Wide-Format & Signage August 2019 by WhatTheyThink

AUGUST 2019

40 L et There Be More Light: LED Signage Hits the Big—and Small—Time 46 F ESPA 2019 Key Takeaways 50 D o Customers Know What “Wide Format” Printing Is?

Print Reality Getting to Critical Mass in Augmented Reality p.14

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VP, GROUP PUBLISHER Kelley Holmes kelley@whattheythink.com 772-579-7360 PRODUCTION EDITOR & MANAGER

“New Print” Will Prevail

Amy Hahn amy@whattheythink.com

Predicting the future of print

EDITOR Jessica Taylor jessica@whattheythink.com

here will printers make money in the future? Some say it will be from digital printing. But digital printing is usurping analog volumes and analog volumes are not growing. In order to grow, the printing industry must find new products and new services. The move to offset lithography from letterpress opened new doors to profitability. Offset could handle full color more easily than letterpress. Virtually overnight, it was like that scene in “The Wizard of Oz” when the screen goes from Kansas gray to blazing color. The best example of “new print” is wide-format inkjet printing. Go back to 1995. The first wide-format inkjets were seen as proofers for color printing. Suddenly, signage became a hot market. Not just signage, but color signage. Signage was done by screen printing, but full-color reproduction was not typical. The wide-format machines got bigger and bigger. Commercial printing companies added them to their fleet of production devices. Today, well over half of all printing firms have wide-format inkjet. They make money with a technology that was never predicted. Predictions are hard. Back in the late 1990s, I gave a talk at RIT and said that there would be half as many printers in 10 years. I was booed, and that was by the faculty. I remember when offset was said to be only for “quick and dirty printing” and when PostScript was just another printing driver. Many new technologies are at first criticized, and over time, become mainstream. Inkjet started as “good enough” and may now have exceeded offset quality levels. There are no leading indicators for the future of technology. Not only did no one expect the Spanish Inquisition (sorry, Monty Python), but no one expected

MANAGING EDITOR Richard Romano richard@whattheythink.com SENIOR EDITOR Cary Sherburne cary@whattheythink.com BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Paul Zimmerman paul@whattheythink.com 973-727-1376 PRESIDENT Eric Vessels eric@whattheythink.com 740-417-3333 COO Adam Dewitz adam@whattheythink.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Tom Crouser Mary Schilling Dave Fellman Heidi Tolliver-Walker John Giles Deb Thompson Elizabeth Gooding Mark Vruno Jennifer Matt David Zwang CREATIVE SERVICES Bobbi Burow, CreativityTank LLC bobbi.burow@gmail.com SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE For change of address or subscription information email: help@whattheythink.com Published by WTT Media, Inc. 2038 Ford Parkway #218, Saint Paul, MN 55116 ARTICLE REPRINTS Please contact your account executive PrintingNews.com PrintingNews.com—the web portal representing content from Printing News, Wide-Format & Signage—is devoted to delivering you timely news and multimedia content on a daily basis. WhatTheyThink (ISSN 2642-3189) (USPS 500850) Volume 42, Number 9 is published ten times per year in January/February, March, April, May, June/July, August, September, October, November, and December by WTT Media, Inc., at 2038 Ford Parkway #218, Saint Paul, MN 55116. Periodicals postage paid at Saint Paul, MN and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to WhatTheyThink, 2038 Ford Parkway #218, Saint Paul, MN 55116. Subscriptions: Individual subscriptions are available without charge in the U.S. to qualified subscribers. Publisher reserves the right to reject non-qualified subscriptions. Annual subscription prices in the U.S.A $95; Canada $125 USD; all other countries $150 USD. Printed in the USA. Copyright © 2019 WTT Media, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recordings or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission. WTT Media Inc. does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any person or company for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions in the material herein, regardless of causation. The views and opinions in the articles herein are not those of the publishers, unless indicated. The publishers do not warrant, either expressly or by implication, the factual accuracy of the articles herein, or of any views or opinions offered by the authors of said articles.

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Facebook and Twitter, etc. In fact, no one ever predicted the internet. So we come back to the original question. If printing services are to prosper, they must find new products and services. Paper-based printing volumes are declining. Therefore, printers must print on something besides paper. Some already do. Those printers invested in flatbed inkjet printing. They can print on foamcore, glass, plastic, ceramics, textiles, wood, metal and more. It is true that there are industrial plants that print on these materials right now. Of course the quantities are in the millions and there is little customization. But new print markets are evolving, like industrial design, home décor, specialty signage, promotional items, unique digital packaging and other decorated items. As I travel the world and visit printing companies. I have seen the early adopters of wide-format inkjet and flatbed inkjet. They found new markets with new technology. There are even companies printing holograms and printing on oddshaped objects. Some say this is convergence. I say it is much more than that. From the days of Gutenberg, print meant printing on paper. Now it means printing on anything. There was media and then new media. There is print and there will be new print. Call it whatever you want, but answer the question: where will printing services make money in the future? Find article here PrintingNews.com/ 21077795 ■

Frank Romano RIT Professor Emeritus fxrppr@rit.edu

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CONTENTS

AUGUST 2019

PRINTING NEWS 8 The New Reality: VR, QR, AR and Interactive Print Merge the Digital and the Physical Cary Sherburne & Richard Romano COVER STORY

14 Getting to Critical Mass in Augmented Reality Cary Sherburne & Richard Romano 16 Surface Tension: Specialty Substrates Are Proliferating, but Printing on Them Has Its Challenges Richard Romano 22 Pricing Software Tools That Enable Print Programs Jennifer Matt

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54 Avoid Common Hiring Mistakes Debra Thompson 58 In-Plant “Frontrunners” Race to IPMA’s Annual Conference Richard Romano

26 Email Is a Terrible Way to Communicate (Internally). Jennifer Matt

52 Wide-Format & Signage

36 Third Age of Print Will Change Everything Gemma Glen 38 Why Address Quality Matters Christine Erna WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE

50 Do Customers Know What “Wide Format” Printing Is? Richard Romano

Departments

34 Ricoh Interact 2019 — A Very Engaging Experience David Zwang

46 FESPA 2019 Key Takeaways Cary Sherburne

24 Are you ready to take your business to the cloud? John Giles

28 S ustainability and Offset Inks: The Latest Trends and Issues Cary Sherburne

4 Editorial 32 Watch List: Video Products 56

Classifieds/Supplier Directory

In the Know- Events Think Forum

September 16-18

Print19 PRINTING United 2019

October 3-5 October 23–25

Search for us… twitter:

@PrintingNews; @WideFormatSign @whattheythink facebook:

Printing News; wideformatsignage @whattheythink

40 L et There Be More Light: LED Signage Hits the Big— and Small—Time Richard Romano

linkedin:

44 Executive Q&A — Wim Maes, Summa Cary Sherburne

youtube:

Printing News linkedin.com/groups/1780044 whattheythink PrintingNews.com

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY

The New Print Reality VR, QR, AR and interactive print merge the digital and the physical. Article by Cary Sherburne & Richard Romano

n author Vernor Vinge’s 2006 Hugo Award-winning novel “Rainbow’s End,” a hospital patient from the early 2000s wakes up Rip Van Winkle-like in the 2030s and finds that much of the world is experienced via augmented reality (AR); wearable computers that transmit information to contact-lens-based visual displays that overlay simulated content on the physical environment. This is how people—especially young people—experience the world, through their own personalized realities. Sound implausible and far-fetched? No, we didn’t think so either, because it seems like that’s the logical progression of AR and its related technologies. The idea of combining the “virtual” with the “physical” has been a trope of science-fiction and fantasy for centuries. The first-ever description of what we would today call “augmented reality” was written in 1901 by L. Frank Baum, author of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and its sequels, in a novel called “The Master Key.” The term “virtual reality” (“la réalité virtuelle”) was first used in 1938 by French playwright Antonin Artaud, although he was using it to describe the illusory world of the theater. In the modern era, movies such as the seminal Tron (1982) and TV shows like “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and its spinoffs had human (and humanoid) characters immersed in virtual environments often via the Holodeck. In the late 1980s and 1990s, the idea of virtual reality (VR)—in which a user donned a special helmet and gloves to interact with a digital environment—entered the contemporary zeitgeist; and in 1994, even the primetime situation comedy “Mad About You” had an episode in which the main character (Paul Reiser) was talked into investing in a VR system, and the episode itself had Reiser entering a virtual environment in which he could gawk at supermodels. (All technological advancements inevitably have some kind of creepiness factor.) VR, with all its various accouterments, never really took

Cary Sherburne

off outside of some education and training applications, but it is poised to make a comeback, and if you have been to some recent trade shows, you may have seen the likes of EFI, Fujifilm, Konica Minolta and others using VR technology to virtually demonstrate equipment that wasn’t physically there—a great solution to the twin problems of the expense of shipping large equipment and limited booth space. VR has been outpaced by newer technologies such as AR, and the various methodologies that comprise what we would more properly call “interactive print” have started to proliferate. What are these technologies? How do they

An example of marker-based AR on a beverage can, providing access to email, web or phone contact with the brand.

Cary Sherburne is a well-known author, journalist and marketing consultant whose practice is focused on marketing communications strategies for the printing and publishing industries.

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY

Bringing a business card to life with marker-based AR.

Walmart understood and loved it immediately and, even better, said Rivera, “They had a 700% increase in traffic on their YouTube channel when we posted the how-to video. It was a really great lesson for us and really opened my eyes early on to show what the technology was capable of.” MJ Anderson, chief experience officer at RealityBLU (https://www.realityblu.com), said that the company has designed a licensing model that allows printing companies to extend access to its BLUairspace Product Suite to clients, allowing them to take ownership of the creation process. “The printer can extend access to the software to the desktop of the designer creating the print file who is best placed to determine what the virtual content should look like and how it behaves. But in many cases, they do not want to own the technology. This gives printers a unique opportunity to be that technology interchange between them and the marketer.”

Leveraging AR for Loyalty

differ? And, most importantly, how are they relevant to the printing industry?

A Place for Print “For a decade now, people been saying print is dead; and yet here it still is, and to me it’s always going to be there,” said Edwin Rivera. Rivera first got involved in AR in 2009 and was the founder of a start-up company in the early 2010s called Reality BOOST (http://realityboost.com) that was among the first to commercialize augmented reality services and products for a wide range of businesses on local, national and international levels. “I think that the savvy printer is going to know how to leverage these types of technologies to get the desired effect and desired engagement. AR for the sake of AR is not going to help any printer.” When Rivera founded Reality BOOST, AR was still a largely unknown quantity. “The market wasn’t quite that ready,” he said. Still, some people got it. A landmark project for Reality BOOST came in 2011 when Walmart wanted to develop a tie-in app for Marvel’s “The Avengers” movie with which users navigated the store using the Avengers characters and their superpowers.

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BLUairspace is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model that can be integrated with a company’s mobile app if one exists, or RealityBLU can create a customized app. Anderson used an example of a consumer entering a retail store and opening the store’s loyalty app to discover specific information about the store’s offerings. “The average consumer is becoming aware that AR is a thing and will eventually be looking for an organic AR experience. In the retail store case, there might be a call to action on point-of-sale signage that says ‘use our app to see what’s on sale today,’ creating an experience that has as much information as a web site but that is designed for the small screen.” Anderson also described an effort underway at a major fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company to make its packaging a portkey to any or all content relevant to that product along its life cycle. “For example,” he said, “the consumer can scan the package in the store to get more information prior to purchasing. Perhaps it delivers a discount coupon that can be used at checkout. Once the purchase has been made and the consumer leaves the store, the messaging connected to that package can change automatically based on proximity. Now it’s not about purchase, but about care and use, specifications, auto-refills, connections to Alexa for reordering, or other things the consumer might want that is associated with the product. That significantly enhances the value of the packaging, both to the consumer and the brand.”

Print. Make. WeAR. Anything printable can be made to be interactive— August 2019 WhatTheyThink - Printing News

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY Beyond the Page by

Cary Sherburne and Richard Romano

Print reality (see “The 4 Rs” article) has currently found significant niches in one particular print application: books. As we discuss in “The 4 Rs”, there are two approaches to adding interactivity to print: image recognition and codes. These two different approaches to interactive print have appeared in some recent industry titles. Clickable Paper Ricoh’s Clickable Paper is based on the image recognition approach to augmented reality: text or a unique image on a page is stored in a cloud-based database, and when the mobile app scans that image on a printed item, it matches it to what is in the database and launches whatever experience the image is programmed to trigger. “An Introduction to Graphic Communications,” written by Harvey Levenson and John Parsons, was the first book to use Ricoh’s Clickable Paper to link content in the printed book to online videos, course materials and other rich media content. It has become notable in that, largely thanks to the interactive component, the book—which is in its second edition, has been adopted by more than half a dozen university, college, high school and vocational school graphic arts programs, including those at Arizona State University, Bowling Green University, Calvert County Public Schools in Prince Frederick, Md., Keefe Regional Technical School in Framingham, Mass., Lewis-Clark State College in Metamora Ill., Township High School, Ryerson University, South Central College and University of Houston. The book is also being translated and printed in Chinese for a consortium of Chinese universities. Link HP’s Link is based on the code approach to interactive print: invisible codes are embedded over text or an image on the printed page and, when the link is scanned with the mobile Link app, it triggers whatever destination or experience the code was programmed to launch. The trick to the Link codes is HP’s High Definition Nozzle Architecture (HDNA) used by its PageWide inkjet presses, which can get the pattern of tiny dots small and precise enough to be invisible to the naked eye but still able to be detected by the app. Two industry books have been developed using HP’s Link: “The Third Wave” (2017) by Dr. Joe Webb and Richard Romano, and “Beyond Paper: An Interactive Guide to Wide-Format and Specialty Printing” (2018) by Richard Romano, were written with interactivity in mind. “The Third Wave” features a cover that when scanned plays a fanfare and author introduction (see http://whattheythink.com/video/87337-have-youheard-cover/), hyperlinks incorporated into the text, short audio “skits” performed by the authors (Abbott and Costello, eat your hearts out), and reader surveys. “Beyond Paper” features a cover that plays a custom-made animation to illustrate an author introduction (done using HP’s now-discontinued Reveal augmented reality app), as well as Link-based links to videos and other trans-textual content embedded in the text. The interactivity of these books has benefited from the availability of a plethora of online resources that can be linked to, rather than creating custom video and other rich media content. (The cover animation for “Beyond Paper” was created by an HP partner in the UK.) Creating exclusive rich media content for these kinds of book projects adds an additional level of complexity and expense to writing and publishing a book, but as these technologies become more common and visible, it’s possible that publishing models will emerge that take into account rich media as part of book production. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21076398

and that includes an increasing number of materials and surfaces. One of Reality BOOST’s hallmarks was AR-enabled shirts for schools. A T-shirt would have an image of a television on it and when a user scanned the shirt, they would see a video or some other content playing on the TV. Reality BOOST created a way of standardizing the development of the TV-based shirts and the accompanying app so that it became something affordable for other schools to implement. “If they’ve got a school spirit video, we can say, ‘We’ll put it on the TV,’” he said. “‘Your video plays inside the TV and activates on the shirt.’ We learned early on how to amortize things—and price points have come down significantly, too.” As with anything, one breakout success can goose the entire market. That breakout came in the summer of 2016. “Pokémon Go really helped the technology get front and center and reach critical mass,” Rivera said. “I can’t tell you how many phone calls I got when that was released, and there was so much excitement. People who had been on the

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY fence about investing in my startup called me and said, ‘Hey, you were right!’” (Rivera sold Reality BOOST in 2014.) He has watched the technology and the interest in it grow, and today, he is a consultant for companies looking to integrate AR. There are many ways to implement AR—from commercial “box” solutions and apps to highly customized, built-from-theground up apps—and part of Rivera’s job is to advise the client on what the best option is based on what it is they are specifically looking to accomplish. He is under NDA with most of his clients, so he can speak in only very general terms; but the projects run the gamut from true AR to what we would more correctly call “print reality” (PR) or “interactive print” (see “The 4Rs” sidebar). One of his clients is a healthcare company that is building a next-generation health and wellness facility. “It feels more like an Apple Store than an emergency room,” he said. “They’re really proud of this initiative and they’re going to launch it in 2020.” They are developing an interactive print brochure and map that, when you point your phone at them, you can do a virtual walk-through of the facility. “You’ve got this digital portal that can be attached to physical products like print,” he said. “With the processing power that we have in in the palms of our hands today, you can add so much detail and you can make certain parts of the models interactive and do things. It’s incredible that, really, imagination is the only thing that holds you back.”

today that virtually any budget can be accommodated. “You have your platforms that require a higher level of engineering and programming, and then you have your out-of-the-box solutions that are

geared more toward the layperson,” Rivera said. “We’ve used both because when I speak with a potential client, I’ll ask them what their needs are.” Take, for example, a school that is looking to add videos to a printed

Virtual Budgets Well, imagination and budget, because while reality is often augmented, budgets for these kinds of projects rarely are. Fortunately, there are enough options available For more information, visit PrintingNews.com/10005400

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY The Four Rs by

Cary Sherburne and Richard Romano

Ever since the advent of VR, AR, QR, et al., there has been a swirl of acronyms, and as the various technologies and methodologies proliferate, it has become common to conflate things like AR and VR, as well as what is more correctly called “interactive print.” Let’s define our terms. QR (Quick Response) QR codes are similar in practice to the ubiquitous UPCs (Universal Product Codes) that have adorned consumer items since the 1970s. Also called “two-dimensional codes,” the pattern of black-andwhite squares acts like the bars in a barcode. Invented in 1994 in Japan by Denso WAVE to track cars throughout the manufacturing process, QR codes spread to more and more applications, especially advertising and marketing. After the advent of the smartphone, QR codes became a quick way to get mobile users to access a website. Although graphic designers are not fans (they’re not the most aesthetically pleasing design element in the world), it has reached the point where users don’t need a separate app to read them. Just aim your iPhone camera at the code and it will be read automatically; this capability is also available on Samsung phones as of June 2019 with the Samsung Galaxy S10 as well as a few other recent Android models. Native QR code readers have been built into Japanese phones for years, which has made use of these codes popular there. When you have to use a separate app, it can be inconvenient and discourage users from scanning these codes. Virtual Reality (VR) VR first appeared on everyone’s radar in the early 1990s. It uses head mounted displays (HMDs) and often gloves and other wearable apparatus—usually pretty clunkylooking ones, at least so far in its development—to generate realistic images, sounds

and other sensations that simulate a user’s physical presence in a virtual or imaginary 360 environment. It is a completely immersive experience. The early adoption of VR technology was in education and entertainment, which is where it has remained. The technology still needs a more elegant solution than HMDs before you will see wide adoption, especially among consumers, although technologies like Google Glass and display technologies that more closely resemble traditional eyewear may help. Augmented Reality (AR) This is where the lines get blurry. The best example of true Augmented Reality at work is Pokémon Go, a game that uses a player’s mobile device and GPS to locate, capture, battle and train virtual creatures that appear on the screen as if they were in the real world. Essentially, with AR, you are aiming your smartphone camera at a real-world environment and an app overlays information on it—augmenting that reality. In terms of print, an emblematic example of AR is the IKEA catalog via which users can capture an image of a room and use the IKEA app to place realistic images of furniture in the room to see how it will look or fit. With Apple’s launch of ARKit, its AR developer’s kit, the company pointed to IKEA as one of the first implementation examples. SAi recently launched VirtualSign, a signproofing app for sign shops in which they can aim their smartphone camera at a surface and an FPO image of a sign will be overlaid to allow signmakers to see how a particular sign will look. LEGO is another example: not only do LEGO boxes feature AR content that can display a virtual image of the completed kit, but the company also recently released LEGO Hidden Side, an augmented realityenhanced LEGO play theme where kids must turn a haunted world back to normal, one ghost at a time. It is the only play experience available today that fully and seamlessly integrates augmented reality (AR) with physical construction to reveal a hidden world of interactive play. According to MJ Anderson, chief experience officer of AR software firm RealityBLU, there are two types of augmented reality—markerless and marker-based. “Apple or Google have focused on markerless AR,” he said. “The interaction with the content is

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY not triggered by a scan of a printed document; instead, it is user-directed, where the app and camera are used to detect a flat surface or a physical location. The user’s ability to see something on their phone is based on a scenario that is tied to location and circumstance. The print world is focused on marker-based AR and stands to benefit by defining its usefulness in conjunction with what they are already doing in the world— adding value and creating additional revenue streams for their businesses.” The term AR is often used—in our view, erroneously—to refer to what is more properly called “interactive print” or—to coin our own term... Print Reality (PR) This class of solutions includes technologies like Ricoh’s Clickable Paper, HP’s Link, Blippar/ Layar, and solutions from Linkz and Stampatech, among others. (There is a lot of churn in this space and apps are being introduced, discontinued and acquired with great frequency so it’s difficult to keep an article like this up to date.) There are two methodologies for making print interactive. In one, like HP Link, invisible codes are embedded in a printed piece or on a package, and users can scan that code with a smartphone app to access additional information. In another (like Ricoh’s Clickable Paper or Blippar/Layar), a unique image or string of text is scanned into a database so that when the corresponding app reads that image or text, it finds it in the database and launches the appropriate content. It extends the value of print with the addition of this extra information, makes it interactive, and provides the ability to swap out information as conditions change—because the back end that supports provision of content can be updated without any need to change the printed piece. Essentially, the aim is to make print part of the “Internet of Things.” The challenge, as we explained in the main feature, is that, save for QR codes, AR and PR require specific apps—and there are still too many competing apps to thwart user frustration. VR still has the cumbersome hardware problem to overcome. However, these versions of “reality” are evolving rapidly, and we would expect many if not most of these issues to resolve themselves fairly quickly. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21076397

graduation program. There are ready-made apps that can create that kind of simple interactive print experience. “It’s very economical and you’re talking maybe a couple hundred dollars, instead of a few thousand dollars if a manufacturer or brand wants to have a scalable enterpriselevel type of experience. So, it really depends on the needs of the client.” On the print provider side, RealityBLU’s Anderson said that as far as printing businesses are concerned, “they have no problem plopping down a million dollars for a piece of equipment—they clearly see the revenue-generating possibilities. By overlooking the AR opportunity, however, they run the risk of not ‘owning the space’ as it develops; rather, as marketers increasingly implement marker-based AR, the printing aspect simply becomes a utility, and the printing service is commoditized.” Creating the “trigger”—which is the term for the code or other page element that launches an interactive experience is the easy part. As anyone who gets even part of the way into AR and related interactive experiences can tell you, the challenge—and expense—comes in actually creating

“People say the devil’s in the details, and when it comes to augmented reality, that is the big devil—content.” whatever it is that the trigger directs the user to. If you’re seeking to overlay an interactive map on a smartphone camera’s display, the map and all of its elements need to be created. If you’re adding 3D-rendered Pokémon-like creatures, they need to be drawn, rendered and animated. And even if you’re just launching a video, it still needs to be shot and edited, assuming it’s something beyond what’s available on YouTube. So that can be the sticking point with interactive print, and for those who are helping develop those interactive experiences. “People say the devil’s in the details, and when it comes to augmented reality, that is the big devil—content,” Rivera said. “It goes back to the brand. What are you looking to do? When I sit with clients, I don’t ask them what the budget is. I ask them what they are looking to accomplish. Who is your target audience? What’s the demographic? Gender? Now, where do you want to drive them?” Continue on page 55

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY

Critical Mass in Augmented Reality Getting to

Artist designs stunning augmented content with Spark AR Studio. Article by Cary Sherburne & Richard Romano

ne of the barriers to adoption for any type of interactive print, or print reality as we are calling it, whether a simple QR code or a complicated augmented reality implementation, is the lack of a consistent way to access the content. QR codes are still not natively read by many U.S. smartphones, especially if you have a slightly older phone. And just about everyone who has implemented AR has their own app. To get to critical mass, we need a common way to access this enhanced content. Who wants 15 different AR apps on their phone, and then have to try to figure out which one to use? Artist and filmmaker Alexander Ward, who is a comic book artist among many other things, has leveraged AR work done by Facebook and Instagram to help users get around this problem. After all, almost everyone has either Facebook or Instagram—or both—already on their phones, right? A recent AR project Ward completed was the cover of a recent book “I Am Love: Yoga, Ayahuasca, A Course in Miracles and the Journey Back to the Place We Never Left” by Allowah Lani (available on Amazon at https:// amzn.to/2YTWZ7y). If you aim a smartphone at the cover, it becomes an AR “portal to another dimension.” (Check it out at https://bit.ly/2XTROn6.) To create the AR experience, Ward leveraged Facebook’s Spark AR Studio. “I’ve used other applications in the past, such as the Unity development platform for creating 2D and 3D multiplatform games,” he said. “ But that approach requires people to download an app. By using Spark AR Studio, I can design stunning augmented reality effects that can be accessed by anyone with Facebook or Instagram running on their phone.”

This is the book cover image. Once you have opened the camera effect on your phone, you can point the camera toward this image and the augmented reality will unravel.

Ward got started on this path just a couple years ago when, as he pointed out, the technology was quite young. “A friend brought it to my attention,” he said, “and we saw the potential right away with comic books and a whole range of other things. Now in addition to

Instructions on How Activate Augmented Reality Book Cover: You can experience this augmented reality book cover at home. All that is required is the Facebook app on your smartphone. To access the effect, simply scan the QR code with your phone camera. Alternatively, visit the following link on your phone: http://bit.ly/arbookcover. This will then prompt you to open the camera via the Facebook app. From there, simply point the camera at the book cover “I Am Love,” and the AR will unravel. (There may be compatibility issues with phones older than three years.) (Facebook app is required to use the effect.)

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This image is an example of what is happening behind the scenes with this effect. The book cover is separated into individual layers receding in 3D space, giving the illusion of looking into the art with depth of field.

producing my own artwork, we have established a creative studio and have done a number of AR promotional pieces for major studios, including album covers. You can also imagine posters, billboards and any number of other printed pieces that can be enhanced this way.” Anyone who has wanted to add an AR experience to printed content has quickly learned that the toughest part of the project is not necessarily creating the AR trigger but

“The toughest part of the project is not necessarily creating the AR trigger but actually creating the AR content that the trigger launches.” actually creating the AR content that the trigger launches. Want a 3D fly-through of a map? Animated birds? A video? Those things have to be created. Ward has a leg up here because, as an artist, he creates all his own imagery, and adds dimensional and other effects using Photoshop layers. All of Ward’s artwork is created digitally. “I create the image and then separate the various elements out into layers to be able to work with the art in a variety of ways, exporting each layer,” he said. “This

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY

gives the art a depth of field when viewed using Spark AR Studio, either on a phone or the web, giving it a stunning 3D animated feeling.” Users can access the augmented content by either reading an included QR code from a phone that has Facebook on it, or going to a provided link on their phone. Up pops the camera application on the phone, and the user simply points the phone at the augmented image. “This is a fairly simple application of the technology,” Ward said. “It actually is a window or a portal to the augmented content. There are many more things that can be done with the technology, and we are really just getting started at this point.” One of the challenges Ward encountered was the file size limitation for Spark AR Studio—a teeny two megabytes. “It was a challenge to get the file compressed to that size,” he said, “and it takes a lot of back and forth experimentation to make sure the layers are separated correctly and don’t feel distorted. Other than that, it’s pretty straightforward.” For printers who want to enhance their value to clients, this is an interesting approach. If you want to learn more, just Google “Spark AR Studio” to download the app, or reach out to Ward if you want to outsource work. Imagine enhancing your next big client presentation with this hightech approach. You’ll be a hero, and you’ll be certain to tear everyone in the room away from checking their email. Based in Wales, Alexander George Ward can be found at https://wardyworks.art and by email at alexander@ wardyworks.art. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21078101 ■ August 2019 WhatTheyThink - Printing News

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DIGITAL & INKJET

The XD-360 from Engineered Printing Solutions (EPS) was launched to service the short-run decorative drinkware market— which is growing rapidly.

Surface Tension:

Specialty Substrates Are Proliferating, but Printing on Them Has Its Challenges An inkjet printing reality check Article by Richard Romano

ne word: plastics. And Glass. Ceramics. Wood. Decking material. Three-dimensional objects. Dentures—now there’s a print Richard Romano Richard Romano has been writing about the graphic communications industry for 20 years. He is an industry analyst and author or co-author of more than half a dozen books.

application you can really sink your teeth into (or vice versa). “I’ve printed on everything from golf balls, to toothbrushes and dentures to spray cans and garage door panels that from a distance look like a beautiful mahogany,” said Mary Schilling, technical inkjet consultant and head of print quality analysis for Inkjet Insight.

Inkjet. Is there anything it can’t print on? Well, that will depend on what you mean by “print” and your quality

expectations. After all, you could run a sheet of Reynolds Wrap through a desktop inkjet printer and it will “print” on it. Whether that print would be something you could use or sell is another thing entirely. We’ve all heard and read about how inkjet printing has evolved to the point that virtually any material, any surface, even any object can conceivably be a printing substrate. While this is true, and while there are business opportunities to be had in printing on unusual materials,

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DIGITAL & INKJET the fact is that getting print to work on unique substrates as you expect it to—or, more crucially, as your customer expects it to—takes no small amount of education, trial and error, and maybe even good old-fashioned luck. After all, inkjet printing—indeed, all printing— involves chemical and physical relationships between two disparate materials, the ink and the surface. And while inkjet ink has come a long way, the idea of a single ink that will adhere perfectly to every conceivable surface is probably the chemical equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. It just ain’t gonna happen. “It really depends on what the customer’s requirements are, because the ink and the substrate compatibility has to be so fine-tuned,” Schilling said. “If you can’t fine-tune it, then you have to use a pretreatment like corona, plasma or flame.” It will also depend on what specifically you are trying to print— simple text and logos, for example, vs. solids, images or precise colors. We say “ink” but we’re really talking about at least four inks. “Cyan, magenta, yellow and black aren’t going to be equally compatible with a surface treatment or with the surface tension of the substrate,” Schilling said. “You may

have magenta and yellow give you problems, but black and cyan don’t.” And if we add additional or extended gamut colors, the problem could get worse.

Liquid Mettle Let’s back up a second and review a few basics about ink. Most ink consists of two elements: a colorant, the dye or pigment that supplies the color, and a vehicle, the liquid that, as the term suggests, conveys the colorant to the substrate, where it then needs to adhere. As we know from ink-on-paper printing, ink adhesion works through a combination of absorption of the colorant and a portion of the vehicle into the substrate, and evaporation of the vehicle. Uncoated papers more readily absorb ink than coated papers because it is easier for the

fluid to soak into the sheet. Most of the time, you don’t want too much to be absorbed or “wick” into the paper or you’ll get muddy halftones and muted colors. As a result, high-quality printing depends on an optimal amount of ink holdout, or staying on the surface of the sheet. Meanwhile, you usually need to evaporate the vehicle rapidly, especially if the print will be duplexed, finished or needs to be delivered very quickly. How this is accomplished is usually what distinguishes one type of ink from another. Juggling absorption and evaporation of the various components of an ink has been one of the biggest tricks in the production inkjet space, and has involved everevolving ink formulations, paper preand post-treatments, faster dryers Direct printing on 3D objects such as containers and caps is a popular application at the intersection of packaging and industrial. (Image courtesy ColorGATE)

Digital printing on ceramics is used for decorative tile applications or for simulating woodgrain and other natural materials on ceramics. (Images courtesy ColorGATE)

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DIGITAL & INKJET and all sorts of other physical and chemical means.

Dyne-ing Room Inkjet printing on paper has been a tough enough nut to crack. Now we have all the gazillion other surfaces we can print on, which just magnifies the perennial issue of ink adhesion. Unlike production inkjet—or most ink-on-paper printing—the inks that have led to the substrate revolution are UV inks. That is, they dry (or cure) through exposure to ultraviolet light. UV inks are not a new technology, and have been used in web offset printing for decades. Exposure to ultraviolet light—either via traditional mercury vapor or newer, cooler LED lamps—quickly polymerizes the ink, turning it into a thin plastic film that sticks readily to virtually any surface. “Virtually” any surface. Let’s qualify that. The extent to which an ink will adhere to a surface is a function of the respective dyne levels of both the surface to be printed and the ink. A substrate has a certain amount of surface energy, or the extent to which the molecules on the surface of a

material have more energy compared to the molecules deeper in the interior of the material. This is called its “dyne level.” (For those playing along at home, one dyne is the amount of force required to produce an acceleration one centimeter per second-per second. One dyne equals 0.00001 newton.) A liquid, like an ink, has a corresponding property called “surface tension,” which is also measured in dynes and is referred to as its dyne level. The relationship between a substrate’s dyne level (aka surface energy) and an ink’s dyne level (aka surface tension) determines how well that ink will adhere to that

surface. If the surface’s dyne level is higher than that of the ink, then the ink will spread out over the surface in a uniform layer, “wetting” the surface and adhering properly. If the surface’s dyne level is equal to or lower than that of the ink, the ink will bead up on the surface of the substrate or otherwise not adhere properly. Think of your car. An unwaxed car has a high surface energy compared to water, so when it rains, the drops will spread out, form puddles, penetrate into your paint job and cause problems. But if you apply a coat of wax to your car, it lowers the dyne level of the car’s surface relative to that of the water, so that when it

Digital printing on ceramics is used for decorative tile applications or for simulating woodgrain and other natural materials on ceramics. (Images courtesy ColorGATE)

There is seemingly nothing we can’t print on these days—but not without challenges. (Photography by Schilling Product Photography)

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DIGITAL & INKJET rains, the drops will simply bead up and roll off. The same basic principle applies to inks and substrates. Plastic, glass and other non-paper materials have non-porous surfaces with low surface energy, and thus require lower-dynelevel inks, or some kind of surface treatment that will boost the dyne level of the substrate, kind of like Turtle Wax for printing. The question is, how do you measure these dyne levels? The easiest way is with what is called a “dyne pen,” which applies a thin film of a fluid having a known and standard dyne level. If the film laid down beads up, you know the dyne level of the surface is lower than that of the fluid, so that tells you what the dyne level range of the ink you ultimately want to use will be. In the most general sense, it will also give you an idea of any ink-surface incompatibility.

companies that sell corona treatment systems. Plasma Treatment—No, you don’t bleed on the substrate (the blood probably wouldn’t stick anyway). Plasma is one of the four basic states

of matter, comprising ionized gas. A plasma treatment zaps the substrate with this ionized gas, which causes oxidation of the surface and, again, transforms its surface properties such that it is more accepting of ink. There

The Trick to Treating So what do you do if your respective dyne levels are out of whack? There are two options: pick a new ink or treat the surface in some way. Essentially, you are breaking down and transforming the molecular bonds on the surface. There are a few basic ways of accomplishing this. Flame Treatment—You apply intense heat using a gas flame to break the molecular bonds in the surface. Flame treatment is fast (faster than corona treatment, e.g.), but can have environmental and safety considerations if used in-line with manufacturing. Corona Treatment—essentially, you have a surface struck by lightning. You expose the surface to an electrical or corona discharge. This breaks the molecular bonds in the surface, producing free radicals that then undergo further chemical reactions, the end result being a surface that is more receptive to ink. There are For more information, visit PrintingNews.com/10005400

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DIGITAL & INKJET “The next time you go to a tile store, bring a loupe,” said Inkjet Insight’s Mary Schilling. More and more floor and wall tile is printed via inkjet. (Image courtesy Inkjet Insight)

Is it real wood or stone—or is it come kind of plastic composite material with inkjet woodgrain or stone texture printed? Choose wisely. (Photography by Schilling Product Photography.)

are companies that manufacture plasma treatment systems—and many companies specialize in both corona and plasma treatment equipment. Pre-treatment—A fourth alternative is to treat the surface with a chemical prior to printing that helps the ink bond. Some production inkjet systems and even textile printing systems use a surface pretreatment to help with ink adhesion. Which type of treatment to choose will largely be a function of the kind of surface you are trying to print on.

A Tale of Two Cities What we have been talking about falls into the category of “industrial printing.” The machines and applications we typically write about fall into the more commercial printing category. Over the past 20 years, UV flatbed machines from the likes of Agfa, Canon Solutions America, Durst, EFI, Fujifilm, Mimaki, Mutoh, Ricoh, Roland, swissQPrint and others have demonstrated that they can print on a wide variety of substrates. Have they solved the puzzle of the ink adhesion issue? “The market expects wide-format 20

suppliers or PSPs to be willing to print on maybe not anything, but close to anything. I think now that we’re 20 years into it, a lot of manufacturers have had considerable time to develop inks that allow for that,” said Dan Johansen, marketing manager, wide format solutions, for Ricoh. Ricoh’s most recent UV flatbed introduction is the Ricoh Pro TF6250. “Now it’s a combination of both inks and the substrates themselves. We’ve been going through a bit of a renaissance the last 10 years where manufacturers have enhanced or improved their inksets, some of whom also have developed more than one inkset to offer customers a choice if they’re printing on more challenging substrates,” Johansen said. That’s an important “if” because despite the growing interest in specialty—or downright wacky— substrates and surfaces, a mass market isn’t necessarily there just yet. “Right now, for most PSPs doing wide format, it’s not very often that a print buyer asks for a job to be produced on something where the substrate required isn’t readily available,” Johansen said. “So it’s a

combination of a majority of devices with inks good enough for most substrates combined with substrates that may close that gap a little further. “I think we’re exponentially closer to sort of a ‘one ink to rule them all.’ It wouldn’t necessarily be one ink, but I think those of us that have been developing technologies for wide-format, specifically wideformat UV LED, are about as close as we’ve ever been to that sort of Swiss Army knife approach.” One other sticking point—as it were—is color gamut and color consistency. “We invested a lot of time, effort and money when we developed our new flatbeds to develop an inkset

“The market at this point is heavily focused on drinkware and custom decoration.” that had the best mix of substrate adhesion and color gamut,” Johansen said. “Historically, where we had one, it was at the sacrifice of the other. If you wanted tremendous adhesion, it tended to come on the expense of overall color gamut, and the best color gamut may not offer the greatest adhesion.” For those substrates that do pose a challenge, flatbed wide-format

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DIGITAL & INKJET equipment manufacturers offer pretreatment options. “Companies like Ricoh, for example, offer a solution with our flatbed devices that does allow for a primer to be laid down,” Johansen said. “They can choose a [flatbed printer] configuration that includes a primer to allow the device to precoat the substrate before inking.”

Surface Stations So what is it exactly that people are trying to print on? After all, before we go to the effort of figuring out how to print on something, we should see if it’s something that the market is demanding. Direct-to-object printing, particularly drinkware, has become a large and growing market sector. “The market at this point is heavily focused on drinkware and custom decoration,” said Ken Tyler, sales engineer for Engineered Printing Solutions.“It has become a dominant request for most of the sales people throughout our territory, which is worldwide.” To handle those requests, EPS launched a product called the XD-360 Cylindrical Inkjet Printer. “That machine was focused on putting custom inkjet decoration on drinkware at a high rate of speed,” Tyler said. “That specific market is very under-supplied on digital capacity. There are a lot of old analog systems that produce the McDonald’s and stadium cups at extremely high rates of speed, but those machines have some limitations as you need to have very long runs.” As in virtually every other printing industry segment, demand for shorter and more customized runs is increasing here as well. Tyler said this is suitable for “the small mom and pop shops that are just looking to get a hundred cups made for a wedding that might have some

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personalization on it.” There has been a lot of increasing demand for printed materials that resemble other kinds of materials, specifically wood. Printed plastics have certain advantages over wood for décor applications. “You’ve got the composite board that they’re putting together for decking,” Schilling said. “It’s a customprinted PVC plastic board that you can get for your deck. It’s going to last a lot longer than wood, but it’s going to look like redwood, walnut, oak and you can pick your color. You can also do custom designs. You could put a big Colts logo on your deck.” (Schilling is a proud Indianapolis Colts season ticket holder.) Tyler has also seen these kinds of applications grow. “An area that has been big has been faux wood grains,” he said. “Window shades, flooring, siding on a building—a lot of that is coming in as a raw material, just white, PVC plastic or a metal-like aluminum siding, and it’s getting the wood grain printed on it. So you end up with a final material that ends up looking like wood. You’re getting what appears to be a high-end product at a low production cost because they don’t have to use real wood.” Plastic is also lighter weight than wood, which is also perfect for some décor applications, such as the interiors of RVs. “The edge molding, crown molding, door molding—they’re not using wood for that,” Schilling said. “They’re using a very light plastic like a poly and then they’re printing the woodgrain on it because it makes the RV a lot lighter.” Digitally printed ceramic tile is also a growing area. “When you go to a tile store, take a loupe with you,” Schilling added. “I do that all the time.” And you might also want to take

a loupe with you the next time you look at a house whose MLS listing boasts “wood floors.”

Objects d’Inkjet If you have been to an SGIA or PRINT show in recent years, you have seen the UV desktop or benchtop machines from the likes of Roland, Mimaki and others that are designed to print on 3D objects like golf balls, smartphone cases and even water bottles. The challenges to this kind of specialty object printing are mitigated somewhat because they are not printing these items on an industrial scale, but there is some degree of surface treatment required—even if it’s just making sure the surface is clean. “Everything has to have some kind of preparation because nothing comes in perfect,” Schilling said. “You still have to wipe them down. If there’s dust on a piece of material, the UV ink isn’t going to stick because the dust isn’t sticking. If you want your fingerprint to go worldwide, touch something and then print it in UV ink, because your fingerprint will be perfect.”

Do Your Homework Inkjet printing is advancing by leaps and bounds, but anyone looking to get involved in specialty printing really needs to do their homework. “Everybody just keeps saying, ‘It’s so easy, it’s so easy,’ and it’s not,” Schilling said. “There are all these things you still need to consider.” This is not to dissuade anyone from pursuing unique applications, but they should go in knowing that these challenges exist and to be prepared for them. Fortunately, equipment vendors and manufacturers—and consultants like Schilling—are there to help. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21075914 ■ August 2019 WhatTheyThink - Printing News

7/17/19 3:18 PM

SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW

Pricing Software Tools That Enable Print

Programs Timing impacts strategic print software decisions. Article by Jennifer Matt

s software continues to take up a larger and larger part of our business lives, all companies want to be more strategic about how they invest, implement it and use it as a differentiator. When you Google anything with the word “strategic” in it, you get a lot of theoretical advice. I have come to believe there is just one determining factor to being strategic. It doesn’t require you to get an MBA from an Ivy League school or read every business book. It simply requires you to have the discipline to carve out the time to make decisions before you’re in crisis. That doesn’t sound very “strategic,” but it is. If we are really honest with ourselves, a lot of print software decisions are deferred until the “haveto” stage. Jennifer Matt Jennifer Matt writes, speaks, and consults with printers worldwide who realize their ability to leverage software is critical to their success in the Information Age.

You implemented a web-toprint solution after your largest customer made it a requirement. ■■ Now you’re thinking that you would have selected a platform that is better suited to all your customers, not just your top customer and their specific needs. ■■ You rushed the implementation and had to rely heavily on the vendor, so now your internal team doesn’t have the skills to implement the next customer on the platform. ■■ The solution doesn’t integrate

into your Print MIS as well as you’d like. You replaced your Print MIS five years after the vendor stopped supporting the product and you couldn’t buy hardware that would run it anymore. ■■ The software was literally crashing; you had to make the replacement decision and implement it as soon as possible. ■■ You simply exported data out of your legacy system and imported that data into the new system. Now you have a new

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SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW system with inaccurate data. ■■ Y ou really wanted to restructure the cost accounting by division, but there was no time to do that so you missed the perfect chance to refresh your business data model to better match the business you are doing today. Being strategic means that you force the urgency of important decisions not because you are in crisis but because you want to prevent ever getting to the crisis stage. This is hard. The urgency of the present moment is always tapping on our shoulder (or ringing in our pockets). We are hyperconnected and always available. There are people who cannot sit through one important meeting without allowing multiple interruptions. The

functional areas of your business weren’t consulted about the choice, and didn’t even know the change was going to be made? The most common excuse is, “we had to make a decision quickly. We didn’t have time to involve

accounting or sales.” Print software decisions are hard enough. Don’t make them even harder by wrapping them in a crisis. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21077192 ■

“When strategic decisions require a team effort, the timing of them is even more critical.” strategic winners in this marketplace are not the ones being constantly interrupted; they are the leaders and the teams that can turn off the present to plan for tomorrow. It is hard. It takes discipline. It takes leadership. Print software is a strategic topic. The investment decisions you make, the approach to implementation, and your strategy for differentiation require cross-functional collaboration within your company and hopefully with a peer group. When strategic decisions require a team effort, the timing of them is even more critical. How many times have we heard the story of a print software purchase where certain For more information, visit PrintingNews.com/10004777

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SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW

Are you ready to

take your business to the cloud?

The best ways to upgrade your business to the cloud.

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SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW Article by John Giles

anagement information (MIS) and estimating software systems for printers are going through a major evolution. Vendor consolidations and new upgrades are giving small commercial and quick printers an easier path to integrate estimating, web-to-print online ordering and websites into one package. Software vendors are shifting their applications to hosted solutions that will make upgrades, support and recovery much easier, lowering a printer’s hardware investment.

Websitesforprinters.com This popular print-specific website vendor, is making a big push to an all-in-one print management system named Odyssey that integrates with its website. It combines marketing, webto-print and print MIS in an easy-touse, cloud-based solution. One of the newest MIS systems on the market, it also integrates a customer relationship management (CRM) system and automation for social media and email marketing campaigns. Odyssey also fully combines with online order forms to eliminate double entry and manual re-entry.

Print Reach Printers Plan is now available in a cloud-based version. PagePath Technologies, makers of MyOrderDesk.com, recently purchased Printers Plan, and then merged with Virtual Systems, maker of Midnight Print & Mail MIS, Midnight Fulfillment and Mail Shop software. The new company, named Print Reach, will continue to support the installed version of Printers Plan, but will offer a migration plan to Printers Plan’s new cloud services. All current support and service agreements will continue under the new company, and it has already scheduled new

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releases for Midnight, Printer’s Plan, MyOrderDesk and Mail-Shop in the coming year. Printers Plan already offers two e-commerce solutions, Web2Plan and PlanWeb, as well as a complete estimating MIS system. For more information on the specific features and pricing of the different software solutions, visit printreach.com.

Docket Manager Docket Manager is another cloudbased print MIS system. It handles a printer’s accounting and estimating needs as well as provides workflow management. It integrates online ordering, provides workflow hot folder automation and includes credit card processing. The software offers unlimited storefronts for online ordering for major accounts, and it works with Constant Contact to provide tools for online marketing. For pricing and more information, visit docketmanager.ca.

EFI PrintSmith Vision Industry favorite EFI PrintSmith Vision print management system is also available either as a customer hosted or EFI cloud housed version. PrintSmith Vision combines estimating, invoicing, billing, point of sale, purchase orders and accounts receivable in a single product. PrintSmith Vision supports commercial printers, trade printers, copy shops and quick printers. It can be integrated with EFI Digital StoreFront, an online storefront where customers can order print products and services over the internet. After a buyer places an order and pays for it on your Digital StoreFront site, information about the order is automatically transmitted to PrintSmith. The production workflow is then managed in PrintSmith Vision based on information included in the order, and status information is sent back to Digital StoreFront. For more information, visit efi.com.

The Cloud At some point, most software used by printing companies will reside in the “cloud.” Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft Office 365 are two of the most common cloud-based software programs used by printers. The advantages to the printer are lower hardware costs, easier disaster recovery and easy access to the program from any internet connection. Printers will also see software problems fixed faster and upgrades made faster since the cloud version is always the most current. The biggest change for printers are the monthly subscription fees required to maintain access to the cloud software and the bandwidth costs. Because of the additional software costs, it may take a while for the print industry to migrate to cloudbased software. This will give time to early adopters to capture a bigger piece of the printing marketing while others manually piece together different systems for estimation, ordering, production management and marketing. Cloud computing will be a major investment for printers and require most print owners to redesign their organization and workflow to take advantage of features. The transition shouldn’t be difficult it you are already organized around functions and not people, you have a well-designed production workflow and you use the selling tools built into the software. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21076435 ■ John Giles John Giles is a consultant for the printing industry who works with Tom Crouser and CPrint International to help printers prosper. Contact John at (954) 224-1942, john@cprint.com , or johng247@aol.com .

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SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW

Let Slack, JIRA, Basecamp and Google Drive streamline your process.

Email Is a Terrible Way to Communicate (Internally) I Article by Jennifer Matt

hate email. I have to live with the tool for external communication (sales, promotion, etc.) but I have done everything in my power to remove email as a tool for any internal/project communication. Here’s why: 1. Email is a sinkhole for intellectual property that you want to mine later (sinkholes are hard to mine). 2. Email forces the cognitive

overhead of constantly making decisions about with whom to communicate. 3. Email encourages silos of communication (often by mistake, all too often on purpose). When you think about it, all our work is broken into projects. When we communicate with others, we are collaborating about a specific project. We might not use the word “project,” but according to David Allen, Getting Things Done guru, “...a project is

anything we want to do that requires more than one action step.” Yet, when we send emails, we are using a tool that was modeled after the snail mail letter. A project has a lot more to it than sending letters to each other. It requires real collaboration. A long email chain is a form of collaboration, but it’s not ideal and it’s really hard to mine for all the content about a single project. Once a project starts, I prefer to move all the people involved out

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SOFTWARE & WORKFLOW of email and into other tools, like Slack, that were built to encourage open, transparent, communication that can be accessed by all, searched and archived. Another advantage to real collaboration tools is that you can remove people’s access when they leave—when you do all your collaboration via email, you basically let the content go with each participant’s inbox. So many projects run slower than necessary because of the lack of transparent communication. Some users try to be so careful they leave people off emails, while others clog inboxes by including everyone in every communication. When you get an email, even if you’re cc’d, you are forced to process it. At the beginning of projects, I quite often have to remind people that all project communication should happen in the Slack project channel. Yes, the channel that includes all the people working on the project. The initial resistance usually sounds something like this: “I don’t want to bother the whole channel with something that is only between myself and one other individual.” I understand this argument and it’s an argument that makes sense in our email way of thinking. The challenge with this argument is this: How many projects have you had blow up only because the right person on the project didn’t have some key information at the right time? It happens all the time. If you’re not specifically mentioned in the message, then you are not expected to respond, but you can see it. It has happened to me hundreds of times. I drop into a project channel and notice someone asking a question but they are asking the wrong resource. I step in quickly and let them know to whom they should be directing this issue. I see development struggling with a software requirement

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that they have misunderstood. The open channel of communication encourages more collaboration, more transparency and higher levels of accountability and trust. This isn’t a theory of mine; I have witnessed this time and time again. So we create a dedicated Slack channel for our projects, most of which are custom software development projects that could have between three to 30 people on them from around the world. This channel

“Coming to agreement is not about publishing something. It’s about giving access to the content and then getting people to edit, question, etc., until the group comes to agreement.” is where we make announcements, discuss issues, remind people of tasks they are behind on (linking to our task tracking system) or making jokes (it is the project water cooler). The project channel does not work by itself, because there are other parts of the project that need different features than a messaging tool. You need to keep track of tasks. We use JIRA, a task tracking system

that supports Agile development. Lost of people use Basecamp or other task tracking software tools. Another key aspect of every project is the need to do what I call “coming to agreement on a complex issue.” So much time is wasted in verbal discussion with many parties having very different understandings of the topic, none of which are perfectly clear, because in our alwaysconnected culture, most people aren’t listening. The only way to be 100% sure of agreement/alignment is to commit the issue to writing, and then everyone is looking at a single version. Coming to agreement is not about publishing something. It’s about giving access to the content and then getting people to edit, question, etc., until the group comes to agreement. You want this to be easy to audit, easy to give (or take away) access, and you do not want to keep track of many versions of content. We use Google Drive and Google Docs, Spreadsheets, etc., because they give us the ability to do all these things and has a nice integration into Slack. So every project gets a Slack channel, a JIRA project board and a dedicated space on GDrive for all project artifacts. When the project is completed, we can simply archive Slack, GDrive and JIRA for a full treasure chest of all the decisions we made in the project. One of the best things to happen to you when you move internal communication out of email and into real collaboration tools is that your time in your inbox drops precipitously, and you’re left with only external communication via email. This gives external communication the higher priority it deserves, because it’s not drowned out by all the internal communication. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21078128 ■ August 2019 WhatTheyThink - Printing News

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OFFSET

Sustainability and Offset Inks: The Latest Trends and Issues Sustainability is a priority in offset inks. Article by Cary Sherburne

ccording to a recent study by the European Printing Inks Association (EuPIA), the share of offset printing inks is less than 2% of the overall eco footprint of the printed paper material or paper packaging on which they are used. Yet inks attract a great deal of discussion in terms of the overall sustainability of print. This includes the sourcing of the raw materials that make up the inks, the environmental impact of those materials, the ability to remove inks from printed materials and packaging for recycling (de-inkability), and the impact they may have on the production work environment, as well as their food-contact safety. In researching this article, we spoke 28

with two ink companies – Sun Chemical in the United States and hubergroup, which is headquartered in Europe but also operates in the U.S. – as well as associations EuPIA and NAPIM, in Europe and North America, respectively. Our goal was to understand the latest sustainability trends and issues facing ink manufacturers and their supply chain partners. Because of global trade and the movement of products and packaging from one region to another, we felt it was important to look into regulations in both Europe and the U.S., since raw materials and finished goods that are imported and/or exported can fall under the regulatory compliance rules for both the source and destination

regions. We did not examine regulations in other parts of the world, including Africa, Asia and South America, for purposes of this article.

Sustainability Define Let’s start by defining sustainability for the commercial printing and packaging industry as outlined by the companies we interviewed. “Sustainability is a broad term for our industry, especially because we are so integrated at different levels, from consumer goods companies to printers to ourselves as manufacturers and to suppliers,” said Tony Renzi, Sun Chemical’s vice president of product management North America – packaging inks. “We look at it as to how we can deliver sustainable

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solutions for printing inks that satisfy the needs of printers and give brands and retailers a sustainability story for their products. The key is, these solutions must be delivered at cost neutrality. Everyone talks about sustainability, but no one wants to pay for it. Our challenge is delivering these sustainable solutions for the market on a cost neutral basis.” “When you talk about sustainable inks, the most important thing to consider is that sustainability also means safety,” said Martin Kanert, executive manager of Brusselsbased EuPIA. “In Europe, we are very proud that for the last 20 years we have had the EuPIA Exclusion Policy. By default, members do not use materials that are known to be

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carcinogenic or toxic. If substances are reclassified and thus fulfill the exclusion criteria, then members are committed to replacing these substances so their products remain safe. This is one of the pillars of sustainability, not only the environment, but the human health aspect as well.” NAPIM’s Director of Regulatory Affairs and Technology George Fuchs cautioned about blanket assumptions that bio-derived substances are actually that much more sustainable or have less adverse environmental impact than petroleum-based components when you look at the entire life cycle. However, he noted that the association has supported the use of vegetable-based components in ink systems. “Bio-renewable materials are those that can renew themselves in a human time frame,” he said, “and certainly the health and safety aspects of these components are less adverse than petroleum-based ingredients.” To support reduced environmental impact of printing inks, NAPIM launched its BioRenewable Content (BRC) program in early 2009. “Companies can send to us their formulations, and we review them to make sure they seem accurate,” Fuchs said. “Then we certify the level of bio-derived materials they contain.” This provides an independent third-party assessment that can be promulgated across the supply chain to educate stakeholders on sustainability factors for printing inks. Hubergroup had the most vigorous approach, a 250-year-old familyowned company that has obtained a cradle-to-cradle certification for its

entire manufacturing process. While not everyone agrees about the value of this certification, it has become a core principle at hubergroup. “Sustainability is in our corporate DNA,” said Bernd Groh, the company’s global product and portfolio manager. “Every year we are more sustainable in our manufacturing operation, our use of energy, the way we treat our employees and the number of sustainability projects we have underway. We batch our own pigments in India, where we have our own water treatment facility to return 96% of the water we use

“Sustainability is in our corporate DNA.” back to its source. Additionally, we also collect about 300 tons of waste water per year from our European customers to purify. We are also working to improve the de-inkability of sheetfed UV inks to be able to give back usable paper fiber to the paper industry, reclaiming as much of the ink residue for re-use as possible.” In the “Cradle-to-Cradle” model, as opposed to the more commonly known “Cradle-to-Grave,” waste materials in an old product become the “food” for a new product, by either composting or reprocessing them. It creates a circular economy that goes beyond conventional sustainability efforts. It is a design concept inspired August 2019 WhatTheyThink - Printing News

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OFFSET by nature, in which products are created according to the principles of an ideal circular economy. This differentiates “Cradle to Cradle” from conventional recycling and the concept of eco-efficiency. It is about eco-effectiveness and goes beyond conventional sustainability tools and approaches, which primarily show the negative influence of humans on the environment. “In order to recertify,” Groh said, “you must continue to set an even higher bar for sustainability moving forward and achieve those goals.”

Regulations Vary from Region to Region Everyone agreed that there are no consistent global regulations governing offset printing inks. “It would be nice if our industry was like a railroad where everyone had the same width tracks, but there are so many different press manufacturers that each have their own nuances, regulations vary from region to region and nothing is really standardized,” Renzi said. “As a result, developments tend to occur around the equipment, use and application, which is why things are so different from area to area.” In Europe, REACH is probably the most prevalent regulation. It applies to all chemicals, and it places responsibility on industry to manage the risks that chemicals may pose to public health and the environment. It requires manufacturers and importers to register substances and supply data on the properties of the chemicals they produce, and to provide their supply chains with all of the information they need to safely use those chemicals. But even REACH doesn’t streamline regulations for Europe. “We wish all the regulations were the same across the European Union (EU). Much of the legislation that affects us, mainly in the area of 30

safety, health and the environment, comes from the EU,” Kanert said. “REACH, for example, is immediately applicable in all EU states. But EU directives are addressed to member states, and they then set the framework for their own national legislation. Member states can go beyond the directives, and there are many examples that they do.” There is a similar situation in the U.S., with some level of federal government regulation, but with individual states free to add their own requirements as well. Fuchs cited a white paper designed to inform ink manufacturers, printers and consumers of printed products about some of the issues associated with ink formulation and minimizing ink’s environmental impact, noting that at the time of publication in 2008, there was no regulatory or industry consensus that defined how to measure and minimize the environmental impact of manufactured products; that situation remains pretty much the same a decade later.

Reducing the Environmental Impact of Offset Printing Ink In looking at the composition of offset printing inks relative to sustainability, there are several considerations. According to the NAPIM white paper, this includes the use of bioderived renewable raw materials, the amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), presence of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), heavy metal content and toxic/carcinogenic ingredients. Printing ink manufacturers must take these environmental factors into account, while also providing a product that meets both the performance expectations on the printing press and the end use requirements of the printed product. Both associations and both ink manufacturers we spoke with take

their responsibilities seriously with respect to the sustainability and safety aspects of their offset printing inks, and we assume that most, if not all, other ink manufacturers in North America and Europe do the same. Everyone emphasized the use of bio-derived renewable materials to replace petroleum-based products, and significant progress has been made in this regard. We often hear about soy-based inks, but in fact, almost any plant material can be used. “We are increasingly looking into bio-renewable source materials, as we did with our AquaGreen series,” Renzi said. “We are also looking at our current systems and working with different labs to test their compostability – how well they degrade. We have also been looking at how we can reuse materials like recycled polyester or polystyrene, reusing those resins rather than putting them in the landfill. We are also working on developing inks that will come off of labels, including the plastic sleeves on bottles that are produced using flexo or offset printing with UV inks, enabling bottle recycling to be cleaner.”

Finding the Right Balance Renzi also pointed out, as did others, that coatings is another area of focus. In addition to making sure sustainable inks deliver adequate performance, Sun Chemical is also working on coatings that will have an impact on sustainability. “We are working on some direct food contact coating solutions,” he said. “For example, we are looking at coatings that will give paper straws the same rigidity as plastic, helping to eliminate plastic straws, as well as other coatings that are acceptable for direct food contact that will help increase the rigidity or performance of paper to make it more reusable.”

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Low Migration: Is It a Thing? The other topic of discussion was unwanted migration of ink components into food and other products from packaging. Renzi noted that there is increasing interest in higher purity, lower migration, lower odor inks and coatings that can still give you the properties or rigidity of a laminated structure, but with one single layer. “We screen a lot of raw materials, including pigments, to see how we can drive down non-intentional migration of substances,” he said. “We can use blocking products to prevent migration, but you can also get set-off migration as the printed materials are stacked. The best approach would be to get to these higher purity raw materials so you don’t have to worry about migration.”

Final Thoughts “As citizens of the world, we need to be a user, not a consumer,” Groh said. “Do you know when your ‘overdue day’ is? That’s the day in a year on which you have consumed as much material as it would take

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the earth to produce in a year. The ideal date is December 31. I worry about how we are polluting our land and sea. We are more than happy to cooperate with our competitors so we all achieve a better ‘overdue day,’ since we believe this will speed up the process toward a more sustainable world. I would like to have a healthy earth for my kids and grandkids.” At Sun Chemical, there are four facets that comprise its sustainability initiatives: 1. Development of eco-friendly products 2. Creation of products designed to improve the eco-efficiency of processes 3. Formulation of products that comply with regulations and protect consumers 4. Responsible manufacturing and good manufacturing practices “We aren’t at 100% bio-renewable content yet, but we are working toward that,” Renzi said. “We still need to use some conventional materials to impart some of the necessary properties. But that’s the goal. Brand owners and end users

want to get to 100% bio-renewable in their packaging. Right now we are at about 50%, and considering that we only started three or four years ago, we have moved quickly. I believe within three to five years, we should be there – or nearly there. In that timeframe, I believe there will be a lot more choices – perhaps a genetically modified plant that isn’t eaten but helps get us to more bio-renewable content. If everyone is working toward that goal, including raw materials suppliers, it will go faster.” Trade associations also have a significant role to play including encouraging more sustainable practices among members and providing educational opportunities. For example, NAPIM conducted a summer course in July at Clemson’s Sonoco Institute on ink formulation and will host a technical conference in the fall focused on sustainability from a regulatory and business perspective. The association also maintains an extensive library of printing ink related publications bulletins, books, conference presentations and brochures covering business, market, technical and regulatory information. The organization also publishes an annual State of the Industry report, which provides current information on the state of the printing ink manufacturing industry. NAPIM tracks, on a monthly basis, imports and exports of all types of printing inks. In Europe, EuPIA also provides a wealth of information, including an annual conference (next scheduled for Budapest, March 26-27, 2020). There is information about sustainability, chemical regulation, safe handling and use and more, including market statistics. Supporting these associations is a critical element of building a more sustainable printing and packaging industry. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21076410 ■ August 2019 WhatTheyThink - Printing News

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WATCH LIST

Howie Fenton Talks In-Plant Trends Howie of Howie Fenton Consulting discusses some of the early, preliminary results of the latest IPMA survey of in-plant printing departments. Find video here: Printingnews.com/21074863

How Digital Makes Textiles More Sustainable FESPA Textile Evangelist Debbie McKeegan talks about how digital technologies are helping address sustainability issues in the textile industry. Find video here: Printingnews.com/21072708

Gaëtane Thiney, a 3D printed model On the occasion of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, France 2019, Gaëtane Thiney, was printed in 3D with our technology N3xtDimensions by Arkema. Find video here: Printingnews.com/21075000

Ricoh’s New Flatbed, Latex Wide-Format Units Dan Johansen, Marketing Manager for Ricoh USA, talks about their new flatbed and latex wide-format printers. Find video here: Printingnews.com/21072703

3D Printing: An Opportunity for Signs & Display Graphics Hear what Massivit’s new CEO Erez Zimerman has to say about 3D printing. Find video here: Printingnews.com/21074335

Suitables — A Revolutionary new Adventure in Children’s Wearables EFI’s Nozomi C18000 was the perfect manufacturing partner that could handle the job. Find video here: Printingnews.com/21072694

Dr. Hamid Shirazi Explains the Company’s LongTime Participation in the Textile Industry Fujifilm has been providing contract manufacturing in the textile industry for many years. Find video here: Printingnews.com/21074334

Augmented Reality from Flexible Pack Featuring Pommard Wine Elevate your brand with an augmented reality label that tells your brand story and is engaging. Find video here: Printingnews.com/21074333

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Bluestone Fabrics Touts the Benefits of Digital Fabric Printing They offer cutting, sewing, and packaging as well. Co-Founder and CEO John Otsuki shares details on the benefits. www.printingnews.com/21075496

Roland Introduces 16th Generation of Print & Cut at FESPA Mark Elvidge, Senior Product Manager, explains some of the 40 enhancements. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21075019

New Bleed Business Card Slitter “The Jetslit” from Rollem 36” Digital Sheet of Business Cards are bidirectionally slit with 100% accurate cuts. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21075169

Mimaki Launches Two New Products Michael Maxwell, Senior Sales Manager for Mimaki, talks about the launch of their new LED UV flatbed, the JFX200-2513. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21075026

Acorn Web Offset LTD Jump to Cloud Based Workflow Solution Acorn Web offset has created a new £1/2 million pre-press department just in time. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21075244

MailChimp | Grand Central-Times Square Shuttle Wrap Exterior and interior (seats too!) shuttle wrap presented by Outfront media. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21077516

Finding Our True Purpose Shana Farrell from Fox Valley Technical College talks about the major themes of her keynote at the In-Plant Printing and Mailing Association (IPMA) Conference. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21075493

EXCLUSIVE: Robert Stabler to Manage Durst/ Koenig & Bauer Joint Venture WhatTheyThink was able to speak with him about his role and his thoughts about the initiative. Find video here: www.printingnews.com/21077244

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EVENT

Ricoh Interact 2019—

A Very Engaging Experience Over 60 sessions designed to help Ricoh’s customers serve their customers Article by David Zwang

nteract, the Ricoh customer event, initially was just an event for their production inkjet customers. As of Interact 2018, Ricoh opened it up to their entire customer base regardless of the type of equipment they have, and it was an immediate success. Interact 2019 took the event to new heights. Unlike many of the other equipment vendor customer events, which tend to focus on a specific type of hardware like toner-based presses and production inkjet, or on specific applications like wide format and labels, this event encourages disparate discussion and learning across different press and application types. It is designed as an event for their customer base, product teams and Ricoh management to “Interact” with each other. There were almost 60 sessions that covered a wide range of highlevel topics focusing on marketing, sales, business management, new application adoption and process optimization. Interact 2019 also included sessions that dug into the weeds like paper types and futures,

David Zwang David Zwang specializes in process analysis, and strategic development of firms involved publishing and packaging across the globe. Contact him at david@zwang.com

color management and how to use fifth-color techniques. Some of the busiest sessions were those related to RPD (Ricoh Process Director) with discussions on enhanced data collection and analysis where Ricoh product experts and customers had very dynamic discussions. They discussed how the customers were using RPD and what Ricoh could do to develop additional features and functions to better support the ever-changing needs of the customer base and that of their customers’ customers. There were 31 partner sponsors covering paper, software and services in a pavilion area that always seemed busy. Interact 2019 was also a great time to meet some of the new Ricoh leadership team, including Gavin Jordan-Smith, the new VP of the commercial printing business, and Heather Loisel, the new CMO of Ricoh USA.

While only at Ricoh for about 90 days, Jordan-Smith met with media and analysts before the event to share some initial thoughts on Ricoh and the industry. He related some of the history and lessons learned from the NPES book, “Challenge, Change and Opportunity: A History of NPES.” While the book offered a lot of information dating back to 1933, it seems as though much of what is old is new again. A lot of the same problems that we discuss today can be seen at varying times in industry history. Ultimately though, we seem to be a very resilient industry. He also discussed Ricoh’s recent growth and its future, which are equally impressive. Jordan-Smith was not at all blind to the challenges going forward. He acknowledged that we are all living and trying to expand in the “age of the customer” market realities. In

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fact, he sees Ricoh as not just a B2B company, but really a B2B to C to C to C (etc.) company, and one that needs to understand the full impact and implications of all of those relationships in order to provide the best solutions and help Ricoh’s customers to deliver them to their customers. Mike Herold, the Ricoh global director of inkjet solutions, presented the history and successes of Ricoh inkjet starting with the original InfoPrint 5000, developed by IBM and released in 2005 before the Ricoh acquisition. He then provided an update on the current production inkjet product line. He paid special attention to the VC70000 released this year. We covered the VC70000 last year, prior to its release, and had a further opportunity to see it in action at Hunkeler Innovationdays earlier this year. This press, along with many of the other current production inkjet presses recently released, are proof that we have finally passed the discussion of whether production inkjet could meet the quality levels of offset, to the more important discussion of the best machines for your specific application. At the media event, there were also four different customers who told stories about their relationship

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with Ricoh. Tim Boyle, of Heeter, discussed his role as a VC60000 customer and subsequently the U.S. beta site of the VC70000. Andy Poole, of Time Printing, talked about his more than 50 years of printing experience and how he is adapting to the changes in the market. Mark Little, of Quick Print Oklahoma, discussed their network of 40 family operations across six states, and their business and hardware decisions. Finally, Josh Bonham, of Sepire, experts in secure communications delivery, discussed their new startup, a “clean sheet” business with a few million dollars of new equipment specifically selected for today and tomorrow. (We also shot several video

interviews at Interact 2019 which will appear on WhatTheyThink over the next few weeks, starting with Heather Poulin.) I am fortunate that I can attend some of the many events that are hosted or sponsored by industry leaders. The Interact event may not be as big as drupa, Hunkeler, SGIA, PRINT, etc., but it seems to me that it’s a very valuable event for Ricoh customers and Ricoh product teams. This enthusiasm and engagement was also echoed by many of the attendees I cornered in the elevator, hallways and sessions. I am looking forward to Interact 2020.

More to Come… I would like to address your interests and concerns in future articles as it relates to the manufacturing of Print, Packaging and Labels, and how, if at all, it drives future workflows including “Industry 4.0.” If you have any interesting examples of hybrid and bespoke manufacturing, I am very anxious to hear about them. Please feel free to contact me at david@zwang.com with any questions, suggestions or examples of interesting applications. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21078121 ■

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INDUSTRIAL PRINTING

Third Age of Print

Will Change Everything from Family Mealtimes to Workplace Design Economic, business, technological and social shifts will put consumers in the driver’s seat. Article by Gemma Glen

he print industry is now entering the “Third Age of Print,” driven by technology and commercial developments, but the ultimate beneficiaries will be the end consumers, who will enjoy more choice and bargaining power than ever before. Thanks to the technological advancements within the print 36

industry, the way that print is used in stores or offices not only maximizes a company’s customer-base and growth, but also assures that precision, quality and agility is met at all times. The humble printer—print service, solutions and other related products—is at the heart of this shift, which will have a profound impact in society from family life to the workplace. Let me explain...

The “First Age of Print” was characterized by limited services such as television, radio and telephone, delivered in a highly-regulated monopolistic (or near monopolistic) environment. Consumer choice was virtually non-existent, suppliers controlled everything from service delivery to pricing. Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press is widely considered the

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INDUSTRIAL PRINTING origin of mass communication; it marked Western culture’s first viable method of disseminating ideas and information from a single source to a large and far-ranging audience. Furthermore, in 1950, Xerox introduced a plain paper copier that made a whopping six copies per minute. Whilst the printing industry had to adapt with the times, it was becoming a vital part of the global economy. Overall, print machines were rare to come across daily, outside the professional space, and proved as unaffordable to the average consumer. This was the beginning of the “First Age of Print.” The “Second Age of Print” was heralded by the arrival of competition and—most importantly—the personal computer and office infrastructure. The former transformed the workplace, signaling the death of the typing pool and much of the hierarchy that accompanied it; the emergence of the “open plan” office, a PC on every desk and a workforce able to create and exchange content directly with whom they pleased are defining elements of the “Second Age of Print.” Furthermore, the print industry had seeped into various sectors by this point. Apart from print advertising, which was on an exponential growth, there was a need for print within other consumer and automotive markets. Not only did printing become more sophisticated and output quality improved, but also printing infrastructure had become more advanced, capable of complex operations and levels of flexibility. Printers finally came into their own. During this period, technology was on a rapid growth, and so were the advancements within the print industry. Within the home, the average desktop printer now became easily affordable to the consumer for the first time and therefore was also

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increasingly purchased for personal use. Printers were being used as connected devices to facilitate other amenities such as the fax, scanners and copiers. This was marked by the development of an all-in-one multifunction printer (MFP), in the late 1900s. Businesses were now able to reduce the amount of hardware in their offices and, in turn, it proved cost-effective. These multifunctional printers were also smaller, taking less space in offices or homes and slowly grew very popular among consumers.

“Today’s consumers have never had more choice in terms of device, network and platform.” Today, technology, economics and social changes are combining to provide more choice and competition than ever before; welcome to the “Third Age of Print.” The “Internet of Things,” mobility, digital print services, smart homes and modern cities are all the result of these changes that typify the benefits of the “Third Age of Print.” For example, 3D printing has never been more popular and has been used to print a huge variety of different objects, including jewelry, clothing, medical prosthetics, food and houses. Finally, big data is fueling the shift in the volume and nature of information being exchanged. In the dawn of the digital age, printing got faster and more easily accessible to everyone. As the

world becomes more digital, print firms have also now developed digital printing technologies that have made it possible to print straight from a digital file. The print industry has extended their offerings as other solutions like web-to-print software become available, allowing information to be stored, sent and printed within minutes remotely. For the busy consumer, these tools form an essential part of daily life. The implications for print machines and print related solutions are as clear as the opportunities they deliver, secure print solutions, scalable and multifunctional printers competitively priced and secure. Today’s consumers have never had more choice in terms of device, network and platform; whether they are securing their home from another location or downloading their favorite series, their expectations in terms of service levels, device compatibility and security are unapologetically high. Family gatherings in front of the television or a line of people patiently waiting to use the printer, scanner or fax machine may become obsolete, but they are being replaced by alternatives that are equally compelling and meaningful. The “Third Age of Print” presents a wonderful moment for the print industry. To find out more about OKI Europe Ltd please visit https://www.

oki.com/uk/printing/about-us/index. html. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21075359 ■

Gemma Glen Gemma Glen is the OKI Product Marketing Manager, Office Products, of the North West Region of Europe.

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FINISHING & MAILING

Why Address Quality Matters The cost of undeliverable mail adds up. Article by Christine Erna

ccording to the DMA’s 2017 Response Rate Report, direct mail has a much higher household response rate (5.1% customer – 2.9% prospect) than digital channels such as email (0.6%), social media (0.4%) and online display ads (0.2%). Additionally, the CMO Council reports that 79% of consumers act on direct mail immediately, while only 45% of all consumers do the same to email. Close to half (48%) of all consumers hold on to direct mail marketing materials for future reference. How many emails do you find around your house or at your friends’ homes? Emphasizing the effectiveness even more, the CMO Council reports that 39% of customers try a new business because of direct mail and 44% of customers visit a brand’s website after receiving direct mail. Impressive numbers to say the least.

Americans Value The “Mail Moment” First, some statistics to support this statement: ■■ Eighty-six percent pick up their mail at their first opportunity. ■■ Eighty percent of consumers consider time with mail “well spent” – up from 73% in 2017. Christine Erna Christine Erna is President of Strategic Postal Advisors. She consults to improve address quality while reducing return mail expenses. She can be reached at: cje@strategicpostaladvisors.com .

■■ M illennials are more likely to shop at stores or purchase items from companies that advertise in the mail. These numbers include some percentage of mail that was not delivered due to address issues. How high would the numbers be, and what is the cost of the lost opportunity associated with undeliverable mail? There are many options to enhance and correct data or take advantage of a customer’s existing data that can help us answer those questions and drive these numbers even higher. By profiling and segmenting data — coupled with the power of digital print technology — service providers can create variable data mailers with targeted images, copy and design. However, an element that the industry has not yet focused on is the deliverability of the targeted mail piece, which would drastically improve response rate numbers. It may seem too simple, but the two most common barriers most often shared with me are: True education and best practices for data governance and improved processes designed to properly manage an organization’s system of record (database). By properly addressing our mail pieces, we can get the right message to the right address at the right time. Enhancing and improving our data governance capabilities through investing in people, process and technology, any organization’s bottomline will be positively impacted. Companies remain challenged to implement standardized, cohesive and integrated workflows across all three areas (people, processes and

technology). The top-level profit leaders in our industry have very regimented, well documented and consistent processes for every aspect of their workflows. They invest in their people through continuous training and investment in technology that works in their environment. In doing this, they support and ensure consistent quality and performance measured by ROI, still the most relevant measure of campaign effectiveness in our industry. The Data Warehousing Institute reports that most organizations believe that their contact data quality is fine. These numbers from the USPS contradict this assumption: ■■ Mail is addressed incorrectly 23.6% of the time. ■■ The quality of stored U.S. addresses decays at a rate of 17% per year. ■■ Undeliverable as Addressed (UAA) mail costs the USPS nearly $2 billion each year. Corporate data governance (or lack thereof) related to mailing address data is suspect, challenging, confusing and damaging to organizations trying to communicate with their clients and prospects. It is not difficult to correct mailing address data in our industry. Multiple affordable commercial address cleansing software options exist that will perform both Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) and National Change of Address (NCOA) functions. The most common barrier I see within our industry, is getting organizations to update their System of Record (SOR) database with this correct, complete and current address information. There are many misnomers about

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FINISHING & MAILING the “legality” of updating an address record in a company’s database. Compliance and risk are extremely important in every business, and just as important is educating the people in those organizational positions about address quality. There are very few “laws” governing a company’s updates to their SOR. There are, however, many corporate “policies” that organizations self-impose that restrict maintenance of good quality client and prospect data. The point here is that actual laws are universally applied to everyone. Corporate policies are not, and therefore can be changed to enable and ensure strong data governance processes. The USPS has been able to reach out to mailers with address quality issues to review options and enable change for some time. Their purpose is truly to improve deliverability, and they do so with effective tools that include fines and assessments based on threshold measurements from the “Mailer Scorecard.” These assessments are a last resort but are one method that can effectively bring about the changes that are long overdue in our industry. Educating organizations about “Move Update” compliance, and specifically those employees working in compliance and risk departments, about these requirements is essential. For U.S. corporations, the impact of poor address quality, undeliverable as addressed mail and a lack of factbased corporate data governance processes is measured annually in the tens of billions of dollars. Tens of billions of dollars? How is this possible? It’s just an undelivered mail piece. Isn’t it? Research has revealed that the industry average cost for any undeliverable mail piece is $3. This accounts for the cost of production (print, fold, insert, etc.), postage, handling the return, research to find an updated address and remailing.

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Further analysis will expose that if the undeliverable mail has an associated receivable with it, the true organizational cost of that mail piece skyrockets based on the value of the unpaid receivable. Is it an outstanding utility bill for $50? A car payment of $425? How about a mortgage payment of $1250 or hospital invoice for $1,500 or more? This is a simple math we should all do. Use your respective volumes, response rates and value of sale to generate these numbers for your organization. To further “tighten the spiral,” when prospecting, we typically send the mail piece using the USPS’ “Marketing Mail” (formerly Standard Mail) class, without an endorsement. As a result, if these mail pieces are undeliverable, they are recycled by the USPS and neither the marketing team nor the organization ever know and are left wondering why their response rate and ROI are so low. Data quality reports from the software performing the CASS and NCOA processing provides valuable information. Insights gained for organizations actively reviewing these associated reports related to error codes include identification of undeliverable, non-Delivery Point Validated (DPV), vacant and/ or changed addresses are crucial information for any organization.

Data Governance Principles

Get It Correct ■■ Standardize address data by analyzing and correcting addresses that do not match USPS data. Keep It Clean ■■ Maintain address data regularly and on a set schedule that serves your organization best. ■■ Continually review, analyze and improve the quality of addresses.

Keep It Current ■■ Establish a confidence level for the delivery of each address. Actionable data allows the organization to determine the likelihood of mail piece delivery. Then decide if the mail piece should be produced based on data.

Enterprise Postal Governance By having all the process metrics come into a central management view, a core set of process analytics enable postal and company experts to ensure overall compliance with both USPS and company regulations and guidelines. In addition to monitoring individual mail streams, this facilitates monitoring and evaluation across mail streams to further promote relationships and best practices across the entire organization. It is critical to have a companywide view of mailing operations related to USPS regulatory compliance. Having just one noncompliant mail stream can cause the USPS to initiate an audit of an entire company’s mailing operations. The metrics, reports and information gathered and stored with a true postal governance process will ensure that the necessary data is available in the event an audit should occur. Given the scope and complexity of the issues, it makes sense to work with a consultant with postal expertise to design and implement the correct solution for your company. Most organizations have not developed this skill set or knowledge internally. This surely carries a cost, but it is far outweighed by the benefits that continue for years to come. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21076422 ■

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Let There Be More Light:

LED Signage Hits the Big—and Small—Time Advances in LED technology—and of course lower costs—have enabled LED signage to move indoors, and are even replacing LCD-based dynamic digital signage (DDS) for many applications. Article by Richard Romano

alking the show floor at the most recent ISA Sign Expos, I was struck by what appeared to be a gradual decline of interest in LCD-based dynamic digital signage (DDS) but an

increase in LED signage. Without this becoming too thick of an alphabet soup, I have usually associated DDS with LCDs—while LEDs were something else entirely. As it turns out, the two are merging. Usually, when we mention “LED”

LED signage has been traditionally used for electronic message centers (EMCs), such as those found outside schools, convention centers, banks and other venues. (Image courtesy EBSCO Sign Group.)

it is in the context of LED UV curing in flatbed wide-format printers. But, there is another application of LED that is relevant for sign and display conversations: signage. LED (lightemitting diode) signage is not new, and currently is most commonly found in electronic message centers (EMCs)—those large digital displays found outside banks, convention centers, schools and other venues. However, LED signage is increasingly being used for indoor displays, and there is a sense that LED signage may be displacing dynamic digital displays on LCD screens. “Some of the most exciting developments with LED signage over recent years result from the success of the technology and popularity of the medium,” said Jason Helton, executive vice president of Sansi North America (SNA) Displays, one of the largest global companies developing video and digital displays. “From a technological standpoint, machinery and tooling have improved by leaps and bounds, allowing LED display manufacturers to fabricate much higher-density products with respect to pixels. Precision fabrication and the ability to produce much smaller diodes and pixels has led to extremely tight-pitch displays, particularly with indoor applications.”

Nit-Picking Let’s back up a sec and define our terms. In LED signage, the term “pitch” or “pixel pitch” is analogous

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Smaller pixel pitches (aka higher resolution) are making LED signage increasingly suitable for indoor displays. (Image courtesy SNA Displays.)

to what we refer to as “resolution” in the print world. Each pixel in an LED display is basically a cluster of three smaller LED diodes, usually a red, a blue and a green. The distance from the center of one pixel to an adjacent one is its pitch, usually measured in millimeters. Unlike the dots per inch (dpi) measurement we use to gauge print resolution, in LED signage, the smaller the pitch, the higher the quality, as it means you can fit more pixels into the display. Obviously, the smaller the pitch the better, and 8 millimeters, or even 6 millimeters, is currently the state of the art. “For us, we’re definitely seeing a lot of interest in the 8 millimeter pitch,” said Josh Brasher, president of EBSCO Sign Group, a manufacturer and seller of LED signage systems. (Watch my video interview with Brasher at this year’s ISA Sign Expo here.) “Traditionally, 8 millimeter has been what’s considered the top-end standard. There are some 6 millimeters that people are introducing into the market, but it’s not well-proven yet. So we feel 8 millimeter is the best out there right now.” “Well-proven” simply means that they have not been on the market long enough for there to be accurate data on performance.

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What the smaller pixel pitch means is that LED signage is better for short-distance applications. A printed graphic that is meant to be viewed from only a few feet or inches away— like an art print or a retail display— needs to be printed at a higher resolution than a graphic that is meant to be viewed from hundreds of feet

away, like a billboard. The same issue of apparent resolution applies to LED signage. An LED sign with a large pixel pitch needs to be viewed from some distance away so you can see a clear image and not just a bunch of flashing lights. As the pitch gets smaller, the sign can be moved closer with no loss of apparent resolution. There has also been a change in the diode itself. Older 10 millimeters and larger LEDs were arranged in what is called a “dual inline package” (DIP) and one of its disadvantages is that it is easy to discern the individual red, green and blue diodes. The industry has been transitioning to a surface mount diode (SMD), which packs the three component diodes closer together. An early drawback to SMD LEDs was that they were not as bright as DIP, which meant that they were unsuitable for daytime use. That has changed as the technology has improved. “They’ve gotten the brightness level

Any kind of image, video, animation, etc., can be piped to a LED sign. EBSCO’s Brasher feels that end users don’t utilize their signs enough from a content creation standpoint. “I think the number-one most underutilized thing is people should use these more for advertising,” he said. “The church that has a sign, the school that has a sign, they could definitely be utilizing that more for advertising.” (Image courtesy EBSCO Sign Group)

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LED signage is starting to be used in extremely creative and visually striking ways, such as this display SNA created for the Bank of Hawaii. (Image courtesy SNA Displays.)

way up and have been able to keep the power consumption low,” Brasher said, “so the technology out there allows for a good brightness that lets an LED sign perform in the sun.” LED brightness is measured in units called nits. One nit (nt) equals one candela per square meter (nit is believed to derive from the Latin nitere, to shine). “Brightness is now over 8,000 nits, so we can put a sign outside, the sun can hit it, and everybody can still see it,” Brasher said, “and it gives a higher resolution than the traditional 10 millimeters.”

LED ’Em In Unless you were talking about very large spaces, like sports arenas, LED signage was not suitable for many indoor applications—until now. 42

“We are seeing a huge uptick in projects in the interior space as more owners, developers, retailers, advertisers and other clients are utilizing the technology,” Helton said. In fact, they are starting to muscle in on applications that at one time would have been served by dynamic digital signage on LCD devices such as TVs. “Most places are replacing their LCD televisions [with LEDs] because LCD televisions don’t have long life spans,” Brasher said, especially if they are left on 24/7. EBSCO is currently working on a project for a car dealership that is swapping out its LCD signage with LEDs. “As LEDs have become more affordable, it’s definitely the way to go because you get a lot more longevity out of them,” Brasher said.

“You’ll start seeing them more and more in airports. The Atlanta airport has a lot right now.” LCDs are also limited in terms of size; TVs can only get so big, whereas LED boards can be tiled seemingly ad infinitum. LED displays are also starting to replace high-end projectors, such as those found in movie theaters, churches and other public venues. And LED display installations don’t have to be permanent. Brasher said there is a lucrative business in companies renting LED displays for short periods of indoor use, such as a concert or other event.

Content, Again One of the dominant issues that often arose when DDS was starting to become a force to be reckoned with

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE Reading the Signs

LED display that SNA Displays installed in the lobby of Salesforce’s San Francisco headquarters. (Image courtesy SNA Displays.)

in the sign and display world was creating content for it. Companies that were deploying DDS systems would often include a content management system that allowed end users to control and schedule their own content, be it a PowerPoint, AVI video or even link to stock tickers, weather reports and Twitter or other social media feeds. Content management for LED signage works basically the same way. EBSCO, for example, offers SignCommand, cloud-based content management for its LED signs, that can either use EBSCO’s stock or the end user’s own customized content. “We have content that we’ve created that’s free to you when you buy a sign,” Brasher said, “but you also have the ability to create your own. If you want to use your own PowerPoint, create your own AVI animation files, that’s completely customizable. You can upload and then present your slides or your playlist. Your content can change as often as you want to change it and as much creation time as you want to put into it.” New technologies are also taking LED signage beyond the traditional EMC or billboard—augmented and

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virtual reality could be coming to a LED display near you. “The hottest, eye-catching applications are ones that are immersive and in some cases interactive,” Helton said. “With increased flexibility and capability, the future of these digital display systems is in experiential applications where the viewer is immersed in the content. Given the blank-canvas nature of our medium, there aren’t many limits.” One cutting-edge project that SNA Displays worked on was a large video wall in the lobby of Salesforce’s San Francisco headquarters—a 107-foot-long, flushmounted wall that contours around multiple elevator entrances. The content features beautiful, life-sized nature scenes. “This project kind of represented a watershed moment in the digital display industry, as people really saw how amazing and beautiful digital signage could be in a non-traditional space like a corporate lobby with the right technology and content,” Helton said. “The effect is a startling, immersive experience that begins when you walk in the door. It’s truly a trend-setting application.”

Only a scant few providers of printed and traditional signage have ventured into dynamic digital signage, despite opportunities to be had in those kinds of deployments. There are opportunities in LED signage, but a wide-format or traditional signage shop is not going to start manufacturing or installing LED panels. Rather, the opportunity lies in working with a company like EBSCO or SNA Displays. “For us, the business model is we sell the complete sign,” Brasher said. “We work with you on what you want the sign to be. We are a true consultative sales organization that goes through where the sign is going to be located. What’s the traffic pattern? What’s the speed at which viewers drive by? We put you into the right size sign based on that information.” LED signmakers can work with end users or they can work through traditional sign shops. As always, caveat emptor. “It’s vitally important for any purchaser of LED signage to find a company they can trust to guide them through the process of procuring large-format digital signage,” Helton said. “Low-end and white-label companies have flooded the market to get a piece of the pie, and as a result many customers wind up with a product that is low-quality or not adequately supported. So the absolute best practice is to find an expert with a solid reputation.” As LED signage comes down in price and increases in visibility and application, at least having enough knowledge to be dangerous is increasingly a must for any provider of sign and display graphics. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21075922 ■

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Executive Q&A Wim Maes, Summa

From Xeikon to Summa, Wim Maes helps make the company a worldwide industry leader. Article by Cary Sherburne

any of our readers will remember Wim Maes for his tenure as the CEO of Xeikon from 2009 to 2017. In parallel, he was also President of Flint Group Digital Printing Solutions from 2015 until 2017. Today, Maes is an Executive Member of the Board at Summa NV (www.summa.eu), a global leader in cutting and finishing equipment for the printing, signage, outdoor advertising and packaging industries, most recently adding solutions for textiles to the mix. PN: Wim, let’s start by talking about how you got involved in the printing industry in the first place. WM: To be honest, my background is in engineering, and my first real association with the printing industry was as CEO of Xeikon, a role I took on in 2009. I spent six years in R&D, six years in sales and did two turnaround stories for The Punch Group. This included development of robots for milking cows, on-board computers for trucks, etc. I didn’t really know the difference between an offset printer and a flexo printer. PN: There had been Summa cutting systems in America for some time. What was involved with getting Summa America started? WM: When I took over the America operation, we had two offices – one in Seattle and one in Boston – and our business was primarily direct sales to end users from those two offices. I changed that model to eliminate direct sales and established 44

a dealer/reseller channel. The Boston office became Summa America, and the Seattle office went back to a previous Summa owner who became one of our dealers. PN: How many dealers or resellers do you have on board? WM: In terms of our flatbed products, about a dozen. For our roll cutters, about two dozen. We don’t want to have too many resellers; we don’t want to over-distribute the product. We want our resellers to have enough skin in the game so they can invest in service, market the product and be able to sell the value, not just sell on price. PN: Your business has primarily been in the signs and display graphics market. But at FESPA, you were showing textile cutting tables. Can you talk about how and why you entered the textiles market? WM: We see a big future in textiles and that there is also a gap in the market for textiles. We didn’t see any other company making dedicated single-ply cutting products that served the textile market. The products I see now in the market for cutting textiles, for garments or for soft signage, are non-purpose-built. They are products originally designed for the sign market trying to sell into textiles. There are also lower quality systems from Asia in the market. We saw an opening for high-quality cutting systems purpose-built for this market. A lot of the companies also are smaller companies that need a high quality, but sub-$100,000

Wim Maes, Executive Member of the Board at Summa NV

solution, and they also want laser cutting. PN: You showed an impressive laser cutting solution at FESPA, the L3214, which is able to cut the fabric while the belt is moving. Talk about the development of that product. WM: We acquired CadCam Technology because they had laser technology, which we think is very important for textiles. It’s a noncontact cutting technology and it has the added benefit of sealing the edge of the fabric while cutting. If you are cutting Lycra for sportswear with a knife, the materials move, which they don’t with laser, so you get a more accurate cut. Plus, the light beam can move faster. CadCam has a lot of experience, and we estimate that over 1000 machines are already installed, of which a significant part are in the textile market. They are very strong in R&D, but less focused in sales and marketing. They had been in business for 20 years. We saw a good fit. PN: Was the L3214 developed subsequent to the acquisition? WM: CadCam already had a plan with drawings on the table. We did some adjustments to the machine because we wanted it to look like a Summa machine, and we gave them time and resources to develop the product.. It’s unique in the market. There are actually two machines: The L3214 is 3.2 meters wide and is targeted at the soft signage market.

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE The L1810 is a 1.8-meter solution more focused on apparel, since we see folks in that market primarily using fabric widths of 1.8 meters or less. The L1810 is currently available and the L3214 is close to commercial release. Also, our experience has been that the L3214 delivers three times the productivity of other systems, which means we are seeing three older machines replaced by one L3214 in many cases. PN: Why should people look at Summa as a cutting solution? WM: Our tagline is “Legendary Performance” for a reason. The products are very reliable, and this is important to customers. Finishing is always the last step, and if it fails, you don’t meet customer deadlines. Plus, waste in finishing due to errors and rework is very expensive, taking out the profit of the job. Plus support – we want to be there immediately if something goes wrong, and our dealer network helps us do that. We also don’t oversell our products. We try to understand what the customer is looking for and provide them with a solution that meets that need. If it is fit for the customer’s purpose, they are happy. PN: Any final words you would like to share with our readers? WM: Summa is investing to make the life of sign makers and textile converters easier, taking complexity out of the finishing job. One way we do that is through our patented barcode process. Barcodes are printed on the material, and our devices automatically search for barcodes when the material gets to the device. This sets the device up automatically. It will know all the settings, including which knife should be used; it will check that the right tool is being used and will calibrate it before cutting. And then it just cuts continuously, job after job on the roll. These systems make

a big difference for our customers. We still see a lot of manual finishing being done, or finishing being done by an expensive, complex system. Our vision is to make reliable systems that are automated and

ADVANCED LASER CUTTING FOR DYE SUBLIMATION, PRINTED FABRICS AND TEXTILES Discover more at www.SummaAmerica.com

easy to operate with a high level of productivity. We want to help people take the bottlenecks out of finishing. For the entire interview please find the article online here PrintingNews. com/21075921 ■

Our vision is to make reliable systems that are automated and easy to operate with a high level of productivity. We want to help people ta take the bottlenecks out of cutting.

- WIM MAES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF SUMMA ABOUT SUMMA L SERIES

For more information, visit PrintingNews.com/10107540

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FESPA 2019 Key Takeaways Did you miss FESPA 2019? No worries! We have it covered. Article by Cary Sherburne

he last time I attended FESPA was in 2010, when it was also in Munich, a lovely city. Back then, FESPA occupied two halls, and I found this headline from one of the print trade magazines: “FESPA 2010 to be Dominated by Digital.” Nine years later, and digital is still dominant, but we were surprised at how much analog technology there was. Screen printing was pretty prominent, as it should be, since the analog and digital technologies will co-exist for quite some time to come. We also saw hybrid analog/digital solutions, like the Digital Squeegee from M&R Digital. It was the first time I had actually seen it in action, and I was surprised at how large the inkjet portion of this machine was. Another similar hybrid solution from ROQ was also on display. We also saw lots of embroidery machines. What was missing there, were at least two solutions for digital

on-demand coloring of thread— Coloreel and Twine—that have the potential to dramatically change the embroidery landscape. They can feed one embroidery head with an unlimited number of colors, dyed to order based on the embroidery pattern. We’re interested to see the market reaction. Coloreel has already launched its product and snagged a partnership with thread company Coats. Twine launched its solution at the show. As with screen printing, however, we expect to see analog and digital solutions both playing a role for some time to come. Digital printing of textiles for apparel and home décor played an expanded role as well, with one and a half halls dedicated to that, as well as two of the special features at the show that we covered in “Print. Make. Wear.” The majority of the show floor, however, was dedicated to FESPA’s heritage, signs and display graphics, including vinyl print and wrap solutions.

Exhibitors seemed very happy with attendance and the quality of visitors. One MIS ERP company logged 1,600 visitors to its booth over the duration of the show—leads that will keep them busy for some time. Visitors were also buying…we ran into an American friend and print business owner who made several significant purchases for his business while also exploring many options for the future. He was certainly not alone. A show like FESPA is also a great place to make new product announcements and/or unveil new products for the European market. ■■ Adobe introduced a new product, Adobe Textile Designer for Photoshop, an extension for Photoshop that is still in public beta. This solution adds significant new capabilities to Photoshop to make textile design easier. Watch for a

(Left) Young fashion designers show off their work in highly energetic fashion shows each day. (Above) Debbie McKeegan, textile evangelist for FESPA, event organizer, is pictured second from left, along with four of the young fashion designers who contributed their designs to the “Print. Make. Wear.” interactive exhibit event.

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Panel discussion moderated by Frank Tückmantel, EFI’s vice president of corporate marketing (second from left) with panelists Daniel Sunderland, director of operations and finance at Serigráfica Industrial and Commercial in Mexico (far left); Bernhard Niemela, general manager and editor-in-chief at Deutscher Drucker Verlag (second from right); and Keith Ferrell, one of the founders of New Zealand’s Cactus Imaging (far right).

video interview with Adobe’s Mike Scrutton explaining this new product. Adobe Textile Designer also played a key role in the “Print. Make. Wear.” microfactory at the show. ■■ Dataline got a lot of attention with its MultiPress MIS/ ERP software designed for sign and display graphics companies. However, according to Jef Stoeffels, the company’s marketing director, it can be used for just about any graphics business. Highlighted at the show were the MultiPress Installation App, which won an Innovation Award at a recent Sign & Print Fair in The Netherlands. This app helps mobile employees manage projects at the customer premises, including uploading photos. And the MultiPress Calculation Wizard makes complex price calculations simple. Integrated into an e-commerce site, it allows purchasers to request correct pricing online. ■■ Durst added two new printers to its P5 family of printing systems, the P5 350 (3.5 meters) and the P5 210 (2.1 meters), for wide-format printing. The company also highlighted its professional services offerings

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at the show, as well as new modular software solutions under the Durst Workflow, Durst Analytics and Durst Smart Shop umbrellas, offering automated production from “pixel to output.” This now becomes a more complete platform for large format operations. ■■ EFI showed a full range of printers for signs and display graphics, including the FabriVU 340i which incorporates printing and calendaring in one footprint. The company has placed more than 200 EFI FabriVU printers over the last two years. The EFI Pro 30f flatbed that can print on materials up to 4 inches thick and a larger print bed were also introduced. Software was highlighted in the EFI stand with a new version of its Optitex 2D/3D software with a new print-and-cut feature. There were plenty of samples of printed output on a wide variety of materials to attract visitors’ attention. At its press conference, company management answered questions about its proposed acquisition by Siris Capital and its recent acquisition of Turkish ink company BDR. The company also introduced August 2019

EFI IQ Cloud Services, a new technology that reads data inside devices to provide actionable information to both owners and to allow EFI to better help customers optimize their printers and run jobs more efficiently. ■■ The HP Stitch series is HP’s first entry into the textile market. Two models were introduced earlier at the ISA show in Las Vegas. At FESPA, the company introduced its newest model, the 3.2-meter HP Stitch S1000 printing at up to 250 square meters per hour. Arguably, HP’s stand was one of the most colorful as the company decorated it with output from the Stitch family. From a workflow perspective, HP’s Print OS is also applicable to the Stitch line, and Stitch printers can print on either heat transfer paper or direct to fabric using HP’s proprietary inks. The printers have an embedded spectrophotometer for color quality control. ■■ Kornit had a significant presence at the show as well, with its new CEO, Ronen Samuel, announcing its goal to be a $500 million company by 2023. The main focus of the company is direct-to-garment (DTG), where it claims a market leadership position, but it also has direct-tofabric solutions targeted at the interior décor market. Kornit’s primary announcement was the introduction of the Avalanche Poly Pro direct-to-garment printer with Kornit’s new NeoPoly technology for highquality printing on polyester. The wet-on-wet printing process applies a fixation agent, then the image is printed, and finally a Poly enhancer is applied before WhatTheyThink - Wide-Format&Signage

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE the competed garment is dried in line with low-temperature curing of the ink. The inks are Oeko-Tex and Eco-Passport certified and do not contain PVCs or other toxic ingredients. The printer can produce up to 250,000 impressions per year. ■■ Massivit introduced a new 3D printer, the Massivit 1800 Pro, that offers a unique variable print resolution capability that allows changing of resolution level and layer thickness on the fly, increasing the range of items that can be created for visual communication, entertainment, concept prototyping and interior design applications. Because Massivit printed objects are hollow, and thus lighter weight than most 3D printed objects, they can be incorporated into 2D signage and display graphics to add a new dimensions to these projects. ■■ Mimaki engaged an interior designer, Claire Vos (watch our video interview with her, posted on WhatTheyThink.com), to talk about how Mimaki digital printing solutions have opened new opportunities for her as a designer. She participated in the press conference, and her designs were on display throughout the Mimaki booth. The company introduced several new products, including a flatbed printer with metallic UV inks, and the JFX200-2513 EX, which it called 2.5D, because of its ability to lay down 17 layers of clear ink for a textured appearance. Although layered printing is not new, Mimaki’s implementation only requires four simple steps for the operator to apply the feature. The company also added an entrylevel 3D printer to its portfolio, with a selling price of €2,000. 48

■■ R oland DG showed the TrueVIS VG2, its 16th-generation printand-cut solution for the sign and display graphics market, which has 40+ enhancements, including orange ink for a wider color gamut. The company also showcased the new VersaUV-LEF2-200 UV LED flatbed printer that includes premium finishing such as simulated embossing. For textiles, the Texart RT-640M textile sublimation printer for printing directly onto polyester fabrics or dye sublimation paper was on display. The LD-80 laser foil decorator for adding text, logos and graphics in a variety of metallic and holographic foils attracted a great deal of visitor attention as well. These are just a few of the show highlights, since with more than 300 companies exhibiting, we don’t have space to cover them all.

FESPA Special Features Steal the Show While all these announcements were exciting, we took particular note of the special educational features the show organizer highlighted this year.

Trends Theater Throughout the show, content was presented in five important growth areas that can help attendees expand their businesses. These included décor, digital textile, signage, industrial and digital print for packaging. The Theater wrapped up with a print leaders panel discussion moderated by Frank Tückmantel, EFI’s vice president of corporate marketing. The panelists discussed their views of growth strategies for businesses in all segments of the market and included Daniel Sunderland, director of operations and finance at Serigráfica Industrial and Commercial in Mexico; Bernhard Niemela, general manager and editorin-chief at Deutscher Drucker Verlag; and Keith Ferrell, one of the founders of New Zealand’s Cactus Imaging. Much of the content for the Trend Theater was derived from a series of (Left) The world’s best vehicle wrappers compete to be crowned the World Wrap Master Champion. (Below) The Printeriors exhibit highlighted the benefits and opportunities of using print for interior décor.

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE of color management hardware and software.

Print. Make. Wear.

(Above) HP’s Inkologist, Thom Brown, explains the importance of quality inks in the inkjet printing process to ensure the best possible color quality. (Right) Laurel Brunner answers questions from visitors about the use of color management hardware and software.

white papers produced by FESPA’s research partner, Smithers Pira, and provided insight into the issues and opportunities facing industry professionals today.

World Wrap Masters This is a special feature that has been an attraction at FESPA for some years. Each day during the show, the world’s best wrappers – the vehicle type, not the singing type – compete to be crowned the World Wrap Master Champion. They are given a section of a vehicle to wrap within a limited amount of time, and judges evaluate their work to determine who gets to go to the next round. This year’s winner was Traian Moldovan, with Norman Brübachj coming in second. Free wrap workshops were offered every day at noon, as well. Most days, the area had plenty of show attendees watching the clock count down as wrappers worked to win a title spot.

Printeriors Located near the entrance of the fairgrounds, the Printeriors exhibit highlighted the benefits and opportunities of using print for interior décor. This included wallpapers, light boxes and soft

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furnishings such as curtains and cushions, tabletops and sideboards, window graphics and chairs. As an added benefit, the various Printeriors displays provided a place for visitors to rest their weary feet and to meet with colleagues and prospects while enjoying the beautiful décor. This year, the theme was “Inspired by Nature – Powered by Print,” and designs were coordinated by illustrator Jasper Goodall.

Colour L*A*B This was a new feature at FESPA 2019 aimed at helping visitors improve color management in their own print businesses. Guided tours were hosted by Laurel Brunner of Digital Dots, and color management consultant Paul Sherfield. The tour took visitors through the entire process, from inks through color measurement of finished print. Here, HP’s Inkologist, Thom Brown, explains the importance of quality inks in the inkjet printing process to ensure the best possible color quality. And here, Laurel Brunner answers questions from visitors about the use

Last but not least was my favorite, “Print. Make. Wear.” In its second year, this year’s interactive exhibit was much larger than last year. Microfactories on display included a large direct-to-garment printing operation that allowed visitors to take home a T-shirt they observed being manufactured on demand, from design through direct-to-garment print. It also featured a cut-andsew area where operators created garments and home décor from digitally printed textiles designed by young designers. Tours were conducted by experts from the textiles and apparel industry, including Debbie McKeegan, textile evangelist for FESPA, who organizes the event. She’s pictured second from left, along with four of the young fashion designers who contributed their designs to the event. Be sure to watch the video interviews we did with her, one of which ran on May 29 on WhatTheyThink.com, and the other on June 11, where she explains what goes into putting the event together as well as how digital technologies are helping address sustainability issues in the textile industry. Each day, the young fashion designers were able to show off their work in highly energetic fashion shows.

See You There Next Year? FESPA 2019 was truly an amazing show, and well worth the trek across the pond. If you haven’t been to FESPA in Europe before, we highly recommend you put next year’s event on your calendar. We hope we’ll see you in Madrid for FESPA March 24-27, 2020. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21077202 ■

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Customers Know What “Wide Format” Printing Is? Do

Good SEO is all about the right terminology.

Article by Richard Romano

hat do we talk about when we talk about “wide format?” We’ve had a version of this conversation before, but this time I want to come at it from a different angle.(And I promise no Venn diagrams.) What do we search for when we search for “wide format?” There was a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, when a print shop would say that “adding wide-format services” 50

was a substantial opportunity. That’s still true, but there is a sense that “wide format” is losing its cachet as a specific term. That is to say, shops that are seeing success in selling “wideformat services” aren’t necessarily marketing themselves as “wide-format printers.” Rather, the emphasis now is on specific applications. The trick becomes: how to best communicate that to potential customers? In the Winter 2019 issue of

“LeadingPRINT,” APTech’s quarterly magazine, there was a feature written by Joe Gass, president and CEO of Heritage Printing, who had built his company’s wide-format business in large part by effectively leveraging search engine optimization (SEO). Without going into SEO in great detail, a significant portion of it entails choosing the right keywords to add to a website to ensure that that site appears toward the top of

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WIDE-FORMAT & SIGNAGE the first page of Google’s search results. (After all, the loneliest place in the world is page 2 or beyond.) It’s telling the keywords that Gass chose to include. He writes: To identify the keywords to put to work for us, we have to think beyond what we, in the industry, think are important terms. We use a lot of jargon, like “wide format.” Who aside from an industry insider uses that term? Initially, we had to think about what a person — often a person who isn’t experienced at buying print — is searching for when they go online. The keywords he chose to use instead were the specific products he wanted to promote, such as “retractable banner stands,” “step and repeat banner stands,” “red carpet banner stands” or “life size cutouts.” It’s easy to verify this in the real world. Whenever I am out in nonindustry social environments and am asked what I do, I often say, “I write about the printing industry, specifically wide-format printing.” (I may also answer “race car driver,” “highly respected brain surgeon” or “international jewel thief.” I attend a lot of different events.) Anyway, that always prompts the follow-up question, “What is that?” (I have also found that, these days, the question could equally apply to “printing industry” as “wideformat printing.”) The point being, only people reading this feature have any real idea what “wide-format printing” actually is. When I go on to explain that it involves posters, signage, window graphics, etc., then they know what I mean. Why is this important? Well, because increasingly, these are the people who buy these kinds of items. These are, by and large, local business owners or managers who in fact have designed and ordered window graphics, signs, posters, banners—and, indeed, “retractable banner stands.” They know what the specific products are,

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but are unfamiliar with the phrase “wide-format.” It’s funny: I also get the same blank looks when I use the phrase “commercial printing,” but when I qualify it by mentioning direct mail, books, magazines (well, maybe not so much anymore...) and specific printed products, they have a better understanding. And, again, these are the people who buy these kinds of items—either as consumers buying the final products or as business owners and marketers who produce marketing and promotional materials. The focus today has become less on the technology of wide format (and I feel comfortable using that term with you folks reading this because you probably know what I’m talking about, at least some of the time) and more on the business of it. It’s less of a mystery how to make these products than it is how to market and sell them. A big part of successfully selling them is to be application-specific—and use images and examples wherever possible. After all, often certain kinds of products go by different names in different parts of the country—or a potential customer may not know what something is “officially” called. (The tips in Pat McGrew’s “Enabling Sales” series apply just as much to wide-format printing as to general commercial printing, perhaps even more so.) This is especially true when it comes to optimizing a website. Let’s face it, as effective as your sales personnel may be, if you’re not paying attention to how potential customers find you online, you’re missing out on a lot of business—and it will only get worse, especially as more and more wide-format print buyers have little experience buying print (of any kind) and simply Google what it is they think they want. Making sure you understand what people search for when they search for wide-format products will go a very long way

toward making sure they can find you. And then once they have found you, then you have the opportunity to sell them other print products that you produce and that they may need. It’s the reverse of the old advice, “start by selling wide-format printing to your current customers.” That’s still good advice, but taking the opposite approach is also perfectly viable. And there’s no reason you can’t do both. This advice becomes even more valid as more and more people—especially small business owners—become savvy about what kinds of wide-format applications are not only available, but also affordable. They may not know what they’re called, but they know they want them. We all love the phrase “soft signage,” but does anyone outside the industry know what it is? How do you make it easy for them? It never hurts—and always helps— to go to business networking events outside the industry. Whenever we cover industry conferences and expos, everyone we talk to is quick to point out that these events are great opportunities to share information about technology and business specific to print. But attending events like local Chamber of Commerce meetings and mixers, American Marketing Association (AMA) meetings, even meetings of service organizations like the Rotary Club are great ways to see how our industry and the products we produce are perceived, even if it’s just to find out all the different terms there are for what we know of as “retractable banner stands.” Knowing how these things are thought of by prospective customers helps you as a print service provider better communicate what it is you offer, and that it may not involve the phrase “wide format.” But don’t worry—you can always use that term here. I’ll know what you mean. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21076426 ■

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PRODUCT NEWS

Epson SureColor T5470M 36Inch Printer and Integrated Scanner Epson announces the SureColor T5470M – a 36-inch printer and integrated scanner offering a fast multifunction solution for printing, sharing and saving technical documents. The print/copy/ scan combo produces accurate A1/D-size prints in as fast as 22 seconds, making it an ideal choice for managing blueprints, charts, posters and more. Leveraging Epson’s PrecisionCore MicroTFP printhead technology with Precision Droplet Control for crystal-clear images, precise lines and crisp text, the SureColor T5470M produces outstanding image quality with industry-leading reliability. The integrated scanner supports multipage scanning and scan to USB drive functions. Next-generation UltraChrome XD2 archival pigment ink delivers vibrant, durable prints.

www.printingnews.com/21077441

Digitech TruFire from Global Imaging Global Imaging, a leading distributor of grand format digital printing equipment, is pleased to announce the U.S. distribution of the Digitech TruFire UV flatbed printer. The TruFire is a dedicated flatbed that excels in ink adhesion and productivity, even with some of the most difficult substrates, such as styrene, coroplast and aluminum blanks. The Digitech TruFire will complement Global Imaging’s already superior UV product offerings with its price-to-performance ratio, starting at under $250,000. This will open new market opportunities for both Global Imaging and its clients.

www.printingnews.com/21077430 Scan Dimension Releases Mac Version of Popular SOL 3D Scanner Scan Dimension, developer of 3D scanning, imaging and realization technology, announces the macOS version of its 3D desktop scanner, SOL. Scan Dimension’s SOL is the market’s most user-friendly 3D scanner, ideal for the engineer, maker, designer or hobbyist. Now, customers can use SOL with macOS Mojave. Recently released, the SOL 3D scanner has been receiving praise for its advancements in 3D scanning. Reviewer Jordan Druber of 9to5Toys.com gave it notable marks for its easy setup and high-quality scans.

www.printingnews.com/21075043

CAPTIVA Innovations Unveils its Market-Ready Interactive LED eBanner Signage Solution CAPTIVA Innovations, the world leader in smart illuminated eBanners, unveiled its paper-thin interactive Printed Electronics’ LED signage solutions for retail at GlobalShop. CAPTIVA showcased how its dynamically illuminated printed eBanners do not only attract attention and draw in audiences, but also engage them through interactive modules to increase brand awareness, loyalty and ultimately drive sales. CAPTIVA’s flexible LED eBanner product can be customized in almost any size and shape, lending itself to a variety of truly unique retail applications, including being hung off ceilings, applied to curved surfaces, integrated into retail End Caps and POS displays, or even retrofitted into retractable banner stands to create eye-catching pop-up stores. CAPTIVA also powers the digitization of the customer experience through interactive modules that can be integrated to push or pull data, as well as engage audience through touch and sounds, creating truly memorable experiences for end-users and more personalized customer engagement abilities for vendors.

www.printingnews.com/21075004

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PRODUCT NEWS Aleyant Announces Expansion of Pressero Web-to-Print Integrated Services

EnVite Multi-Media Digital Press Xante’ has announced the EnVite Multi-Media Digital Press, its newest innovative digital press designed for the demanding stationery and specialty printing markets. The EnVite delivers extremely high-quality, fast and fully automated prints on specialty media and does so at a very affordable price. The EnVite produces stunning 4800 dpi color quality on an extensive range of media types and sizes. Well-suited to fast production of invitations, envelopes, stationery, business cards and greeting cards, EnVite boasts speeds of up to 3,500 full-color, fully-addressed A7size envelopes per hour and media sizes from 3.5x3.5 up to 13x49. The digital press includes the Enterprise SP, a new design high-speed feed system that fits comfortably in the limited floor space of stationery stores. With the EnVite, stationery stores will be able to print on a wide range of media including vellum, linen, sueded, pearlized, and foil-lined envelopes. EnVite print markets include small poster printing, menus, postcards and so much more. Powered by Xante’s iQueue workflow software, the EnVite provides stationery stores with rich personalization and customization tools to satisfy any requirement. The Xante’ EnVite Multi-Media Digital Press is available immediately direct from Xante’ or its reseller partners around the globe.

www.printingnews.com/21074281

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Aleyant, an innovative leader in providing robust software services to the graphic communications industry, has announced that as part of its ongoing expansion of Pressero Integrated Services, the company now offers seamless integration with EFI PrintSmith Vision and EFI Pace print MIS solutions for advanced order-to-invoicing automation. Originally developed in conjunction with franchisor Alliance Franchise Brands, whose franchise members benefit from integration efforts, Aleyant has now made this highly productive integration available to all Pressero customers as part of Pressero Integrated Services. With the integration in place, when an order or change to an order is received by Pressero, job, job parts (including production files), contacts and shipment entries are automatically generated into the EFI MIS system. This not only speeds the job through production, capturing all relevant information within the MIS, but it eliminates the potential for human errors that can occur when information needs to be manually entered. Seamless communication ensures that information is aligned between the two systems.

www.printingnews.com/21075047

Gladi8tor Kornit Konnect Kornit Digital has announced Kornit Konnect, its new cloud-based, mobile workflow software platform that enables businesses to maximize productivity of their digital printing solutions. This is the first phase in Kornit’s implementation of its industry vision of textile design, decoration and production being fueled by data-driven insights and performance metrics. In its first phase, the Kornit Konnect enables businesses to monitor production, analyze insights and manage their fleet, in order to eliminate blind spots. It includes a fleet management dashboard, data driven benchmarks, actual production costs, and cost structures per job, making it easy for businesses to learn more, react faster and perform better.

www.printingnews.com/21074288

Gandy Digital innovates the next generation flatbed printers using “NanoDot” Technology. A whole new concept of digital printing that has come of age to extra wide large format printing in Gandy Digital’s Gladi8tor True Flatbed printer. The Gladi8tor comes in two sizes, Gladi8tor “2” has a 4ft X 8ft (1.22m X 2.44m) print size or Gladi8tor “3” with a 6.5ft X 10ft (2m X 3.05m) print size both on a vacuum table. Both models can have a Roll to Roll attachment either 8ft (2.44m) Wide or 10ft (3.05m) Wide. Here are some of the popular features: - Crash Sensors that stop for even small objects and save print heads from damage. - Static Bars that really work in dry climates while keeping prints sharp. - Automatic head cleaning and wiping station. Graphical User Interface simple touch and drag (GUI). - Powerful vacuum table holds uneven materials flat.

www.printingnews.com/21069662 August 2019 WhatTheyThink - Wide-Format&Signage

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TRADE SERVICES

Avoid Common Hiring Mistakes How to prepare yourself for a successful interview. Article by Debra Thompson

electing and hiring the perfect employee is a difficult task, but if done right, it is one of the most important moves you can make for your business. In today’s economy, there is no room for bad or even marginal hiring decisions. Therefore, your selection process must have little tolerance for errors. As the famous business guru Peter Drucker emphasized, “One third of all hirings are total failures.” Here are a few of the common mistakes that contribute to those failures:

1. Falling for the “halo effect The term “halo effect” refers to the tendency to focus on how much you liked the candidate’s appearance or how much you have in common with the person rather than how well the candidate fits the requirements of the job. Studies have shown that the majority of hiring decisions are made within the first 10 minutes of an interview. Indeed, the first impressions of hiring managers in initial interviews may drive the entire hiring process because they expect—and perceive—better answers from candidates who make a favorable first impression. As a result, many hiring managers make hiring decisions based on style rather than Debra Thompson Debra Thompson is president of TG & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in “The Human Side of Business” specifically for the graphics industry. Debra can be reached at debra@tgassociates.com or www.tgassociates.com .

substance—and pass over highly qualified candidates.

2. Lack of a current job description for the position It is essential to accurately describe the roles needed to meet the company vision. As technology changes our industry, the functions needed are changing as well. Therefore, it is critical to re-evaluate the position and capture all the new requirements. You must be able to articulate them in such a manner that personnel can be recruited, trained and measured against the criteria. If you choose to execute a hiring process without an accurate job description, you have already increased your chances of a bad hire.

3. Failure to pre-screen the candidates There are many opportunities to pre-screen candidates. The first level is the careful scrutiny of the resume itself. Don’t jump to conclusions over a beautifully written and printed resume. Read between the lines and make sure that you do a thorough job of comparing the resume to the position description. A telephone pre-screen will quickly identify the suitability of a candidate. As you listen to the responses, also listen for the tone of voice and enthusiasm. Pay attention to phone etiquette. Use prescreening to “smoke out” salary issues early. You want to know the potential for creating a win-win situation.

4. Lack of preparation Preparation is the key to a successful interview. Hiring managers and interviewers are often so busy that they do not think about conducting

the interview until just before the applicant arrives. If you do not prepare properly, then you end up winging it – a sure recipe for another failed hire.

5. Failure to test Failing to test candidates is one of the biggest mistakes that employers make in hiring. Too often they need “a body” so desperately that they rely on their gut instincts to make a selection rather than take advantage of the many tools available to help make a more informed decision. It is absolutely essential that at a minimum, you evaluate intelligence and personality as part of the selection process. It is too expensive to find out later that they do not have the smarts to learn the job or they do not fit the culture of the company or the rest of the team.

6 Failure to reference check When done well, the reference checking process helps hiring managers screen in qualified candidates who are good fits for the job and the organization and screen out unsuitable individuals. Don’t eliminate this step just because the candidate “appears” good. A few phone calls can verify the information you have received through applications, resumes and interviews.

7. Rushing to hire You must be responsible to your employees, your customers and yourself to know ahead of time who you are hiring. The hiring process is an exercise in completing due diligence. Each step in the hiring process is vital to the success of hiring the right person the first time. Find article here PrintingNews. com/21076436 ■

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MARKETING TECHNOLOGY Continued from page 13

The brand and the desired experience will then define next steps—and ergo the budget. BMW is launching an app for its new hybrid car that, when the user scans the car, it shows what is going on under the hood. The nature of the brand and the desired experience define the approach. “When you deal with a manufacturer like a BMW, it can’t look cartoonish,” Rivera said. He added that a way for brand owners to amortize the AR development costs is to include the experience in other media. BMW may have a scannable car that triggers an experience, but the same experience can also be linked to its printed marketing and promotional materials.

One App to Rule Them All? There is a lot of potential in AR and PR, but one major obstacle still remains. “The biggest challenge right now is the fact that it has to go through a specific app, that it’s not just acknowledged or recognized by your camera,” Rivera said. “Also, you’ve got different hardware, but holding up a phone or an iPad for an extended period of time kind of gets old.” What’s next for display technology? The head-mounted display/gogglebased approach that has been the hallmark of virtual reality? “Nobody wants to walk around looking like an astronaut with goggles on,” Rivera said. “The industry is very anxiously awaiting the likes of Apple coming out with a pair of glasses so it’s a more natural and immersive experience. You don’t have to necessarily hold up your hands to see that digital layer, you can just wear the glasses. That’s going to change things.” Rumor has it that Apple is working on such a pair of glasses, but so far

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trade show, but do you really know if anyone did anything as a result of getting that brochure? Not really, no. However, QR, AR and PR can all be used to acquire better data by pushing print recipients into online track-and-trace marketing environments, and then into marketing automation systems. Print can now be included in the metrics and analytics that chief marketing officers (CMOs) require to gauge the ROI on a particular campaign. A scanned code or AR trigger on a printed direct mail piece or a sign can send the viewer to a website, and the CMO can see that the mail piece or the sign was the source. So, the interactive element not only benefits the consumer (a quick link to get more information, an immersive rich media experience or some other payoff) but also the marketer (accurate analytics). Print can be as measurable as electronic media—since it now feeds directly into electronic media—and can thus stimulate marketers to use more print. We’ve always known that print was effective—but now we have data to prove it. Find article here PrintingNews.com/21075929 ■

there has been no official—or even unofficial—news. RealityBLU’s Anderson said his company is working on an emerging technology—Web AR—which is the ability to scan for augmented reality content without the use of an app, using the phone’s web browser to initiate the action. “While the marketplace is screaming for app-less AR, I don’t believe apps are going away anytime soon,” he said. “The onus is being placed on the marketer to make their app solutions real consumer channels, and AR is one way we can add value to that channel.”

Made to Measure OK, the cool things you can do with AR and interactive print are all well and good, but there is one big advantage that interactive print has over non-interactive print: it is measurable, and we don’t mean in terms of trim size. It can provide data. Today’s marketing professionals need to know which media channels are working and which aren’t. Electronic media like email and social are beloved by marketers because electronic media are trackable. You give out a printed brochure at a

Interactive Project Links SpaceVR: Step into Space: https://bit.ly/1idM9UF Virtual Reality Viewer Made from Recycled Cardboard:

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Lego Digital Box Augmented Reality at Lego Store:

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Augmented Reality -- Luxury Retail: https://bit.ly/32vd0mQ What’s the Top Use for AR/VR for Marketers?: https://bit.ly/2XLDBs8 Reality Blu Applications in AR: https://bit.ly/2Z5efqH Lego Launches Eight AR-focused Sets: https://tcrn.ch/2LxqFV2

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ASSOCIATION INSIGHTS

In-Plant “Frontrunners” Race to IPMA’s Annual Conference In-plants experience a renaissance that was apparent at IPMA’s most attended show. Article by Richard Romano

fter years of languishing as “those guys in the basement,” in-plant printing departments have experienced something of a renaissance in recent years, as they have expanded their products and services, embraced new technologies, proven their value to their parent organizations, and, in many cases, have even seen greater profitability. Consequently, the In-Plant Printing & Mailing Association (IPMA) Annual Conference, held in Louisville, Ky., was the biggest in recent memory. Centered around the theme of “Be a Frontrunner,” the conference drew a record number of in-plant attendees—a substantial number of them first-timers—and sold out the floor space in the event’s vendor fair. The first session of the first official day kicked off with Shana Farrell of Fox Valley Technical College in Appleton, Wis., asking the question “Why are you here?” The twist was that she wasn’t asking “why are you here at this conference?” but rather “why are you here on Earth?” The goal of her presentation was to “plant some seeds” and encourage us to step back for a minute and consider some of those bigger questions about what our goals really are, what our purpose really is, and to “find our spark.” The second keynote on Tuesday brought a bit of levity to the proceedings, with actor, writer and keynoter Scott Christopher (levityeffect.com )—author of the 58

IPMA keynote speaker Shana Farrell of Fox Valley Technical College.

book “The Levity Effect: Why It Pays to Lighten Up”—delivering a humorous talk about the importance of making workplaces fun. The breakout sessions covered the waterfront of in-plant issues big and small, from more or less existential topics such as “What In-Plants Need to Do to Stay Alive in 2019” and “Today’s Speed of Change and the InPlant’s Vital Role” to down-and-dirty issues such as “Informed Delivery Overview,” “Understanding the Differences in UV Flatbed Printers” and “Lessons Learned in Offering Digital Garment Printing.” Indeed, the latter two topics are particularly apt as new print applications have become a growth area for in-plants and, it could be argued, have been a major driver of the in-plant renaissance. The ability to add these new products and services has

been of great benefit to their parent organizations. Mailing has always been a traditional in-plant function, albeit one that is often overlooked in favor of “sexier” functions like wideformat or garment printing, and the plethora of mailing-related sessions at the IPMA Conference is indicative of the continued importance of this function (it’s also the “M” in IPMA). You’d think “mailing is mailing,” but the growing “Amazonification” of mailing and shipping—the ability to precisely track whatever was shipped or mailed and being notified when it’s delivered—is affecting more and more businesses in general, and thus in-plants in particular. So it’s becoming necessary to understand how to build this kind of functionality into their shipping and mailing systems. Finally, the IPMA Conference also hosted the In-Print Awards, ultimately selecting 73 winners from 33 in-plants. The “Best of Show, Offset,” award went to the Church of Scientology International for its Castle Kyalami Catalog, while the “Best of Show, Non-Offset,” was awarded to The World Bank Group for its Special Project Faces of Resilience Photobook and Posters. Fort Myers, Fla., is the location of IPMA’s 2020 Conference, specifically the Hyatt Coconut Point in Bonita Springs, June 7–11, 2020. The theme of the 2020 conference is “Perfect Vision,” so it seems apt to say that we’ll see you there! Find article here PrintingNews.com/21075931 ■

WhatTheyThink - Wide-Format&Signage August 2019

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