NONTRADITIONAL PRINT AVENUES OPEN UP FOR PRINTING INDUSTRY AS DIGITAL PRINTING TAKES OVER
The printing industry continues to adapt to new marketplace conditions. New printers, especially in the digital realm have expanded the capabilities of many professional printers, and the newest digital machines now produce as good an image quality as offset printers.
SMALL, CUSTOM JOBS GOOD FOR LARGE AND SMALL PRINT COMPANIES
The easy set-up of digital printers, though, makes them much more versatile for short run and custom jobs, and there is a huge untapped market in that category for art, small business and organizations and other specialty printing applications. The easy and cheap availability of ink cartridges and compatible ink for many types of printers used by small and home businesses will be another factor in reduced costs of operation, which is critical for small start ups.
One new direction and an example of the ingenuity of the publishing and printing businesses is the Spineless Classics project. Victoria Litho prints the ‘books’ for John Lewis. What makes these books so revolutionary, and what makes them a great example of the new ways people are thinking is that an entire book is printed on a poster. They have already done Alice in Wonderland and Hound of the Baskervilles, by Lewis Carroll and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle respectively, and many other titles.
Spineless classic project. Alice in Wonderland in 1 single Poster
The script is in 4 pt. Times New Roman, and column width is key to fitting the entire book on a poster size sheet of paper. The projects are printed on 170 gsm Lumisilk paper. This is an excellent chlorine and acid free archival grade paper, and is a multi-coated matte paper. Digital printing shows its adaptability by being able to print in a wide variety of ink formulations and on a wide variety of media.
ON DEMAND PRINTING ALLOWS FOR SINGLE BOOK RUNS
On demand book printing for reasonable prices is also becoming a lucrative market; Photo bucket has an excellent photo printing service, with many different size, paper and cover choices. These books are printed on high quality paper, and Photo bucket goes out of its way to warn you if your images will not make a good print (for instance, to small an image results in pixelation).
source: ncsu.edu
These small run presses are not limited to books, though - with digital technology, it is quite easy for a company to offer just about anything from t-shirts to coffee mugs with custom graphics and photos printed on them.
Small boutique businesses are making just as much headway on a local basis. Photography studios no longer have to send out for top quality prints. Now modern ink cartridges and color laser toner cartridges, along with increased quality in software and the mechanical aspects of the printer allow businesses such as these to print super high quality product the same day they shoot the pictures. Sign companies are another big benefactor of the new printing technologies as well.
As time goes forward, larger companies are adapting to this micro-targeted printing model, and are offering more and more small and short run services to their lineup. This is going to continue as the business diversifies in unforeseen ways. That goes for large scale printing as well; digital, as has been noted here before, is continuing to capture chunks of the market that used to belong to more traditional printing processes.
If you like to print your photos the old fashioned way, you can find photo paper and ink cartridges for your printer in our web!
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