Small Shop, Big Color

While many small in-plants only dream of adding a large digital color press, Printing Services at Georgia Perimeter College made that dream happen four years ago when the five-employee shop installed an HP Indigo 1000.

Though Associate Director Barbara Lindsay originally thought she would justify the press based on the variable data printing opportunities it would create, so far the digital press’s on-demand color capabilities are what have made it such a success at the Clarkston, Ga., college.

“Our business cards and our letterhead were all three-color,” she says. “This was relatively expensive to have printed outside.”

With the HP Indigo press, customers could print as few as 50 cards, instead of the higher quantities required by outside printers. Other previously long-run jobs have similarly been reduced and are now printed in-house.

Having gained experience with digital printing technology over the past four years, the in-plant is now in an excellent position to help the school with its burgeoning variable data efforts. The new college president is pushing the school into one-to-one marketing, and the institution is developing the necessary infrastructure and databases. The in-plant is poised to play a much more substantial role in the college’s recruitment and fund-raising strategies.

“It’s really going to be kind of exciting in the next year,” Lindsay says.

—By Bob Neubauer