Against the grain

July 2008 - Posts

• Print is demanding

  I’ve been running my own little print-on-demand division here in Printing World towers. I’m currently producing some public sector work from creative files distributed via an open-source document workflow. The software is supplied by Adobe and uses one of its PoD-centric file types. The RIP comes from Microsoft while the output device is a monochrome HP electrophotographic digital press. No, I’m not shucking off the desk-bound discipline of business-to-business journalism in favour of getting my hands dirty in the press hall… ... I just need to exchange my Australian driver’s licence for a British one, so I downloaded some information from the DVLA using Firefox, opened the PDF in Acrobat, changed some print settings in the Windows dialogue box then printed it off on our office Laserjet 4000. I can also provide offline personalisation in black, blue or red thanks to a drop-on-demand marking system developed by the Bic corporation. Getting the DVLA application is a fairly straightforward process, once you’ve also tracked down booklet INF1D, cross-referenced that with form INF38 and downloaded and read booklet D100, then ordered in the application form (which I don’t have the facilities to produce … yet). I’m not the only one in on the PoD boom. One recent entrant is publisher Faber & Faber, which in May handed the print contract for its new Faber Finds operation to CPI Antony Rowe. Other rivals to my fledgling business may include Amazon with its BookSurge initiative, Lightning Source, HP’s new MagCloud venture and Google, but I’m confident they can be outmatched by some entrepreneurial spirit. Investors better get in touch soon, otherwise I’m taking this to the Dragon’s Den. Sure, there could be a few flaws in my business plan and inconsistencies in my balance sheet that might not stand up to the scrutiny of Duncan Bannatyne, but for those companies with the right foundation, PoD is a boom market. On one side, there’s the technology, with web-to-print storefronts capable of filling the digital press with personalised jobs for the individual consumer. On the other hand, there’s the global repository of material that we call the information super highway or worldwide web, which is brimming with ones and zeroes ready to be turned into hard copy. It obviously made sense to nationwide retailer Blackwell, which last month bought in the UK’s first Espresso Book Machine for on-demand publications, and has plans to roll the machine out to all 60 of its stores. Fuji’s in on the action in Japan with a service that allows Nintendo Wii gamers to upload images via the console, with prints produced and delivered to their home. The service stretches to photobooks of their in-game characters (known universally as an avatar, or, in cute Nintendo language, as a ‘Mii’). And your avatars aren't limited to the 2D either – last year, I researched 3D printing and found that gamers can order 3D replicas of their characters on-demand, fabricated using ‘rapid prototyping’. But lets put our toys aside for a moment – how will this affect the print industry? If you’re a copyshop, then print-on-demand is forecast to be one of the key drivers of your future success, as predicted by Frank Romano on behalf of Canon. If you’re an inplant, then rolling rote forms off your digital press makes more commercial sense than stockpiling quickly outdated materials, while also boosting your environmental credentials. And if you’re a commercial printer? Well, CPI Antony Rowe isn’t alone – Forward Press, MPG Books, Charlesworth Group and Polestar Wheatons are just a couple of printers in the PoD arena. We’re an on-demand society. You can go home and sit on your Ikea sofa (ordered over the internet, delivered to your door, one screw left over) and try to turn on your Argos TV (ordered over the internet, delivered to your door, died after a week) to watch any programme using Sky+ (ordered via the remote, delivered to your set top box, still have to watch inane commercials) while eating your Tesco ready-meal (ordered over the internet, delivered to your door, still frozen because you bought your microwave along with your telly). Print on demand is just another step in our point, click and receive world, where getting your printed material is as simple as 1, 2, 3. Or, in the case of filling out this DVLA form, as simple as 1, 2, 3, 4A (see note D over page and refer to section 13F of booklet IN1FD). Posted Jul 31 2008, 06:22 AM by Steven Kiernan with 1 comment(s)

• Wham! Kapow! Print!

  In the dark night of the soul that is the looming prospect of recession, who can help us? The government? The mortgage lender? The pawn shop? How about Batman? Well, yes. If box office figures of the film franchise’s latest installation, The Dark Knight, are anything to go by, then the economic crisis that has the rest of the media world in a spin is in fact pay dirt at the box office. Punters streamed through the turnstiles in the US last weekend to the tune of $158m… and counting. This makes it the biggest-ever American opening weekend. Recession? What recession? Sure, most of the money will line the pockets of overpaid studio execs in Tinseltown, but some will trickle down into the wallets of other media, including print. The Dark Knight will initially spawn a pop-up stand and poster frenzy in theatre foyers worldwide, along with a plethora of other collateral, such as building wraps, paper placemats for happy meals, colouring-in books, stickers, packaging of everything from crisps to Christmas crackers, plus (in a move either ironic or post-modern or both) comics of the movie of the comic. Miles of column inches across magazines and newspapers have been driven by film reviews and media hype, not to mention coverage of the untimely and lamentable loss of Perth boy Heath Ledger. The film will create work for flatbed specialists with images bound to adorn vehicle livery – in fact, the iconic symbol was printed on Toyota’s F1 car at the British Grand Prix. And let’s not forget the $158m worth of entrance fees so far printed on paper cinema tickets. Plus the printed popcorn and frozen Coke cartons. Of course, there will be the rest of the merchandising cash-cow with its associated print, from action figures (packaging) to lunchboxes (labels) and from clothing for people, such as inkjet or screen-printed t-shirts to, erm, pet costumes… Then the gravy train will make a return journey when The Dark Knight hits DVD. One winning printer should be Warner Brothers supplier Creo Retail Marketing. Managing director Richard Saysell found his inner Jonathon Ross when he told me the The Dark Knight would be “the biggest film of Q4”. While Wossie will rate the ridiculously rewarding rollercoaster ride of a film with his review (just ask the Beeb presenter to say that quickly), Saysell could just as well be reviewing the size of its printed ancillaries. For a firm like Creo, there’ll be the three or four different types of floor stands, a pre-launch standee, a launch standee, more point-of-sale cut-outs, floor media… the list goes on. But all that print is still, well, just print. As Barney Cox points out in Printing World's upcoming August cover feature, future success in print may well be found outside traditional print and instead in the constantly expanding world of cross-media. Batman’s entire existence is not played out in Gotham, but in cross-media, whether it be the printed page, the silver screen, the telly at home, the computer games, the viral marketing campaign or the online trailers. The same can apply to lucrative contracts for printers. To reach the largest group of customers means using the largest variety of channels. The canny printer who becomes expert in opening up these different avenues for its customer to push out a message can expect more revenue streams to roll back into its accounts department. So whether it is page-turning technology for digital editions of magazines, personalised URLs for your marketing customers or data management for complicated campaigns, printers can find fortune by becoming cross-media experts. The opportunities for work are as broad as the imagination... ... I might steer clear of dog costumes though. Posted Jul 23 2008, 08:23 AM by Steven Kiernan with no comments

• An (off) licence to print money

  Being a printer used to be a licence to print money. Case in point: UK industry mythology has it that Patrick Howitt, ex-chairman of the eponymous Nottingham print firm, famously chartered a private jet to fly a jolly of journalists the 100 miles from Heathrow to East Midlands Airport. I’m surprised they even had time to order drinks before touchdown (though being journos, no doubt they managed it). These days, one of the only real licences to print money in our industry is, in fact, having a licence to print money. Take banknote specialist De La Rue, which time and time again took the highest denomination in the PrintWeek Top 500 UK print companies. However, the real money is in plastic: in June, De La Rue sold off its cash systems division (which makes ATMs and the like) for around £350m, which could see it lose its top spot and fall to around sixth in the next Top 500. We Australians also know that real money is in plastic, our polymer-based banknotes being a source of national pride. This is especially true when you scam your British mates in a pub bet by waging they can’t rip a fiver in half, only to pull from your wallet the hardy Down Under version rather than the expected, and easily tear-able, paper pounds sterling. The Oz cash sets a world standard and represent a true hybrid of more than half a millennium of print evolution, incorporating offset, intaglio and letterpress. Not only secure and near-on indestructible, it’s waterproof as well, especially useful when you jump in the surf still carrying your wallet. But back to turning money-producing into money-earning – you’ll struggle to print money, either literally or figuratively, when you haven’t got a substrate to run through the press, a fact of which Zimbabwe is now well aware. German paper supplier Giesecke & Devrient this month bowed to local and international pressure over the “political tension” in the African nation and cut it off from the banknote paper supply. Which must’ve hurt G&D’s cash flow somewhat – we’re talking about a currency customer that issued a whole new set of banknotes in 2006 in order to lop off a few zeroes, then pulled a U-turn last year by introducing 14 new denominations ranging from $250,000 to $50bn… in a bid to stifle raging inflation. Wacky plan it may seem, but you’ve got to trust the enlightened judgement of bank governor Gideon Gono, who put minds at ease by saying: “I know the zeroes we removed last time came back quickly, but this time we are doing it in such a way they will not return.” Their national reserve’s in a safe pair of heads, then. Surely Gono studied at the same school of media relations as leader Robert Mugabe; back in those halcyon days of late 2003, when his regime was still just about tolerated by the international community, Mugabe said of then Australian Prime Minister John Howard: “They tell me he is one of those genetically modified because of the criminal ancestry he derives from.” Well, we were all thinking it. Those same convict roots offer a good case for Australia’s banknote printing strategy. It may have taken 200 years to realise that a nation founded by criminals should put in place a few extra obstacles to counterfeiting, but eventually in our bicentenary year 1988, a lightbulb went on at Reserve Bank subsidiary Note Printing Australia and it introduced those first polymer notes, putting the country at the forefront of monetary security printing, and paving the way for free rounds at my local in London. And I’m not the only one turning dollars into pounds into pints – I actually heard someone hustled a free four-pack of Beck’s cans by using the note-ripping con at their corner shop. Which is not really a licence to print money, but it’s definitely an off-licence for drinks money. Posted Jul 17 2008, 06:43 AM by Steven Kiernan with 1 comment(s)

• Don't judge a Pantone book by its colour

  I’m sure other Aussies would agree that there’s no better place to pinpoint the importance of colour management for branding than spending a Saturday night seeking sustenance at a West London gastro pub after the kitchen has closed. Ask any other Antipodeans in the area and I’m sure they’d agree (they'll be behind the bar). All you want is a burger and chips (although, as it’s a London gastro pub, you would’ve had to settle for the pancetta-wrapped rissole with goat’s cheese, rocket salad and hollandaise on a semi-dried tomato and olive ciabatta with a side of paprika frites). But the chef's gone home, so instead it’s crisps and a beer. You sit down at the table, pint of proper British lager in one hand (which just happens to have a map of Oz on it), packet of Salt & Vinegar crisps in the other. You reach into the pack, pull out a crisp, put it in your mouth and… … Prawn Cocktail! You see, not only does the water flush the other way Down Under, but we are also certified to a different standard for our potato crisp colour space. Salt & vinegar is pink. Ready Salted flavour is blue. Chicken flavour is green. Marmite flavour is… well, Vegemite. Like so much branding, the connection is deep-seated and unconscious, built up through years of television advertising and hiding your lunchbox from the playground bully. For brand owners, these colour connections are sales and marketing dynamite. For printers (especially those looking for corporate clients), they provide a strong impetus to adhere to strict colour management principles. Pantone has long been the dominant source for standardised colour matching. But even Pantone colours are less than standard, with different tones requiring an individual approach depending on substrate or ink formulation. Colour shift is also an issue, whether it be from mechanical variations during printing, ageing of the printed product, atmospheric stimulus or accidentally leaving your swatch book sitting on top of the radiator. For the August issue of PrintBuyer, I’ll be looking at colour and brand management from the perspective of printers’ customers. This doesn't only apply to those obvious business giants and their corporate colours – colour management is a way to maintain brand integrity across all printed collateral. Think about a global auction house that wants to send the same fine art catalogue to a gallery owner in Kuala Lumpur and an art dealer in Prague. The printer will be different. The paper and ink may be different. The only constant among the variables is the £2m Monet on page four. Colour management can be the difference between continuity of collateral and a cancelled print contract. But corporate colours make for the most obvious and simple examples of best practice. Or, in the case of those digital press manufacturers that can’t actually print their own logo with the inkset in their own kit, less-than-best practice. Pedantic? A colour shift of a few delta-E might not seem like an, ahem, hue-ge problem, but brand owners splash out massive sums on their corporate identities. Not only do colours need to match across varied substrates, but also under many lighting conditions. To put it in plain English, metamerism (as it’s officially known) is a complex undertaking to create metameric matches of tristimulus values regardless of an image’s spectral emittance curve. Punters too are canny colour customers. Upon returning from Drupa with a head full of printing technology and a belly full of that German favourite, long-life milk, I headed to the local Sainsbury’s for a half pint of some fresh stuff of the green-lidded variety. At my local supersize supermarket, I wandered in a daze up and down the dairy aisle, which in length terms is on par with Heidelberg’s exhibition stand. My vacant stare may have looked like the side-effects of a fortnight in the Messe Düsseldorf, but I was actually just plain lost in the hunt for semi-skimmed. I nearly cut my losses to take my business elsewhere. But, at the last moment, all became clear. Cunningly, the retail giant had undertaken a storewide product redesign – hiding in plain sight was the green milk, with a label more Pantone 3405 than the expected PMS 354. At least, I assume Sainsury’s had overhauled their product design. Or maybe they just left the labels on top of the radiator. Posted Jul 09 2008, 03:41 AM by Steven Kiernan with no comments