European Headlines: Print 4.0 – Don’t Let Our Culture Die

Print may be on the decline in some segments, but the future is bright in others.

Let me start this column with an anecdote. Officially, the culture of printing dates back to at least 3,500 BCE. Being bold, you may even go back to the days when our ancestors colored their palms to leave hand-prints and hand-printed messages on walls and ceilings of caves.

By definition, print means nothing more than leaving a “mark” or making an “impression” on another surface. So when in more “recent” history officiating clay boards, or papyrus documents, became a standard procedure, printing became part of day-to-day business.

Since then, and in different cultures, we have seen print become an integral part of a culture, comprising fabric printing (e.g. patterns), book printing (in any form and shape imaginable), fine arts (e.g. edging), pamphlets (= news), and signs. There were carved wooden blocks, movable wooden types, and then the arrival of Johannes Gutenberg. And since 1439, printing has become affordable across the western world with books and newspapers evolving into mass products (limited only by the lack of reading/writing education).

Fast forward to the 20th century. Since the 1990s, digital printers have been staking claim in our lives with their toner, ink, gel, simplex, duplex, 3 pages per minute, several hundred pages per minute. First, there were static documents and static layouts, but then as technology and code advanced, printed communication became personalized and dynamic. It was now print on paper, print on anything to create anything, a book, wallpaper, packaging, labels, a dress, tiles””your imagination is your limit. We are also at a stage where print can be three-dimensional in our messages, using augmented reality, and, of course, we have the real 3D thing””which strictly speaking isn’t printing, as it slightly deviates from the original idea of applying pressure to leave a mark. But, I guess that’s a discussion on the philosophical end of the print-definition spectrum.

Another side to print is haptics. There’s something about printed “things” that gets to us. I travel a lot and I read a lot, and I love my e-reader! But at home, the nicest part of the house is our bookshelves”” hardcover, softcover, junk, cookbooks, anything and everything, old and new. I wouldn’t want to live without my books. And not to mention our walls: prints, prints, prints. Yet, at the office, there’s no print at all.

There are many discussions around print, the relevance of print, print security, and much more. But don’t we fail to get to the core of our struggle with print? Isn’t it that we need to realize that print is an integral part of who we are, as individuals and as communities, and how we communicate with each other, hand over information, traditions?

There are, no doubt, a lot of “prints” out there we don’t necessarily need anymore, some of them so heavy on our wallets that we should get rid of them. That’s what is generally described as office imaging. With the internet taking over as a much more dynamic communication tool, there are certainly a lot of other prints out there some of us don’t want or need any longer including bills and statements for example, and the famous German OTTO calendar as another. After 204 years of propelling OTTO’s customers to buy the latest and finest in fashion and household goods, the static monster became irrelevant, a burden.

And then there’s packaging. Don’t even get me started. What a massive waste of resources! We really need to re-think that printing strategy.

What about fashion? Isn’t on-demand fabric printing great? You can create your own patterns, get them printed and voilà , there’s your new summer shirt! Consider wallpapers, curtains, carpets, tiles. They’re no longer right off the shelf, and everyone’s got the same thing. You get exactly what you want! Oh, so many ideas with all the new printers and presses out there.

And now, fine arts, books, postcards, all those pretty little things. Would you want to be without them?

The decline in printing is undeniable, unstoppable, and necessary, but only in the traditional areas, like the office, offset (litho), transactional, standard book printing, and anything that animates to quickly dispose of it again. Specialty printing and industrial printing are well alive, and we should do everything to keep the culture of print alive. We should strive to be responsible and innovative with it to continue to satisfy our senses, seeing, smelling, feeling.

Please visit The Cannata Report for more on the printing and office imaging industry.