This is typically the time of year when columnists, pundits, and bloggers look back at the past year, and ahead to what the next one may bring. Assuming the planet will not end altogether on December 21st, here’s my retrospective and glimpse forward for the printing industry. For some, the
Admittedly, Halloween would have been a better holiday for this post, but since superstitions have no fixed season, I thought Id dredge up an old one namely, printing as a dark art and ask if those same fears cloud our thinking today. When Gutenberg’s vision of print manufacturing first emerged,
It never pays to resist or deride innovators especially in the world of print. The clerics and inquisitors who warned us about the dangerous innovation of Herr Gutenberg (himself a pious man) ended up on the losing side of that technology argument. William Morris decried the industrialization of the printed
Last week, I journeyed to Chicago for this years Graph Expo, the annual trade ritual for the struggling print industry in North America. Occurring only a few months after drupathe worldwide version of that experience Graph was something of a re-hash. My editor at Printing Impressions acknowledged this when he
In nature, a species has to either adapt to an ever-changing environment, and increasingly efficient competition, to survive. Sudden, drastic changes make survival less likely. One popular notion is that such a change an asteroid impact, an influx of volcanic activity, or what have you brought about the extinction of
The question is print dead? is superficial nonsense. The real question should be: What is print, and why should we care? Print is everywhere, and is likely to continue for many, many years. Putting oil-based ink on ground-up trees may decline,* but it will be replaced by other printing methods
