From The Editor Future Color
Last month I moderated a panel on digital color printing at the Big Ten Printing & Copyright Conference, held at Purdue University. Host Sandy Komasinski, director of Printing Services, had come up with the great idea to send each of the panel participants—Heidelberg, Xerox and HP-Indigo—a file containing a four-color print job that Purdue's in-plant had done on its two-color Heidelberg Speedmaster press.
Copies of the job were printed on a NexPress, an iGen3 and an HP3000 and distributed at the session, offering attendees—and myself—their first opportunity to compare the quality of the three most-hyped digital color printers using the exact same printed piece.
Hoping to stir controversy, I asked the audience to pick a favorite, but this induced nothing more than some uncomfortable seat shifting. And in fairness, there really was no winner. Each of the digital devices printed a slightly different-looking version of the piece, yet despite color variations, each looked great.
The exercise illustrated that the decision of whether to print offset or digital in the 21st century should have less to do with quality and more to do with the length of the print run and whether variable data can be used to personalize the piece. Your customers won't be able to tell how their job was printed, as the in-plants we profiled in last month's cover story realized when they decided to leave offset behind and print everything digitally.
But the offset vs. digital issue isn't the only quandary you face as an in-plant manager. The fourth member of that Big Ten panel, Ray Chambers, CIO of Juniata College, pointed out that today's students are passionate about electronic communications. Universities have to decide if print—whether offset or digital—is still the best way to recruit them. Will they be more receptive to e-mails, Web sites and CDs? And if so, how will this affect your operation?
Moving your in-plant from the printing business to the communications business is something IPG has been advocating for years. But now, as the kids of the computer age move into adulthood, it's more important than ever.
This was recognized years ago by the Washington State University Office of Publications and Printing, the subject of our cover story (page 12). With a Web strategy in place, the in-plant has positioned itself for a time when printing is no longer the primary method of communication.
How are you preparing for this same possibility?
