Having printed on the HP Indigo before, I was not too surprised to hear the virtues of digital printing. I knew that digital printing was perfect for high-quality, short run and quick turnaround. But what I didn’t realize,  in those 2 hours, that digital printing indeed has come along way from a few short years ago. Rivaling the quality of offset printing, all but the highly-trained eye can tell the difference. And when the UV coating is applied all bets are off.

So what about the future? And what about the trees?

Quite frankly the future is now with digital printing. The web-2-print process is unbelievably hi-tech and environmentally-friendly at the same time. Instead of traditional offset printing where a client had to order a large up-front quantity of collateral, then store it in a warehouse with the hopes of one day being delivered to the end-user. All-too-often most of the collateral ends up in the old trash can. Not only is this not environmentally-friendly but extremely cost-ineffective.

Perfectly suited for large organizations, such as BMW, as cited by Francis, HP Indigo and its web-2-print process can be deployed by posting actual files on a web platform, then the user can order and personalize on-the-fly and even distribute to it’s targeted audience. More impressively, the response rate can be tracked and analyzed. That is sooo 21st century. To take this a step further, you can incorporate a PURL, which is personalized website, to further capture your target. But that is for another day.

No business card? (This is a very foreign idea to graphic designers!) “Trying to be environmental, save paper,” the fellow explained. Uh, okay… Website then? You MUST have a website… right? Nope. Now, in this day and age that’s pretty unacceptable. Okay, well, give us your email address then. Guess what, no email either! That’s okay for my grandmother, but how can you function in business without email???

This company had nothing. Nada. No business cards, no website, just a cell phone number. (Isn’t that how drug dealers operate?) Every time we discovered some other piece of basic business stationery or a digital trace of his company that was missing, the man became less real. He sort of vanished before our very eyes.

Maybe he couldn’t afford it, you say. Okay, I’ll give you that on a fancy, huge, dynamic website (options there too!). But there are many options for acquiring affordable company stationery. And it’s true that with email and online operations, there is less need nowadays for printed letterhead, but a business card is something affordable and easy to carry around (and give out!) that will remind your contacts of your business after you’ve parted. A business card legitimizes your company, advertises its capabilities, and shows people how� they can find you, literally or virtually. That’s a lot for 3.5 x 2 inches!

As it was with this man and his “company,” without company stationery, you pretty much don’t exist. There was no proof that he did what he said he did. No example of his operations. It was inexcusable and needless to say, we lost any interest in working with him. (What guy? Where’d he go?). I mean, even con artists get cards printed! It’s inexcusable because with digital printing, there are many possibilities for having company stationery created afforadably. Now, I mentioned having a website as necessary too – but that’s a tale for another day.

One main thread throughout the evening’s discussion was that of “be true to the medium.” Many good ways of thinking about designing for the web were presented: print design gives “a speech,” web design has “a conversation” (Khoi Vinh, New York Times) and we’re not just designing stories, we’re designing “ways INTO stories” (Ian Adelman, New York Magazine). Could go on and on about those!

But what also came out of using either medium to its truest and fullest was what may be a printed piece’s strength: some of us (and this will no doubt change as younger generations grow more accustomed to reading more on a screen) still like to read longer articles and stories in a “hard copy” format, and not necessarily sitting in front of a computer. As one panelist put it, printed magazines are good for “lush feature wells” – really long articles with beautiful pictures. True, for now. However, since a lot of us haven’t bought a newspaper in some time – I agree that “an online newspaper is a better newspaper” because it does better at what a newspaper should do – I think our reading habits are going to keep changing.

Magazines will likely be around for awhile yet, and possibly become more of a niche-market, specialized thing. But it’s inevitable that reading preferences are going to evolve to more screen-friendly practices (Kindle, anyone?). In fact there’s a new book out, iBrain, about how technology is influencing “brain function and behavior” (with a lot about social interaction). Yes, that does sound scary. But I guess as designers, we can’t keep fighting the current, we have to find ways to swim in it.

I felt a little guilty eating their food, and enjoying myself while wondering if they’ll be around in the next couple of years. Of course not all paper companies will go, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see 1 or 2 less booths in next years show. Especially if we continue to “save as PDF” instead of “collecting for output”.

My routine a year ago was to stop by a local grocery store, pick up the newspaper (especially if the Mets won the night before) and read it on my way to work. Now my morning routine after dropping off my daughter to school, is to check the newspaper’s websites for the articles and use a great app on my iTouch called Instapaper. This free application allows me to save any article in the web into my iTouch, and read later say in the Subway, even though I’m away from an internet connection. It’s like TVo for web articles.

It’s ideas like these that leaves us all wondering about the future. Will I have another major printing project? Will Lindenmeyer have a show in 2010? Will the Mets get Sabathia? And unless we actually have a crystal ball, we’ll all just have to wait and see what happens.

While the process of creating a brochure 25+ years ago is now part of art history, I do believe a quick review (leaving out a lot of details) illustrates how technology has changed the design industry for newer generations of designers. Back then, if you were a student “freelancer” with a client, and they had a printer, they needed your design and a “mechanical” for production.

I was fortunate to be an art student and knew some things about print design. I designed my high school yearbook by using a company kit that showed how to specify the layout of a page, size photographs, create special line art and fit copy. If you had talent, skills, reference materials and a lot of art supplies (many of them extremely dangerous), and knew how to use them – you could probably do the job – although you would probably need to correct a lot of mistakes.

The process usually involved at least two additional businesses: a type shop and photo stat shop. Each had their own staffs, expensive equipment and supplies. The type output (referred to as galley’s) and the photo stats would then be cut and pasted to a white piece of illustration board. Hopefully, the results would resemble your vision, and more importantly, it fit together in the allotted spaces. If not – the work would need to be repeated.

To begin, you had to rough out the layout, do a character and line count of the manuscript and then specify instructions for the typesetter. You had to physically get the manuscript to the typesetter where it was retyped! In many instances headlines were produced on entirely different equipment. This type came in long strips which you had to handle additionally. In some instances you could use transfer type that came on adhesive film, although the size and quantity of letters you needed might not be provided on one sheet, requiring you to buy additional ones.

If text changes were required [get this] you would physically cut and paste them together – letter by letter, word by word and sentence by sentence (often using scrap type from additional galley’s)! You hoped that you had the right letters and everything would stay in place. You could phone in corrections to the type shop but it usually took 24 hours to receive the revised text. Access to photo copiers was limited (copy shops) and there were no fax machines. And all of this needed to happen before you presented it to your client the first time. Afterwards, you would repeat this process over and over again. Finally, on a tissue overlay, you’d indicate color break and a variety of information for the printer. When in print production, the job went through a number of additional steps and the printer could make some changes but not all.

A lack of space and time will spare the details of incorporating logos, line art or photographs. If you had them, the photo stat shop would make direct positives or negatives that would be sized and handled again and again for cropping. And all the decisions regarding their use required math. You can imagine the challenges this created when doing a magazine, book, or a daily newspaper! Consider how many materials were leftover and needed to be stored.

Today, you can virtually do everything on your computer without leaving your desk. This has eliminated many businesses and industries but created new ones. Now that we have the Internet, you can deliver a pdf – that in many ways is the finished product. It is amazing to compare how our practice has changed and recognize the ways it has remained the same. It is exciting to think about all the things that will happen in the future!

Earlier this year, while vacationing at Florida, I dropped and killed my iPod. I went out and got an iTouch and little did I know that this would change the way I view the internet. I was able to see websites exactly the way they were meant to be seen on a computer, without having to carry around a heavy laptop. I made another discovery when I went into the Fandango.com website to see what movies are out. The first thing it asks is if I want to view the regular site or the “iPhone” version. I pressed iPhone and I got a very simple, easy to manage version of their website designed for the iPhone (or iTouch) screen. I began to realize that there were other websites doing this. All thanks to WAP.

A WAP browser gives us the basic services of a computer based web browser but simplified to operate with a mobile phone. WAP sites are websites written in WML (Wireless Markup Language) and accessed via the WAP browser. As a person still learning website design, this scared the daylights out of me! Has everything I learned to make websites ALREADY gone obsolete? Do I have to change my approach to satisfy the portable surfer? Should I go into construction?

One thing’s for sure, with all the new phones coming out like T-Mobile’s Android, and the Blackberry Storm, we can see where this is going.

The trend over the past several years has been startling. In business for 17 years and in the communications industry for 23 years, I have seen the printed piece severely diminished. Is this the evolution of communications? Is this to save money? Is this to save trees? Is the printed brochure still relevant anymore?

I believe that the brochure, or the “printed piece” is still a viable and necessary tool in communications. There is nothing like a well printed brochure. The touch and feel of beautiful uncoated stock. The richness of a photographic reproduction captured with laser-like precision from a 6-color Hidelberg press. The elegance and finish of perfect binding.

A brochure is, in it’s pure form, a reflection and reminder to your client of your company’s product or service. Think of the last time you went to a new car dealer and you fell in love with that car that you couldn’t afford. The salesmen then handed you a fresh-off-the-press brochure. And when you got home you read through every page like you we’re studying for a test. You imagined, you envisioned, you dreamed.

The brochure was a living document behaving like the best salesmen whispering in your ear. This is communications at it’s best. The printed brochure is a controlled article not beholden to a company’s laser printer. And in this era where most company’s are scaling back the printed document, it is, in my opinion, the one’s that still print will truly stand out in the crowd.