PIXEL PROPHET
PIXEL PROPHET
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
It used to be said that a week was a long time in politics, reflecting the temporary nature of policy and personality. Well in the last twelve months we have come to expect that not a week, but even 24 hours is a lifetime. Martin Christie scribes…
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opefully in the next few months we will begin to see the gradual ending of this ongoing nightmare, but much like some castaway drifting slowly towards an unknown shore, what can we expect when we finally stretch our legs again? It won’t be the same familiar environment that’s for sure. Whatever the old normal was, it has been swept away and left with a vacuum, not only for printers but anyone who used to deal with customers directly over the counter. We have all had to adapt in the last year, and will have to adapt further in the next. The simple prediction that more people will work from home ignores the tenuous nature of internet connections, particularly on mobile devices, and the reality that it is by no means a perfect means of communication. The fact that during the closure of schools and colleges, a large proportion of students were attempting to do their course work on their phones highlights a flaw that we have become all too aware of in dealings with customers since the devices became almost universal. The assumption of instant communication and, more importantly, understanding is a fatal mistake. A small screen ideal for simple tweets and snaps is hardly suitable for reviewing large documents and complex artwork. Inevitably errors are overlooked, and the responsibility is put back on the receiver to second-guess whether information is actually correct. Way back in the last century when I did my first on the job training as a journalist, there were no user aids to back up spelling, grammar and common sense. I was drilled to read what I had written as if being read by someone else. It is all too easy to suppose the reader understands because you know what you meant. In the days of manual typewriters and Tippex, there was time for a second look. Now the temptation of quickly pressing the send button is all too great. And when it’s gone, it’s gone. Does anyone ever scroll through the daisy chain of messages to see if they all make joined up thinking? Not many customers in my experience. In fact, it’s often a surprise when they do make sense. Don’t you love it when you reply to a print enquiry whether they want it in colour or black and white and you get the retort “yes please”! Of course with regular customers, like any shop, you would tend to know what they wanted, or usually had. When working at a distance that relationship is more difficult, and while being a mind reader is a useful talent in the service industry, it’s not infallible or always rightly rewarded. On a purely human level, the personal contact is an essential part of two-way communication; we are just wired up that way. But it is also so much more efficient because preferences and problems are so much more easily sorted one to one than batting back and forth over the airways. On a practical level, as printers, we have to produce hard copy that is real and permanent, so we need the sort of definites that printing machines demand. Once set in motion, they 14
don’t have a delete button, only a waste bin. The very fragile and temporary nature of purely digital information ensures that the often predicted demise of paper is still a very distant prospect, and the versatility of modern printers opens opportunities to produce much more than simple colour copy. Almost all print shops will have expanded their range of products substantially to service customer demand, particularly with the flexibility of current inkjet and dyesublimation printers which have been chronicled in these pages over the years. There is no likelihood that these products will suddenly lose popularity. In fact, it is much more likely that personalisation possibilities will expand. (See our cover story on pages 20-21 and New Profit Centre on page 28). While it’s all too easy to spot the decline of outlets in the high street which had begun some time before Covid, there is also an alternative promotion to shop local, and further to reduce waste by cutting down on extended deliveries of non-essential goods. Online shopping has encouraged over production of items at the lowest possible cost, a real cost hidden under the illusion of ‘free’ delivery, and a massive pile of wastage and unwanted goods. A reaction against this tide could be the growing trend to produce just what you want, when you want it, and as close to home as possible. The challenge for the print shop is going to be to grasp this demand, explore its potential and be prepared to promote its part in it, rather than sit back and hope for the best. But as well as the products in the virtual shop window, it’s the specialist knowledge that goes into their production that also needs to be promoted. This is not to baffle the customer with science, but flag up that their order will get personal professional attention not just another number in the production line. This does rather fly in the face of the popular trend to make things easier to purchase on the internet, but a fair number of people will have had as many bad experiences as good, especially with anything more complicated than basic products. While we are well aware that every customer equipped with a mobile device has suddenly become a photographer, designer and artist overnight, that’s not to say that we can’t indulge these creative juices profitably. It’s partly a matter of being aware of their limitations and being able to compensate, rather than condemn and reject them for them.
COLOUR SPACE – A CAUSE OF ISSUES
In recent columns, if regular readers can think back that far, I’ve looked at the colour differences between the visual space of the RGB rainbow, against the more limited range of printed CMYK. Modern printers, especially multi-cartridge inkjets, are able to reach many more colour tones than previously possible, but ultimately there is a limit. You can catch up with QPP issues online if you want to fill in the details, although it’s by no means an in depth analysis rather than it is sufficient to make the reader aware of the important points. And, as I always try in these columns, I present them in a way in which you could also explain to a customer if need be. So having covered some of the limitations of output — due to the finite colour range of ink — there is one other great visual mystery which is why there is no such thing as the proper colour despite the fact that most customers think there is. The colours we see are only what our eyes and senses determine them to be. In the same way, the colours on any screen are only what the device has translated the digital information fed to it. And, just as any human eye shows variances, so does any monitor, which is why matching what we see with what we print is such a black art. The human eye can pick out a huge range of colours in changing light conditions through evolution from a time it was important to spot the difference between a zebra and a tiger in the long grass. The digital lens, whether phone, camera or scanner has similar red, green and blue receptors, but it’s processing capacity at the moment, has a limited colour range in FEBRUARY 2021 • QUICK PRINT PRO
