perfect for sampling different materials and graphic effects. Production costs are low and consistent, so fulfilling orders of one or 1,000 yield reliable profit margins. The speed to market, supplemented by efficient workflow and visibility systems to ensure a streamlined, accountable pixel-to-parcel fulfillment process, means producing only what has been sold is a realistic business model, safeguarding operations against unforeseen disruptions, and enabling nearshoring or onshoring of operations to mitigate supply chain risks.

It’s one thing to discuss the mechanics of digital fashion production, but another to see just what the finished product can be. That’s why working alongside such organizations like Red Carpet Green Dress is key to highlighting what bold and beautiful creations may come of a process that delivers on the promise of a digital world—using less labour, less material, less energy, less time, and less space to shrink carbon footprints while demanding no compromises, and, in many cases, even introducing new graphic and tactile possibilities.

In the end, the award just might go to sustainable fashion on demand.

Don Whaley is vice-president of North America at Kornit Digital

Trend No. 1: Expressive typography
Typography is one of the most essential elements of graphic designers. In order to give the individual letters more character and to convey essential messages demonstratively and decisively, designers resort to expressive typography. This is no wonder, because, in a visually oriented era, it makes sense words evolve to become more pictorial. In the new year, accessible software such as Glyphs makes it easy to create your own font that is an ideal fit for your business or brand.

Trend No. 2: Branded illustrations
Brand illustrations can make complex messages simple and also add character and feeling to a company’s brand. Big companies prefer using branded illustrations, and smaller companies also use their advantages for themselves. By creating their own unique look and feel, they establish their own distinctive visual identity that will inevitably be associated with them, even if no logo or lettering is used. After all, illustrations can easily tell a story or an idea by combining visual elements with fine art. Also, audiences love illustrations, mainly because they are relatable, personal and usually creative. Branded illustrations also add creativity and style to any platform where it exists.

Trend No. 3: Motion
Advancements in design technology have made it possible to create high-quality, moving images that can be used for both indoor and outdoor advertising. The world of motion graphics has experienced a big boost over the last few years. From kinetic typography to isometric shapes, there exists a huge variety for experimenting with motion graphics. In a world where audiences’ attention spans are increasingly diminished by the constant stream of content across all channels, moving image formats attract more interest simply because the recipient can’t catch them in a single glance.

Trend No. 4: Bold minimalism
Unlike trends like branded illustrations, bold minimalism is an industrial design style characterized by clean, simple lines and shapes. The focus is on functionality, so decorations are kept to a minimum. In graphic design, industrial elements like small icons and badges are often used to add depth and interest and can be combined with expressive typography for an overall effect. In contrast to this is the trend toward maximalism. Yet, here, too, striking fonts can play an important role. If the tone of voice and aesthetics of a brand are rather, bold, loud and energetic, the “more is more” approach can also be the way to go. The main thing is to stay true to yourself.

Trend No. 5: Nostalgia
Fashion already showed it last year, and now in 2023, we’re looking back to the 1970s and 1990s in graphic design as well. The designs recalling these years show cute icons, stamps or doodles, placed seemingly randomly on a product to mimic the visual effect of a sticker book. Further, the ‘70s vintage aesthetic is coming back and we’ll see more and more designs in warm, earthy colour schemes and comforting designs, especially in the packaging industry. All of these elements can serve as vehicles for storytelling and reviving the past.

Trend No. 6: Foil printing
Another trend we can expect in 2023 is foil printing. It offers a unique way to add an extra bit of luxury and style to print materials. For brands, finishing can help add a touch of class and sophistication to products. For instance, you can go full gold to give a product an air of sophistication or you could use multi-coloured foil to make it appear more futuristic.

In summary, 2023 holds exciting design trends that inspire the printing and packaging sector alike – whether that’s reflected in print products or how goods are advertised and packaged. Of course, it is unclear to what extent the design trends presented will actually prevail in 2023. But one thing is certain: it will definitely not be boring.

Pantone goes on to say it is an assertive, but not aggressive, carmine red that does not boldly dominate but instead takes a ‘fist in a velvet glove’ approach. Exuding dynamism, the transformative red tone is capable of driving design to create a more positive future.

The strong colour echoes Pantone’s forecasted spring and summer 2023 top 10 standout colours for London Fashion Week including Cherry Tomato, Blazing Yellow, Electric Blue Lemonade and Pink Cosmos. They integrate tradition and innovation marrying the need for brightness and vibrant positivity with quieting tinted tones. They embrace the freedom to colourfully express individuality without constraint.

Vivid colours form the foundations of some key trends set to dominate 2023. Among the ones that caught my eye are the following.

1. Acidic hues

This is not just about bright, sharp colours, it’s about colours that hurt your eyes. They are arresting and striking. They grab your attention. It is a trend rooted in science. It takes inspiration from testing acidic substances. The more acidic a substance, the brighter the colour gets.

2. Colourful retro

Bright colour pallets will combine with idyllic retro imagery as the 1990s revival and vintage visual trends of 2022 continue. Everything from posters to packaging will be imbued with a sense of nostalgia.

3. Silver chrome

This moody and dark trend subverts the status quo with its distorted, melted metallic look. The shade of silver can range from a dark or dull tone to a shiny silver metal. This colour trend is about stirring anti-establishment expression and pushing back on norms.

4. Rich jewel colours

The rich jewel colours of 2023 are elegant, tonal and sensual. They are ushering in an interesting and chic era for colour in graphic design. Inspired by 1930s palettes, rich crimson, burnt orange, forest green or powdery lavender, offer a cosseting and indulgent quality. They allow colour to do the talking for high end-branding or luxury packaging design.

5. Condensed typography

Simple neutral colour schemes or black and neon can be combined with condensed typography to create two very different results – to temper drama or escalate it. In 2023, in line with the move toward Metaverse and futuristic styling, condensed fonts and compact typography will take centre stage.

Strong, vibrant colours that stir emotions are shaping the palette for 2023. Combined with the leading design trends they deliver an energized tone for the coming year. For print service providers the accurate recreation of the shade, depth, and nuances of a colour is vital. Consistent repeatability is essential.

John Blyth is marketing and communications manager, Ricoh Europe.

Screen printers, however, should overcome this reluctance and invest in LED exposure units, as UV-LED technology is ultimately better for their business, employees, and the planet than legacy ink curing methods such as UV curing with mercury bulbs. Not only is the ROI ultimately advantageous for screen printing businesses from a cost perspective, but it also helps companies mitigate health risks and meet consumer demand for sustainable, environmentally friendly processes.

Shifting to sustainable screen printing processes

Screen printers consume the most energy when powering mercury bulbs and cooling systems for their printing press. Mercury lamps produce high temperatures by emitting infrared energy. This heat can damage lamp housing and substrates if it is not managed properly, requiring significant effort and expenditures on behalf of screen printers.

Shifting to LED-based technology for UV curing results in a 98 per cent more energy-efficient process. The LED lamps do not need substantial power input, as they can be plugged into standard wall outlets. In stark contrast to mercury bulbs, LED lamps also emit little to no heat, requiring significantly less elaborate cooling systems than mercury-based technology.

Mercury lamps remain on throughout the production day because heating these systems up and cooling them down takes time. There is no need, however, for LED lamps to remain running while not in use, as they instantly switch on and off. Unlike mercury lamps, LED lamps do not emit ozone, so screen printers further reduce energy consumption by cutting out the ventilation systems needed to filter out ozone.

In addition to cutting energy costs, shifting to sustainable screen printing processes will help companies meet evolving consumer demands. Consumers today often seek out products that are built with sustainable materials and processes. This is evidenced by a recent study by the IBM Institute for Business Value, which found three out of five consumers report that at least half of their recent purchases include sustainable products.

Adopting an environmentally friendly approach

Another motivation for screen printing companies to adopt an LED-based curing process is the fact that it is more environmentally friendly than a mercury-based approach. Several factors establish using LED lamps as a more environmentally friendly approach to ink curing than mercury lamps. Significantly, the overall reduction in energy consumption that results from adopting an LED-based curing process reduces the harmful emissions caused by many energy production processes.

In addition to eliminating the emission of pollutants such as volatile organic compounds, LED lamps do not need to be replaced as often as mercury lamps. Mercury lamps can be used between 1,000 and 2,000 hours and have to be kept turned on throughout the working day, such that they typically have to be replaced once every eight to 12 months. In contrast, LED lights, with their ability to quickly be shut off when not in use, can typically last over a decade without having to be replaced. Ultimately, this longer lifespan reduces the amount of waste caused as a byproduct of the ink curing process.

A cost-effective curing process

Many screen printing companies may be reluctant to adopt UV-LED curing technology due to the upfront costs. However, when viewed holistically, investing in UV-LED curing technology will cut costs over time. This is due to the reduced spending on energy, the elimination of common regulatory costs involved in the use and disposal of mercury lamps, and significant savings in maintenance costs.

It will only take three years for the investment in LED lamps to pay itself back in full: a study by Specialist Printing Worldwide found that, while the cost to retro-fit LED lamps can be up to USD535,000, shifting to LED lamps will save companies around USD187,000 a year. Here, a major area where costs are cut is energy savings. For example, Empire Screening spends approximately USD650 on energy to power its LED lamps. In comparison, most similar-sized companies will spend up to USD35,000 per year to power mercury lamps.

LED technology has improved over the years, leading to increases in the output of UV-LED curing lamps. LED lamps can now output UV energy at the 395-nanometer wavelength and at 12- to 16-watt intensities. These options offer faster production speeds than the lower-watt lamps of years past, cutting costs by allowing more products to be manufactured more quickly.

Protecting employees

One of the biggest motivations for screen printing companies to switch to an LED-based curing process is to create a healthier work environment and protect workers. A mercury-based curing process, if not well-ventilated, releases irritants into the workplace that can cause respiratory issues for workers. LED lamps, by contrast, eliminate ozone and generate minimal heat, removing the need for HVACs, and allowing for air to be recycled without presenting hazards to employees.

Screen printing companies looking to cut energy consumption and costs while protecting their employees and the environment will find an ideal solution in UV-LED curing technology.

While many printers are familiar with the idea of joining small jobs together to create longer print runs, batching brings intelligence, precision, and automation to the process. It is different from concatenation, which printers may use to stack files into a single print run.

Batching rules can be built and managed based on job attributes to optimize production to meet service level agreements (SLAs), production demands, or unique processing based on the client’s requirements.

Batches are groups of jobs that share common elements that allow them to be processed and printed together. Jobs might share a common colour profile, paper, or finishing path but arrive from a variety of applications and network locations on different schedules. Building batch queues to hold, then release files when the assigned criteria are met, streamlines production, and increases efficiency.

Offset printers have used these techniques for decades. They often take jobs from multiple clients and use nesting or ganging applications to increase print capacity. Labels, hang tags, and even business cards can share a common sheet for printing and then be separated based on their finishing requirements. Applying similar techniques to business, transaction, direct mail, and other types of printing helps to eliminate the hands-on efforts to manage the growing number of short run jobs – a constant challenge for many printers.

To get started:

• look at job data to identify the common job types you manage;
• look at physical job elements like paper and finishing, but then look at more granular elements; and
• consider the colour profiles and ink levels.

Batches should have similar ink profiles, so keep graphically rich brochures separate from files with fewer graphic elements like invoices. Keep dark colour profile work separate from lighter profiles.

A best practice is to use the variations in the print applications to develop job queues to automate capturing inbound jobs and routing them.

No matter how you get started, batching belongs in your printing operation. Batching helps to reduce paper waste that occurs as jobs start up and increase uptime for print devices by levering standard setups. Whether you acquire a batching solution or do it yourself, this is a best practice for your print business.

Erwin Busselot is business innovations and solutions director, Ricoh Graphic Communications, Ricoh Europe.

Be it long delays caused by staff shortages and company shutdowns during the pandemic, or extra paperwork and logistical issues as a result of Brexit, there has been an impact on all sorts of companies, especially those trying to meet tight deadlines.

With no sign of relief in the near future, and with rising costs hitting businesses already struggling with shortages and delays, now is the time to take a look at your business and identify a cost-effective solution that will make your working life significantly easier in the long run.

Take the time to review the products and services you are offering, with a view to streamlining the consumable materials you need. This will ensure you can continue to meet client demand without feeling the pressure of the ongoing supply issues.

Consider reaching out to your distributor and manufacturing partners to isolate your core print and application requirements. Doing this will enable you to forecast, and in some cases even reduce, the number of different materials you need for day-to-day business, allowing your company to operate much more effectively.

Another obvious benefit is that you could significantly cut back on costs related to materials and consumables. Planning ahead and forecasting for the future will allow you to develop a much more accurate budget enabling you to acquire all the materials you need to operate, without the danger of incurring too many additional costs.

When we say shifting to from a ‘just in time’ model to a ‘just in case’ approach, this is mainly related to higher volume purchases. Obviously, this may be more expensive initially, but if you have all the materials in stock earlier on, you will avoid issues such as supply problems later in the year, allowing you to carry on working and delivering products to customers.

This approach will also avoid the panic of having to source materials and consumables during times of shortages; something that, more often than not, is an expensive process as the cost of products inevitably rises. Having excess materials in stock will remove this issue and allow you to operate as normal.

Finally, this model fits in well with certain trends that have been emerging recently, primarily that the “I need it tomorrow” level of demand has dipped as more businesses look to plan ahead with their purchases. Being able to deliver this sort of service will mean a much more relaxed experience for both your business and customers.

One of the key lessons we have learnt from the past few years is the importance of planning ahead to safeguard your business. Adopting this forward-thinking ‘just in case’ approach will certainly help you achieve your long-term goals.

Dennis Leblanc is senior business development manager for North America at Drytac.

However, the most exclusive and sought after of all blacks is something called Vantablack. It is the darkest manmade material on the planet, and uses nanoparticles to absorb virtually all light. It has properties useful to industry, and naturally, has attracted the interest of the art world where a celebrated artist obtained exclusive rights to the use of the blackest black. Another responded by creating the pinkest pink pigment, and making it available to anyone to buy except the aforementioned artist with rights to Vantablack. Colour can certainly stir emotions.

The fact is colour is a primal concept that informs, affects, and inspires us every day. We care about colour and respond in different ways to colours, thanks to their weight of associations, such as black for luxury and pink for affection.

This is the realm of colour psychology: the study of how colour affects human behaviour and emotions. It is widely believed the ability of colours to evoke certain emotions is linked to memories that we have of those specific tones from throughout our lives.

Colour’s central role in our lives is highlighted by the annual interest in Pantone’s colour of the year. Each year, there seems to be more coverage as the media have come to understand the level of interest in this announcement. According to the company, the “courageous” periwinkle shade Very Peri encourages personal inventiveness and creativity.

Your marketing clients will be tuned into colour psychology as their goal is to create a connection with their audience, building brand awareness and loyalty. Without consciously realizing it, consumers are already making assumptions about the style and tone of a brand simply from the colours present.

So, the dominant and secondary colours used can tell you a lot about what your clients are trying to communicate. Let’s pick just a handful of colours to illustrate how the choice of colour in marketing collateral send signals and evokes emotions.

Red is one of the most popular colours used by marketeers, and for good reasons. It’s a powerful tone that can stimulate strong emotions. It is used by brands to represent characteristics such as action, boldness and even hunger as seeing red accelerates the blood flow, and in turn, the metabolism, which can make us hungry. Hence Coca Cola, KFC, and McDonalds all use red extensively.

Then there’s blue with its association with calm and stability. Ford, Facebook, and American Express use blue to express these concepts.

Lastly, orange, which can convey creativity, adventure, and friendliness. It is good at capturing attention and is used by EasyJet and Harley Davidson.

So, to gain, a richer and more insightful appreciation of how your clients aspire to engage with their customers, take a good look at the colours that predominate in the items you print for them. The importance of colour can’t be overestimated. The impressionist master Claude Monet would agree. He said, “Colour is my day-long obsession, joy, and torment.” Yeah, a bit extreme maybe, but those of us who are not tortured geniuses can also appreciate the beauty and meaning of colour.

John Blyth is marketing and communications manager, Ricoh Graphic Communications,Ricoh Europe.

One of the primary reasons for this tricky selection process is the wide range of factors that you need to consider when choosing the media you are going to work with. Can it adhere to rough surfaces? Is it compatible with a certain type of print technology? Can it be used outside as well as indoors?

Among the many questions you need to ask yourself when picking out your next material is whether you require a grey or clear adhesive. This will likely come down to the type of application you are working on, with one type of material offering certain advantages over the other, and vice versa.

First and foremost, acrylic adhesives in their original state are typically clear and manufacturers will add a “tint” to the adhesive to provide blockout properties to the media.

But why is this important? In some applications, a blockout adhesive is necessary to avoid colour shift in the graphic due to darker substrates, or if you are applying the media to a surface with existing graphics and want to avoid these from showing through the new graphics.

Take, for example, producing a set of wall graphics for a retail store; there is a chance that the walls in the store will have some form of graphics already installed, or they could be painted a dark colour. Opting for a material with blockout adhesive will mean the graphics will stand strong in front of any existing designs or colours, helping the application “pop”.

However, blocking out an existing background, or indeed the light – natural or otherwise – that is behind the graphic may not always be the most sensible or effective approach. In fact, when it comes to certain applications, materials that allow light to pass through will allow for a much higher-quality and impactful result.

If, for example, we are to look at window graphics; in the majority of cases, the customer or client will want natural light from outside to pass through the graphics to light up the interior of the shop, restaurant or other venue. Materials with a clear adhesive will enable the user to achieve just this, allowing for the production of a high-quality design that is effectively lit up by the light that flows through it.

Similar advantages can also be seen when viewing window graphics from the opposite side. If the graphic were to be backed with blockout adhesive, this would mean the non-printed side would be a dull-looking, solid colour. However, clear adhesive lets the light pass through and produces a mirror image of the graphic on the other side of the print, which is more pleasing to the eye.

There are advantages for using either of these materials, with the choice simply coming down to the type of application you are working on. The key to a successful outcome is to fully understand your application, your substrates and choose your adhesive science and colour appropriately.

Dennis Leblanc is senior business development manager, North America, Drytac.

In just over two years it has emerged as an all-for-one technology.

This is because it has a number of attractions. They include the ability to work with direct to garment (DTG) printing technology to produce a wide range of high quality sportswear and workwear, as well as corporate and promotional items, on a broader range of substrates like polyester and nylon.

DTF cost effectively delivers on demand, or short run print, as there is a shallower learning curve for printing DTF transfers and there is no need to pre-treat the fabric.

The transfer technology works by printing designs onto polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film using water-based pigment inks. The design is printed with CMYK ink first and then white ink. This is a reversal of the standard DTG approach of white ink first, followed by CMYK. At the same time the image is reversed so that its orientation is mirrored.

The wet ink is powdered with a hot-melt adhesive and then cured. The final cured image is transferred to the textile application using a heat press.

Among the benefits of the technology are:

• Increased opportunities for customized, short run, on demand garment production by enabling printing on a wider range of fabrics.
• Material versatility and suitability for fabrics not ideal for other production methods, such as water repelling surfaces like leather and nylon. Polyester can be used as well.
• Durability and high fastness that makes it particularly suitable for applications such as synthetic sport jerseys. It is also ideal for workwear, promotional items and corporate branding.
• Greater elasticity and stretchability for high quality results on a wider range of applications.
• Very soft and flexible results.
• Extensive colour options.
• The ability to produce full colour, photorealistic images, and no limitations on complex designs.
• The ability to prepare images in advance and apply to fabric at a later date. This prevents over production for a more sustainable approach.

Axel Stuhlreiter is head of textile solutions, Graphic Communications Group, Ricoh Europe.

Your board members serve different purposes and have distinct expertise, but consistently these members need one key ingredient: trust. The people you trust to be completely selfless in their guidance and advice with a single focus on helping you to meet your goals are the ideal candidates to make up your board.

A simple exercise to determine your board members is to write a list of trusted professionals in your network, noting their area of strength beside their names. Then write down your career goals to assess what resources you may require to support your efforts. Once you have identified the subject matter expertise you need, you can then start to slot in board members identifying any gaps.

While certain members will remain consistent, your board may change depending on the goal you are moving toward and adding members with specific expertise to contribute to more of their knowledge to achieve your next milestone. What if you need a financial expert and don’t have one in your immediate pool of contacts? Network, ask your existing board members for recommendations, ask others for referrals and then identify the best fit to contribute to your career journey.

At this point, a common question becomes, “Why would someone join my board of directors and donate their time?”. This is a general question I get from career starters about networking with more senior professionals, and my answer is consistent: anyone further along in their career recognizes the value of the many contributors to their journey and often welcome the opportunity to pay it forward by giving someone else a helping hand. This rule does not apply to everyone, but you’ll be surprised by how many people openly and willingly share their expertise to assist others in their careers. Well-developed expertise is a gift to be shared, and those confident enough to know that share enthusiastically.

Now that you have identified your board of directors formally or informally at your discretion and want to activate it, how do you do that? To make the most of the resources available to you, it’s vital to be a receiver, meaning your goal is to provide plenty of air time for the member to share their knowledge, ask open-ended questions and listen, take notes and not dismiss a single idea of how you extract the most information to consider.

Listening to advice does not mean you need to take it or even apply it. Instead, consider it, layer over the nuance of your particular circumstances and goals and make the best-informed decision for you. If you do not take the lead in the process and filter accordingly, this is where people can get lost chasing their tail and by changing direction with every piece of advice. The belief that respecting the recommendation is to follow it is honourable, though it leaves you rudderless when navigating toward a goal. You have to be the captain of your ship, and taking this approach of listening, considering, and adjusting to customize your strategy is a critical lesson in leadership. No one should lead your career journey but you.

You are the head of your board that you have contributed to your career goals. To get the most out of this esteemed group, you need to compose thoughtful, open-ended questions. For example, “I want to be a director in the next three years; what should I do now to prepare myself?” “How would you approach asking for a raise?” “What are some things you had to overcome to get to where you are?” “What do you suggest to improve my writing?”. By preparing clear and direct questions before engaging with each member, you can ensure you are making the best use of their time.

The most respectful approach to your members is to prepare before speaking with them, acknowledge the importance of their time and don’t take too much. Engaging with members for shorter increments of time and more frequently can keep your guidance current relevant and adjust to real-time developments on your progress.

For a checklist example of open-ended questions, email crystal@propelleadership.ca.

Crystal Hyde is a certified professional coach in Waterloo, Ont., and founder of Propel Leadership Coaching, specializing in communications consulting and leadership coaching.

The bottom line is that the print industry continues to evolve—a notion confirmed in the latest market study from Madison Advisors (January 2021). Madison Advisors’ research focused on post-composition solutions for volume print production environments.

Why is post-composition important for the future success of volume print production industries? “Even if some of the functionality of a post-composition solution overlaps that of the core document composition solution(s), the cost benefit of considering post-composition to address rapidly changing customer expectations more easily is worthy of serious consideration,” said Keith Woedy, vice-president of Research and Practice Lead, Madison Advisors. “We believe that, to stay competitive, companies need to take a hard look at including post-composition into the workflow to support the ability to deliver highly personalized, efficient, cost-effective communications.”

Jonathan Malone-McGrew

As Woedy mentions, the need to deliver what print buyers and customers require is key to the value of post-composition in 2021. Jonathan Malone-McGrew, senior director of engagement at Solimar Systems, sees five ways in which post-composition can help print production workflows handle more business, more efficiently.

1. Handle a larger number of smaller quantity orders

Around the world, printers of all types talk to us about the challenge of more orders coming in but for lower quantities per order. Post-composition print workflow solutions are critical here. Optimizing print orders as they come in, commingling or batching them with like print jobs and automating the process with visible, trackable and reportable processes or workflows is crucial. Customers tell us this capability can save them hundreds of thousands of dollars in printing and process costs annually while opening the door to new revenue opportunities.

2. Fulfil the requirement for personalization

The idea of personalization isn’t new, but the need for it continues to grow. Personalization isn’t just about applying a name to a printed product. Regionalization is a key component to personalization and delivers unique experiences for recipients in different geographies. Using variable data printing (VDP) techniques, printers can offer data-driven content that makes each piece more relevant and valuable to the recipient. That relevance can be driven by the user’s own preferences revealed by past purchasing behaviours or interests. Given the long timeframes associated with implementing composition workflows, personalization is often added in a timely manner with a post-composition solution. By adding these tools in print environments, organizations have the opportunity to offer customers extended services and grow their business overall.

3. Meet the demands for fast production and delivery

Rapidly changing expectations are pressuring printers to become more agile in meeting faster turnaround times. To do this, the critical processes within a volume print production environment need to be efficient. Automation is vital, leaving manual tasks for only those orders that have special needs or exceptions. Post-composition solutions can reduce production overhead, time-to-complete, and manual labour across all types of jobs. At the same time, these solutions tend to improve accuracy and create new revenue opportunities.

4. Enable competitive pricing

Competitive pricing is based on both business and market factors. While businesses can build a competitive pricing strategy by adjusting profit margins or by bundling unique offers, a more sustainable approach is reducing structural overhead. Post-composition can provide the critical path to giving high-volume print shops the ability to reduce operational expenses. Through hands-off, automated and templatized processes, organizations can streamline and drive costs down. The benefit is flexibility in maintaining profit margins while offering more competitive pricing to customers.

5. Leverage all destination devices and channels

The fifth consideration for how post-composition easily drives success for volume PSPs is the ability to load balance or redirect work to the devices or channels available. Simply put, some operational decisions are best done after composition. With the right workflows, PSPs can drive significant benefit by digitally diverting jobs for e-delivery or by batching and segmenting content to optimize both printer and inserter utilization. Additionally, such post-composition workflows tend to leverage postal discounts. No matter the need, post-composition print workflow solutions can help PSPs leverage the equipment they have and optimize the work they do.

Jonathan’s advice to influencers in in-plant or PSP businesses is to take a closer look at their current processes. Make sure to walk the workflow from order or job receipt to the delivery of the finished product. If bottlenecks or slowdowns in the five areas mentioned above are witnessed, you are on the right path to discovering a plan to improve your print business through post-composition software solutions.

Here, Solimar Systems’ Drew Sprague, president, Mary Ann Rowan, chief experience officer and Jonathan Malone-McGrew, senior director of engagement share their thoughts on trends that will shape the industry in 2021. They offer their advice on what print providers can do to make their businesses more resilient, competitive and profitable in the year ahead. 

What are some print technology trends we can expect to see in 2021?

DS: Among the many trends, I’d like to highlight three big ones. First, PDF asserts its place as the de facto printing standard across application types and workflows. No longer is PDF just for commercial print or electronic statement delivery. The flexibility of PDF—its rich palette of features including colour control—make PDF irresistibly attractive even for transactional output. Second, JDF gains traction. As devices become PDF-only, specifying finishing, tracking production and collecting accounting data drive connectivity from LPR and watched folder handshakes to full-fledged, bi-directional JMF/JDF dialogues. Third, dashboards and mobile apps make the work floor much more visible. Tracking service level commitments; getting accurate and timely approvals; and resolving operational issues become much easier.

Additionally, I see another step-change will be the way in which software is rolled out in a print shop environment. We see many people looking at virtualized environments with both private and hybrid cloud implementations. In 2021, I believe more companies will be looking at how they can make the best use of cloud services while keeping the necessary server-side for security and performance.

Live job tracking and reporting will be crucial to service providers. The ability to track jobs or individual pieces from anywhere at any time provides the accountability that matters for 2021 and beyond.

Jonathan, do you think data security will continue to be a hot topic in 2021?

JMM: Data security is an extremely hot topic for print providers. Since 2016 and the adoption of GDPR in the EU, we have seen increasing regulations around the globe. These changes require more careful and precise handling of data that may be used to identify a person. As a consequence, more printers are taking aggressive steps to track Personally Identifiable Information (PII). In talking to customers, it can still be a surprise that accepting, handling and storing name and address information of a California resident is enough to trigger CCPA regulatory requirements. And this is independent of where the provider operates. More importantly, it is a familiar story globally due to the impacts of GDPR in the EU.

This reality drives the need for updated processes and technology that will secure data while being stored or as it moves through print or digital production processes. And there are many opportunities to improve security with software solutions that make it possible to obfuscate content, encrypt data and align to an IT department’s strategy for defending against ransomware and other cyber attacks.

The good news is that workflow management software can really help in this respect. The right solution will offer highly secure print file transfer capabilities as well as data redaction, obfuscation, and appropriate levels of encryption from the print management solution to the printer itself.

What makes workflow systems remain relevant today?

Mary Ann Rowan

MAR: From conversations with our global network, it’s clear the idea of workflow is only increasing in relevance. From our customers’ perspective, the change in how work is being brought into their print and digital communications delivery environments continues to evolve. There is a clear trend toward increased personalization in jobs. This trend impacts print providers by creating shorter runs, or more job-of-one work, that can strain current processes especially if they are still completed manually by production staff. When looking at a production environment, it is critical to understand where bottlenecks are happening as it may challenge on-time delivery of current work and limit the opportunity to take on additional work that boosts profits.

We also see print providers looking to make changes to their environments, whether that is from mergers and acquisitions, expansion into new markets or upgrades to current hardware and software within their facilities. In each one of these examples, the current processes should be reviewed to identify if they are efficient or should be optimized for the best possible performance. This includes reducing redundant systems and/or upgrading to new technologies that are better suited to delivering the features and functions that will make it possible to achieve the organization’s goals.

In my opinion, our own personal technology has shaped our expectations of what information we should be able to see, access and monitor within our businesses. I liken traditional print environments to the old advertising analogy, “I know half of my advertising is working, I just don’t know what half.” Many environments suffer from a lack of automation, reporting and visibility, which impacts efficiency and responsiveness. Having real-time status updates at your fingertips whether via a mobile, tablet, desktop monitor or screen on a shop floor is critical to managing the ever-changing production environment with maximum effectiveness. Visibility and reporting make it possible to reduce and keep production costs in check while providing the ultimate benefit of empowering the organization to take on new business and growth opportunities.

What steps can print shops take to make their business more profitable next year (and beyond)?

JMM: Generally, when we talk about making the print production process more profitable, we look for areas where we can streamline processes, increase throughput and upgrade the entire performance of the production environment. When trying to impact profitability you can raise prices to create more margin, but that may not be successful in a competitive environment—a situation most print markets are in today or will be in the future. More commonly, we see customers turn to look at cost centres, opportunities to grow new business and value-adds for the buyer or consumer. When we walk a workflow with a customer, we often uncover opportunities for improvement. These lead to better utilization of staff, reduced costs and many times new revenue. I talk with clients and future clients about manual processes, legacy software and hardware that may not be performing well in today’s environment. Additionally, we discuss pre-printed stocks and forms, transition to colour and inkjet, archival costs and whether their print equipment is able to run at its best based on how files are fed to it. The key: a good workflow opens the door to new and better business.

Improving efficiency will bolster profit, but it shouldn’t be the only method your organization looks at. In many cases, an investment in small, tactical solutions can deliver compelling short-term returns. Taking advantage of value-added offerings for the consumer is also a way to improve profitability.

What advice would you give to companies to streamline their business/optimize their workflow?

DS: The first step is to know your workflow. That sounds like a buzz phrase or a sales pitch, but it is the most important thing before deciding how your organization and teams should act to streamline and optimize. The best advice we can give organizations that have production print and electronic delivery environments is to know exactly how jobs come in (on-boarding), how they get reviewed or interrogated (pre-press processing activities), how they are modified or enhanced, how they are queued or scheduled for print or e-delivery, and also what happens when things go wrong like damaged pieces and interruptions in the middle of printing. It is also important to look at all the manual tasks that are being performed as part of the processes to take a job or print file from receipt to delivery. Manual processes invite human error, production time variances and risk when employees are not able to work. Automation, visibility, and accounting are key to making sure workflow is streamlined.

Are there other opportunities that print providers can take advantage of to improve the resilience and profitability of their businesses in 2021?

MAR: As we look ahead there is no doubt in my mind that print and digital content providers will have the opportunity to accept outsourced work from large brands and organizations, see an uptick in demand for personalized content and be asked to deliver work both physically in print and across electronic distribution channels. These trends shine a positive light on the available opportunities heading into 2021. My best advice to print providers is to make sure they are positioned to take advantage of all the opportunities that would benefit them. The solutions you implement are of supreme importance to the way your teams and processes work together in harmony and for success. I see significant opportunities for print providers to leverage technology that has been designed to be implemented with a professional services light strategy. This allows organizations to shorten the implementation, to easily train up and have confident people on staff to manage the solution and save money both in the short and long term on professional service hours.

As an art director looking at the world through a creative lens, print for me has always been a means to an end. I have always loved print as such, but I was ambivalent about it as I felt I had to compromise my creative ideas to get the best printed results. Whether this was due to colour or to production constraints, it was a limiting factor.

Over the last decade, however, I have had the privilege of managing the creative work done by HP Indigo and became intimately acquainted with digital print. I have fallen head over heels in love with it! Instead of limiting my work, it has actually enabled me to reach new heights of creativity and to stretch the limits of my imagination. I have discovered that digital print is the best, newest, most exciting design tool there is. It is my new paint brush, my colour pallet and my tool box.

The air-brush of today and tomorrow

The development of digital print is reminiscent of the advent of the modern air-brush: suddenly there was a new technology for releasing ink onto paper. It was easy to learn and use and it quickly became popular. With this new tool a whole new art form started, taking photo-realism and photo-retouching to a completely new level. Digital printing can do just that, too, and be the new air-brush for the graphic-design community; an exciting new chapter that easily expands design capabilities.

As designers, customers have also changed, and so have their marketing and branding requirements. This affects what is required from us – basically it changes our own product. In the past, branding was based on consistency with the psychological rational being that familiarity will lead to brand recognition, brand preference, buying and loyalty. When my own generation, so-called generation X, walked into a supermarket and saw the myriad brand options on-shelf, our hands would somehow instinctively reach for the one which was familiar, which looked the same as it always had been, reminding us of home, of safety and of predictability.

Then the millennials came along, who were brought up to expect personal service. Safety or predictability was less of an issue, familiarity was nothing to them – on the contrary, it was ‘boring’. Millennials do not see themselves as ‘part of a crowd’ – they prefer to be seen as ‘one of a kind’. They expect brand-owners to treat them as individuals and target their products specifically to themselves. Sustainability also became an issue and altogether, mass production and traditional advertising were not cutting it. As a response, marketing departments and advertising agencies started developing more targeted campaigns with ‘activation’ tactics to reach and appeal to these new consumers but still, overall, the personal touch was mostly missing. Millennials, who grew up with the internet, are certainly more used to sharing their personal data in exchange for content. They are happy to participate and click if this means the brand will acknowledge them personally. They expect the brands to use this data and get the product right.

Now comes generation Z, which is even more internet savvy in every possible way. To them the technology comes as naturally as the air they breathe, it is taken for granted. According to a recent report on customer trust trends from Salesforce “although a slim majority of consumers are still wary of companies’ intentions when it comes to handing over personal data, Gen Z and millennials are more game to take that risk — as long as they are getting something in return”.

So, how do we offer today’s customers the right product in today’s consumer market? The ultimate answer to this question is: with digital print! Digital print allows us to control and change the data on a print product, using information the consumer has given us to make it the most relevant product possible for them.

Mind the gap

At the moment there is a gap between the possibility or idea and what the design world is actually doing. In most cases, designers, being unaware of the potential of digital, still design ‘for any print technology’, being wary of colour limitations and definitely not using the digital tools potentially available to them for an improved brand experience. The ability to close this gap lies in the hands of the print-vendor (or print service provider). Proactive and agile printing firms can help their customers to achieve huge marketing success by offering them such design tools.

I once worked with a team on the development of such tools and had the honour of collaborating with big international brands who used these tools to deliver astonishing, impactful campaigns where digital print enabled the product itself to become the media. The first campaign was a collaboration with Diet Coke in Israel:

2 million different Diet Coke bottles

Coca Cola in Israel was looking to increase their Diet Coke sales and the brand manager, an innovative young millennial, was seeking something new, something different. Having experienced the power of digital print with the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign in summer 2014, a campaign which broke the boundaries of personalized mass-production, she realized that the staggering results of the campaign pointed to an obvious customer need or desire. She then reached out to our marketing team and her brief to us was this: “We need 2 million bottles, every single one different from the other – doesn’t matter how. Just keep the logo and ingredients as they are. Everything must be on-shelf in 2 months”.

With a combined effort between R&D and design teams, we came up with ‘HP Smartstream Mosaic,’ an algorithm which manipulates the design result. It’s a plug-in for Adobe CC and is very easy to use. The result is one that manual labor could never achieve. How does the algorithm work? Well, in short, the designer supplies the ‘seed pattern’ and the algorithm manipulates it into different results each time a page is printed. Never repeating, always changing. The design work took 2 weeks, with 23 seed patterns created to then achieve 2 million different individual designs. Digital print allowed a fast turnaround and the product was on the shelf on time.

Save the elephants

A second such campaign example and a personal favourite of mine used the same algorithm and digital print technology to support an even bigger goal, namely ‘cause-driven marketing’.

“Millennials and Generation Z are continuously changing the way consumer experiences are being created. Cause-driven marketing plays a large role in this change, and brands and marketers should find a cause to stand for to impact these generations.” This has been concluded by many marketing researches, and Amarula, a liquor brand from South Africa embodies this by supporting the ‘save the elephants’ campaign. Elephants are being relentlessly poached for their ivory and the Amarula brand has from the start been supporting the cause to save them – symbolized by the elephant on its label.

Using HP Smartstream mosaic, Amarula put 400,000 different bottles on-shelf, each with a differently designed elephant that represents a living one. Two seed patterns were designed and the rest was handled by the digital press and software. For every bottle purchased, Amarula donated money to a foundation they partnered with. Digital print enabled this emotional, big-issue message to get across on-shelf as every bottle could be as unique as every real elephant. Just as with Diet Coke, the message from the brand to today’s younger generation was carried on the product and was supported by a 360˚ campaign which drove consumer engagement and brand equity through the roof.

So, to re-cap my arguments – today’s consumer market thrives more and more on personalized, or individualized, brand communications; however, many brands are still confused by this fundamental consumer change and by how it affects their supply-chain; printers themselves hold the key to new digital print capabilities but don’t actually participate in marketing strategy talks with brands or their designers – and so the gap remains! The design-community has a real opportunity to unleash digital as their new ‘air-brush’ to create beautiful, personalized multi-channel campaigns and to enable a new kind of marketing. At drupa 2021 you will witness a world of almost endless possibilities. Visit drupa, get in touch and embrace the future!

About the author

Hadar Peled Vaissman is an independent international Art Director who helps brands to improve their communication mainly through customization, personalization and individualization. She believes that these will elevate a company’s relevance in a digital world.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life,” Steve Jobs, Apple Co-Founder, once said.

At the end of every year, I like to look back and review the events of the past 12 months and reflect on how things have changed. Our December enewsletter highlights 25 of the most significant moments of 2019 that have driven Canada’s printing industry. From Friesens’ continued shift into digital production, to the passing of print trailblazer Mary Black, MET Fine Printers’ new Vancouver headquarters, and CJ Graphics’ monumental Benny wins, what a year it was. Visit http://ow.ly/5gw750y2Dvc to see our complete list.

To mark the new decade, we compiled a list of our most-read news stories from 2010 to 2019. Flip to page 14 and join us for a walk down memory lane as we recap these top PrintAction.com articles. It was certainly a period of consolidation and business turbulence, with the majority of the stories being company closures, acquisitions and bankruptcy filings. Here’s an interesting tidbit — two of our top-read articles of all time are also on this list: The 2017 passing of Hemlock Printers’ Dick Kouwenhoven, and the 2019 Canada Post stamp price increase.

How do you intend to make your mark this year? Will 2020 be the year your business expands its services and capabilities? Or perhaps you and your team have decided to focus on operational efficiencies as you strive to minimize makeready times, costs and waste. The new year might also serve as the time to refocus your company brand and culture.

Consider this advice from Michael Dell, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Dell: “You don’t need to be a genius or a visionary, or even a college graduate for that matter, to be successful. You just need framework and a dream.”

Here at PrintAction, we have reinvigorated our portfolio to ensure we meet and exceed your needs. We are entering this new decade with a refreshed attitude and will continue to keep you informed with timely, accurate and insightful content across our print, digital and social media platforms. The thing I’m looking forward to most in 2020? Attending my first drupa tradeshow in June. PrintAction is delighted to bring you pre- and post-show coverage, as well as live updates throughout the enormous trade fair. Messe Düsseldorf is estimating that well over 250,000 visitors and 1,800+ exhibitors from 50 countries are expected to attend drupa 2020. If past drupas are any indication, the innovation on display this summer will undoubtedly reiterate that print remains a powerful tool, even if how it is produced and consumed continues to evolve.

“It has become very apparent in recent years that the appeal of print products is growing as the technology steadily advances,” says Sabine Geldermann, Director of drupa and Global Head of Print Technologies at Messe Düsseldorf. “Print is conquering new dimensions with haptic elements, innovative materials and finishing techniques that engage the senses in previously unknown ways for an entirely new experience.”

According to Smithers research, the worldwide print industry remains in a stage of transition. Total print volumes are forecast broadly and unchanged at 49.5 trillion A4 sheets between 2019 and 2024. During the same period, overall value will increase at 1.3 percent year-on-year in real terms, from US$818 billion in 2019 to US$874 billion in 2024, an indication that value-adding potential still exists.

“Global print is in good shape overall,” according to the 6th drupa Global Trends Report, released by Messe Düsseldorf in spring 2019. “Clearly there are some regions doing better than others. Equally there are stronger and weaker markets. The industry has found its collective confidence again after the twin shocks of the last decade — the global recession and the impact of digital media.”

We can’t wait to see what the new year brings. As always, thank you for your continued support throughout the past year. From all of us at PrintAction, we wish you a happy, safe and prosperous 2020.

This feature was originally published in the January/February 2020 issue of PrintAction, now available online.

Last month Walmart announced its seasonal toy catalogue has been enhanced with Digimarc barcodes that let shoppers scan pages with their smartphones and order items online, marking the retailer’s first catalogue integration with mobile technology. Designed to be a simple ‘scan and shop’ experience, customers with Apple iOS and Google Android devices can now use their phones to shop by activating the barcode scanner in the Walmart app over the desired page. The app will then show a list of toys that can be added to a wish list or online shopping cart.

Scan & Shop powered by Digimarc is featured in 35 million print catalogues available in Walmart’s nearly 4,800 U.S. stores, with millions also mailed to U.S. homes and major omnichannel toy resellers, Digimarc explains.

“Creating convenience for Walmart’s customers was a key priority for this year’s toy catalogue. Through our partnership with Digimarc, we were able to enhance our catalogue with a Scan & Shop option for our customers,” Alvis Washington, Vice President of Marketing, Walmart, says. “This is an exciting new feature that I know will resonate with our customers.”

According to Adobe Analytics research, consumers will boost mobile spending by 20 percent to US$14 billion during this holiday season from a year earlier, making up 36 percent of all online sales. As consumers increasingly rely on their smartphone to purchase holiday gifts – for family, friends and themselves – savvy retailers are working to combine the nostalgia and excitement of flipping through a printed holiday catalogue with the ease of mobile shopping.

For the second consecutive year, Amazon.com Inc. mailed a toy catalogue ahead of the holiday season, instead of relying on all-digital advertising. Titled Play together, the eye-catching 94-page catalogue features hundreds of toys, but they aren’t marked with prices, just QR codes that draw consumers to the Amazon website. There is also a sticker sheet to flag items as well as a mad-libs page that invites children to write out their own holiday wish list.

“Once you turn this page, you’ll enter a world where holiday dreams are made. So stack the cookies high, keep the cocoa toasty, and cozy up together because you’ll definitely want to check this book twice,” reads page 2 of the scannable catalogue.

Tim Curtis, President of direct mail consultancy CohereOne, believes Amazon will soon customize its catalogue based on the recipient’s household if it isn’t already, as quoted in a November 2019 Forbes article by Kiri Masters. “Their roadmap will probably include custom content for each recipient. They know from the size of Halloween costumes we ordered, what are the ages of the children in our household,” he said, noting that the online retailer could even feature certain products based on the TV shows the family watches in their Prime Video account.

“Amazon will surely see positive responses from this. We know from neuroscience that [direct mail] is extremely effective at building an emotional connection with customers and driving demand. Even the stickers in the catalogue — it’s nostalgia. They are doing it right,” Curtis said.

The strategy represents a repeat effort from Amazon to incorporate traditional engagement tools used by brick-and-mortar stores, as analysts speculate the e-commerce giant pivoted to print catalogues last year in a move to capitalize on the July closure of Toys “R” Us stores in the U.S.

Meanwhile north of the border, Toys “R” Us Canada is experimenting with augmented reality (AR) through a new partner-ship with Snapchat. The toy retailer recently published what it says is its most “interactive and creative” Holiday Toy Book, a 44-page booklet with characters and products that “literally pop out from the pages.” A printed version was mailed to more than five million households, while the digital counterpart is available on the Flipp flyer app. Snapchatters simply open the app, use the Snapcode in the Holiday Toy Book to add the lens, and a 3D Geoffrey the Giraffe will guide users through the portal. The retailer is the first in Canada to market the Snapchat Portal Lens, a unique lens designed to give consumers an immersive experience as they interact with the season’s top toys.

“AR is a powerful new technology and we are excited to use it to improve the customer experience,” explains Frank Juhasz, VP Marketing and Omni Channel Innovation at Toys “R” Us Canada. “Through this partnership, we’re able to bring our toys and products to life in new ways. Canadians expect this type of innovation from great retailers and we’re happy to be leading the charge.”

Despite these different innovations, it’s clear the coveted toy catalogue remains a vital part of the holiday shopping experience.

This feature was originally published in the December 2019 issue of PrintAction, now available online.

“Science has finally confirmed what we’ve long known to be true — we’re hardwired for stories,” Sujan Patel, growth marketer and entrepreneur, writes in the article, Nine companies that are killing it with brand-driven storytelling. “They lead to better understanding, trust, comprehension, receptivity and more. We teach important ideas to our children via fables and fairy tales. We share episodes from the lives of important religious and historical figures via dialogues and stories. We connect, engage and are moved…to tears, to laughter, to anger, to sympathy, to action.”

A recent design and social impact project highlights the power of human connection. Organizers collected untold, anonymous stories in Toronto and Atlanta, and wrote them into reclaimed, second-hand books; visitors of the art exhibit could then reply to these stories by sending a postcard. Titled What is your story?, the exhibit looks at the struggles and secrets hidden deep within ourselves and our peers, and how these unknown stories connect us more than we realize. Designed by Spark Corps and Orange Sparkle Ball, in collaboration with BooknBrunch, the interactive installation quickly became an outlet for untold stories.

“There are very few burdens greater than carrying the weight of an untold story. People constantly have trouble finding their voice and sharing their story for fear of being judged. Books are the silent storyteller,” the organizers explain. “This interaction makes the storyteller feel heard and responded to. The vulnerability of what people share under anonymity is astounding and powerful.”

The collection of books was put on display as part of DesignTO in January 2019, a city-wide cultural celebration of design in Toronto, and is now on exhibit in Atlanta. The installation is expected to travel to additional locations in Canada, the United States and Colombia in the future.

“Stories create community, enable us to see through the eyes of other people, and open us to the claims of others,” Peter Forbes, photographer and author, once famously said.

Life on the line is an art project that saw 100 posters take the place of typical subway advertisements from November 17, 2018, to January 6, 2019. Launched by Toronto-based not-for-profit organization Twentytwenty Arts, the pieces were created by artists who have been affected by mental health issues, either directly or through their loved ones, and aim to reflect their diverse experiences.

The 20 winning pieces – selected from roughly 350 submissions – vary in design and media, ranging from lithographs, digital works, screen prints, photography, oil paintings and collages.

“Art has an opportunity to communicate experiences that might be incommunicable,” Megan Kee, executive director for Twentytwenty Arts, told The Globe and Mail.

Displayed on Toronto Transit Commission’s Lines 1 and 2 subways for nearly two months, the prints are also available for purchase, with 80 percent of sales going toward the Canadian Mental Health Association Toronto.

In today’s fast-paced society immersed in digital technology, we’ve seen a return to creating simpler, authentic connections. Think classic board games, vinyl record players, Polaroid cameras, retro-inspired television shows, even print catalogues and direct mail pieces — what’s old is new again.

“The Internet constantly rewards us with convenience and instant gratification, making the human touch increasingly more scarce and coveted,” writes Celinne Da Costa in the article, Three reasons why brand storytelling is the future of marketing. “In this environment, businesses can no longer afford to be faceless entities. To survive, businesses need to connect with audiences, pull at their heartstrings, and engage with them on a much deeper level than seen before.”

While the article focuses on crafting and executing an effective brand marketing strategy, the bottom line – “humanity is becoming the new premium” – remains true. Effective storytelling will continue to evoke an emotional, memorable response.

“Your audience may forget what you say, but they will not forget how you made them feel,” Da Costa notes.

As Jimmy Neil Smith, founder and president emeritus of the International Storytelling Center in Jonesborough, Tenn., puts it: “We are all storytellers. We all live in a network of stories. There isn’t a stronger connection between people than storytelling.”

This editorial was originally published in the March 2019 issue of PrintAction, now available online.

One of the most recognizable holiday symbols is the Starbucks holiday cup, first introduced in 1997. For many, the anticipated return of the ‘red cup’ signals the start of winter. The holiday designs, over the past two decades, have ranged from whimsical brushstrokes in bold colours to vintage flair. This year the company welcomed the festive season with four retro designs inspired by its own coffee roasts and logo.  

“The emotional connection that our store partners [employees] have when they open that first box of the red cups and start using them that first day, and the emotional connection they see from their customers, that’s what we strive for,” Terry Davenport, then-Senior Vice President, Global Brand and Creative Studios at Starbucks, said in a 2013 interview with Dieline.

In past years, Starbucks has gone for a more interactive cup design. Last year the traditional red cups were white with colour-it-yourself doodles, while the 2016 cups featured 13 crowd-sourced designs submitted by customers through a worldwide Instagram contest.   

As a physical form of communication, print helps to cultivate rich customer interactions that forge authentic, emotional relationships. Companies often take advantage of the festive season to experiment with their brand strategy.  

For the 2015 holiday season, Oreo gave consumers the chance to get creative with the cookie wrappers through customizable illustrations, printed using an HP Indigo WS6600 digital press. Customers could choose to colour the package online or order a white-and-black pack for at-home colouring. The packaging also allowed customers to add a personal message.  

“Because well-crafted design elicits emotional responses, great brands use packaging design to stand out in the crowd and make powerful first impressions. The best packaging designs are not only emotionally appealing to customers; they also convey the unique meaning and value of the brand. Packaging design alone can facilitate an emotional connection and bonds customers to brands,” writes brand leadership expert Denise Lee Yohn in the Forbes’ article, Let design do the talking for brands.

Texas-based Karbach Brewing Co. takes beer fans down a nostalgic road with its seasonal brew, Yule shoot your eye out, inspired by the 1983 classic film, A Christmas Story. The can is decorated with the infamous ‘leg lamp’ – a lamp consisting of a stockinged woman’s leg wearing a high-heeled shoe, topped with a black-fringed bell shade – one of the most distinguishable movie props of all time.

Heineken released its limited-edition 1.5-litre bottle last month, mirroring the festive look of a champagne bottle — an unusual size and shape for the Dutch pale lager beer well-known for its signature green bottle. “Beer is an essential purchase for holiday celebrations. More than any other season, consumers want the brands they serve during the holidays to reflect the spirit of the season,” says Bjorn Trowery, Director, External Communications at Heineken USA.

Lee Yohn continues, “Whether through product design, web design or retail design, great brands create extraordinary experiences – brand ‘worlds’ of sorts – that appeal to all the senses and use details and decor to help express their brand personalities.”

Breakfast sausage brand Jimmy Dean, from November 12 to December 23, is hosting a recipe gift exchange for free holiday swag. After sharing their favourite recipe that features a Jimmy Dean product, customers can choose from various gifts, such as sausage-scented gift wrap, a holiday apron or a glass sausage tree ornament, as a thank-you for their participation. The “smells like sausage, tastes like paper” gift wrap proved to be a hit and was out of stock several weeks into the promotion.

Last year Hemlock Printers released its own scented wrapping paper through Hemlock Holiday Wrap, a yearly staple in its project portfolio. With eight different compositions, the 2017 series was dedicated to the passing of founder Dick Kouwenhoven. One of the featured designs, the Hemlock Bake Sale sheet, recognizes the company’s annual fundraising bake sale and pictures a few of Kouwenhoven’s favourite baked delicacies. The sheet was printed with a UV CMYK ink sequence with a gingerbread spot-scented varnish.

“Every single encounter that people have with your brand will either enhance its value or diminish it. Creating a ‘brand world’ means carefully choosing and integrating every element,” Lee Yohn says.

This editorial was originally published in the December 2018 issue of PrintAction, now available online.

I do a lot of speaking events these days. I’m actually writing this article from an empty little airport in Brainerd, Minnesota. I just presented a session on Direct Mail at AIGA Design Camp. The event draws hundreds of designers every year to the charming and rustic Grand View Lodge and Resort. I’m on my way home, and I finally have some time on my hands as I wait for my flight.

No more nerves
It’s almost hard to remember back when I used to get nervous – crazy nervous – before an event. I would fret about it for weeks, breaking into cold sweats and wishing desperately to be on the other side of it and on my way home. That was 10 years ago. These days I barely have a butterfly in my stomach before I hit the stage.

I don’t know if it’s all of my Fold Factory video work over the past few years, or if it’s the frequency in which I speak to crowds, large and small, or if it’s just the confidence that comes with really knowing your content, but it’s gotten a lot easier – and a lot more fun, thankfully. It also helps that the printing industry is quite welcoming in general. I also find comfort in knowing that often the audience includes people who watch my videos and appreciate my work. They show up excited and ready to learn.

Eureka! Printers are finally getting it
I have seen a lot of changes over the years. Although there are still some printers out there who see themselves as “just the printer,” more and more I’m seeing printers who are getting deeply involved in creating a top-notch learning experience for their customers. It has taken a while, but printers are finally realizing that they can stay top of mind and build relationships if they bring valuable learning experiences to their customers and if they can be seen as a team member, and a provider of solutions (for print and other forms of media), rather than as a place to print stuff. The other driver seems to be the inability to get face time with customers these days. Events become the draw, and the opportunity to show off their skills and remind customers of their capabilities and willingness to help.

Printers are starting to pull out all the stops for their events, creating a “designerly” experience for their customers with engaging and creative event invitations and following through with a cool venue, fun goodie bags, large-format event signage, often hors d’oevres or a meal and drinks, and an enlightening presentation filled with valuable information that addresses the challenges their customers face. Printers have finally realized that their customers really do not want to sit on a folding chair in a windowless room of a print facility to watch a PowerPoint presentation. They are learning to create an experience that their customers will want to attend, and that investment is really paying off for them.

One great example of this movement was billed as the printForum, hosted by Rider Dickerson in Chicago in September, during PRINT 13. They put together a day of speakers and I was this year’s luncheon keynote. In addition to the lunch, there was a vendor reception with lots of great materials to take with you, and great content. They had a few hundred in attendance. Within the past few weeks in Atlanta, Prographics and Standard Press each hosted fabulous educational events that brought in crowds of 150-plus.

Choose the right topic, and not only do these events draw a crowd they draw a big crowd – a quality crowd that is not just there for a free lunch and the tchotchke. As a matter of fact, these people come early, they take lots of notes and even photograph the slides with their smartphones. They stay late to ask questions, too. It’s pretty amazing.

I do a lot of events for Sappi Fine Paper. I speak on my own or with the amazing Daniel Dejan, Sappi’s North American ETC Print/Creative Manager. I’m on my second big project with Sappi after providing the content for Standard #4: Scoring and Folding a few years back.

We recently collaborated on a new Sappi direct-mail publication called ACT NOW! and Daniel and I have been touring to share information about how to create mail that performs. We were in New York City at the Art Directors Club in early October and we actually had a waiting list, because registration was at capacity. Almost 200 were there that night. If you would like to see us present live, or get a free copy of the publication, contact your Sappi rep to learn more.

Breaking new ground
This summer, I crossed into the world of online education. I gave two live, 90-minute presentations on creativeLIVE.com – one session was on direct mail, the other was on creative folded solutions. It was fun, and a little scary and everything in-between. Even my parents were watching me from their little desktop computer in Rochester, New York – yikes!

I was in Seattle in a studio with producers, camera operators and hosts. Questions came in live from the online chat rooms, and there was a small in-studio audience, too. The events were free for anyone to watch on the day of the event, and now theses sessions are available in the creativeLIVE store. It was a fabulous experience. I am actually invited back to creativeLIVE this December.

The cool thing about that event was that it was a bridge for me. creativeLIVE’s audience is different than the groups I usually present to. There are lots of creative entrepreneurs, photographers, people who have creative careers, and even those that are just sharpening their skills or hobbyists.

Audience observations
What I’m seeing is that there is a real hunger for meaningful information in the industry (and in any industry, I imagine). For example, although there is so much potential for mail and digital print combined with other forms of media for a true cross-channel marketing experience, the how is very overwhelming for people who used to be able to buy a mailing list, send a mail-piece, count responses and repeat. For people who are just starting their careers, there is a critical foundation of practical knowledge that just is not taught in academia.

There is a lot of confusion over acquiring, gathering and managing of data, and understanding how to leverage it. There is confusion about what can and cannot be done with mail from a format perspective, and how to avoid costly mistakes while staying creative and engaging. There is discovery in learning about the strategic side of the process – the written word and the positioning of the offer, which is eye-opening for people. It’s also a challenge to cover mail requirements without putting an audience to sleep. It can be done, however (wink, wink).

Audiences want an information-packed, in-person or online experience that fits their schedule and is respectful of their time. It needs to be in an accessible format or in a comfortable venue. They love having something tangible to take with them – for future reference, and for proof to their coworkers that they were not shopping or napping during the hours they were away.

Audiences want people who are easy to listen to, can answer questions, and provide solutions. They do not want to be overwhelmed with details and dry, overly wordy PowerPoint slides. More visuals, fewer words, lots of examples, powerful statistics and case studies will do the trick. That’s the formula.

Advice for a successful event
My advice to everyone who wants to put on an outstanding event is to talk to your customers and identify the pain points they have and the topics they want to learn about. Focus on a few (or even one) high-quality events per year and bring in speakers that will engage and educate the crowd. Whether it’s me, or another experienced speaker from the industry, it’s great to bring attendees someone they would not otherwise have easy access to.

When it comes to marketing, do not just send an email blast – market the heck out of the event. Give it a catchy name, show off your skills with a well-designed invitation and maybe offer an easy online registration process. Have your sales team follow up with their customers to remind them to attend and to build excitement. Keep the quality and the energy up from the moment the invitation goes out to the moment the event is over and the last person leaves.

The worst events are the ones where the intentions are good, but the details are overlooked, the momentum fades, and the corners are cut. Think of it like a wedding: Put together the best event you can for the audience size that you can afford. If you cannot afford to do a high-quality event for 150 people, then try for a high-quality event targeting your 50 best customers.

I hope this is helpful to everyone. I’ll see you on the road!

Trish Witkowski is Chief Folding Fanatic at the foldfactory.com community. Contact Trish at trish@foldfactory.com