Hewlett-Packard

SAN DIEGO State University is an academically rich, urban university with more than 34,000 students, award-winning professors, top-notch research facilities and a location that serves as the gateway to Latin America. Like most universities—especially in California—SDSU is also very conscious of its environmental footprint and constantly monitors and works to reduce its impact on the environment. In April of 2005, the university hired Leslie Rutledge to transform its in-plant, ReproGraphic Services. Her years of employment with commercial printers and graphic arts vendors made her the right person for the challenge. “When I walked in the door on April 4, 2005, which is one

DIGITAL COLOR was introduced to the marketplace more than a decade ago. Indigo and Xeikon unveiled key new products in the mid-1990s, and early projections were that these technologies would take off. Initially, as with a number of new technologies, there were technical issues. Presses were unreliable; ink and toner didn’t stick to the paper; and the cost of consumables was too high to generate any substantial application transfer from offset technology. Today, Indigo has been taken over by Hewlett Packard. Xeikon faced bankruptcy before being acquired by Punch Technologies. Kodak bought out Heidelberg’s share of NexPress. Ink and toner are now sticking

WHILE DIGITAL color has been the hot topic in the printing industry for the past few years, digital black-and-white printing still accounts for the majority of the digital print volume. According to InfoTrends, black-and-white devices produced 874 billion impressions and generated $17.8 billion in retail value of print in 2005. Total equipment revenues (equipment, supplies and service) reached $7.41 billion. Equipment vendors have not lost sight of this opportunity and have continued to introduce new and improved devices to replace existing digital black-and-white equipment, as well as to open new market opportunities. Vendors realize that selling equipment has become about more than feeds and

I was listening to the radio the other morning when a short piece about on-demand book publishing caught my ear. The reporter mentioned a company called On Demand Books that was promoting its all-in-one printing/binding device, which can reportedly produce 20 bound books an hour. The device—called the Espresso Book Machine—wasn’t exactly news to me; the company’s been talking about it for a while, and the World Bank installed one back in April. But this news report was the latest in a series of references to on-demand book publishing that have come to my attention. Apparently, demand for printed-while-you-wait books is on

Hewlett-Packard is hosting a traveling one-day seminar called GO Digital, along with Printable Technologies, MindFireInc, AccuData, and GPA. It will hit 12 cities in the U.S. and will focus on helping identify profit opportunities in digital printing. The sessions will feature in-depth discussions of how digital technologies—such as the HP Indigo press 5000—are generating more sales with more profitable rates of return for printers and their customers. Attendees will learn to: • Differentiate your operation through profitable high-growth services • Apply technology to your clients’ marketing strategy and deliver a service your clients are demanding • Provide start-to-finish marketing strategies for your customers

EVERY IN-PLANT strives to be an asset to its parent organization. Spartan Stores’ Graphic Services department takes this even further. The in-plant’s 82 “associates” work tirelessly to give their parent company a strategic advantage over the competition in the wholesale and retail food distribution business. And what is this strategic advantage? Well, versatility for one. The in-plant provides so many services it can meet virtually any demand. It can take a job from design through fulfillment, while offering excellent customer service. Convenience and fast turnaround are other strategic advantages. The 36,000-square-foot in-plant is housed right at the Spartan Stores corporate office in Byron Center,

Hewlett-Packard is hosting a traveling one-day seminar called GO Digital, along with Printable Technologies, MindFireInc, AccuData, and GPA. It will hit 12 cities in the U.S. and will focus on helping identify profit opportunities in digital printing. The sessions will feature in-depth discussions of how digital technologies—such as the HP Indigo press 5000—are generating more sales with more profitable rates of return for printers and their customers. Attendees will learn to: • Differentiate your operation through profitable high-growth services • Apply technology to your clients’ marketing strategy and deliver a service your clients are demanding • Provide start to finish marketing strategies for

PALO ALTO, CA—Dec. 4, 2006—HP announced that Amazon.com has elected to install multiple HP Indigo press 5000 machines to provide digital color printing for the online retailers’ expanding books-on-demand business. These color presses reportedly will operate in conjunction with existing black-and-white digital printing capabilities at several Amazon fulfillment centers. They are to be used for one-off to short-run color book production and printing of color covers for black-and-white book blocks. “Through this collaboration, consumers will benefit from the integration of HP’s digital print technology and Amazon’s unmatched ability to offer the broadest selection of books possible,” said Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president, Imaging and

The Association of College and University Printers met for the 42nd time recently. Here are some scenes from the gathering in Boston.

More coverage of Graph Expo product introductions . IT MAY be telling that the majority of presses in operation around the show floor of Graph Expo and Converting Expo 2006 last month were of the digital variety. Offset units were conspicuous in their absence. Digital presses have become part of the commercial printing mainstream, rather than being a specialty product segment or market niche. To emphasize this, Hewlett-Packard shared results from an InfoTrends study that surveyed a sampling of digital color printing buyers and producers. The research firm found that the percentage of color printing jobs with a run length