Reprints Online

1. Introduction
Books, directories, prospectuses, multipage documents etc. are traditionally printed on offset presses since for the last few decades. Nowadays, many of these short-shelf-life volumes are increasingly printed on digital presses in multiple runs of fewer than 500 with intermittent updates. The costs incurred with prepress, production, warehousing and obsolete versions have made digital printing an attractive and utmost essential alternative.

Although, despite the seemingly obvious economies and merits to digital printing, there is an ever rising debate about digital versus plate printing.

The burning example of this is where there are large print runs; here the price per unit drops down considerably from the price of digital printing to traditional printing. There are many reasons behind this. For example the high price of investing in new technology, and the problem of the relatively rapid obsolete technology. Another genuine problem, where there is progress, is that of information incompatibility. Only now are computer programs appearing that can translate original files to the format needed to digitally print, while merging cross media technologies like Quark Xpress that allows
content from the newspaper layout to be easily stripped of its formatting and made ready for posting onto the web, are also omnipresent.

As a matter of fact that not only digital printing but also traditional technologies in printing are developing and their coexistence is inevitable. Apart from digital imaging presses, traditional offset printing machines as well as CTP (computer to plate) systems show immense popularity.

Moreover this write up will explore the possible reasons for the less than expected take up of digital printing and its disappointing degree of penetration in print media markets. In the following paragraphs I will give some definitions of digital printing, as well as describing the features of digital printing systems that are considered to be innovative and fruitful and furthermore offer added value over its traditional printing counterpart.

2. What exactly Digital Printing is?
Definitions of digital printing emphasize sometimes the process and sometimes the machinery used.

For instance Juhola et.al., suggest that digital printing is a printing method by which electronically made-up, black-and-white or multi-colored printed products, which may differ by sample or by page, are produced directly from an information system with a digitally controlled printing engine. [Juhola et.al., 1997]

While describing digital printing in terms of machines or hardware, Holland defines the different types of digital printing machines as follows:
Non-variable on-press direct imaging (No film or plate)
True digital which can handle variable content (Image carrier is re-imaged after each print).
[Holland, 2001]

Politis, on the other hand, widens the list to include whole systems and recommends the following set ups, and that could be considered as digital printing:

Stand-alone machines, either for one- or four-colour printing in terms of capacity to offset printing (not copiers), producing sheets or rolls of paper, with further processing in a binding and finishing department.

Digital printing systems where printing units or machines are combined with on-line binding and finishing systems, leading to a ready-to-deliver printed document. (Trimming can either be included or be a separate unit to these systems).

Direct imaging printing machines which are termed hybrid printing machines where direct imaging is combined with traditional offset printing systems (74 Karat and Heidelberg Quickmaster are examples of such machines) [Politis, 2001a].

2.1. Digital printing: innovative characteristics and technologies
The most interesting and innovative features of digital printing over traditional printing are considered to be
print on demand (PoD), short run and variable printing.

2.1. a. Print on demand
Print on Demand (PoD) is nothing but a electronic printing process that delivers exactly and only what the customer seeks, when the customer wants it, and at the place where it is needed [Hewson and Bank, 2000]. However, PoD can also be considered as a process that is more than just printing. It is everything from idea creation to printing, to delivering and distributing that information to the end user. Because print on demand is so all-encompassing, it further requires a re-engineering of the whole process.

2.1. b. Short run
What is still clear is that PoD allows a complete book to be printed and in a matter of minutes, but that it is only cost-effective to produce books one or two at a time or in small lots, rather than in print runs of several thousand. [sfwa.org.2002] At this point of time conventional printing presses are more appropriate for some jobs-long print runs or non standard formats-because unit cost is cheaper with longer print runs. [Parker 2001] But while a digital press may be capable of printing short runs economically, digital printing on printing presses is well suited for longer runs, thus, digital printing is printing from digital files but is not restricted to short runs. [Romano 1999]

2.1. c. Variable data printing

Variable data printing technology is in the early stages of its adapted product life cycle. Manufacturers of digital presses and variable data systems are working to improve their products with respect to durability, reliability, quality and speed. Advancements in the technology are being addressed from multi dimensional sources.

Leaders such as Xeikon, Indigo, IBM, Xerox, Agfa, Barco and Scitex all continue to improve their product offerings. As all these improvements are made, companies must be aware of the multifaceted applications being demanded by the market place.[PODi 1999] Thus variable data printing has the potential to offer the highest added value, but also requires most changes in the production chain.

It is this feature which allows content and service providers to target their audiences, providing personalization of the content, customization of the presentation mode and versioning to suit the user.

3. Print Media Market: Trends and Characteristics

3. a. General market trends
The print media market is so closely linked to information and content provision services that it cannot fail to be affected by the far reaching effects of changes there, and overall market trends. Where previously the concern of the print media might have been limited to processes concerned with the presentation of printed documents, this has been enlarged to include such definitions as content managing and processing [Enlund, 2000], where content is divided into two further classifications such as Static Content and Dynamic Content.

Let us give a glimpse about Static and Dynamic Content. Static Contents are basically photos, logos, text, signatures, customer data, whereas Dynamic Contents are dealt with digital format, graphics, images, animations, audio clips, and video.

As the world of information dissemination is changing in every second, more and more of the information and entertainment we encounter is an electronic form. One forecast estimates that by 2020, the relation among print, electronic and other media will be as follows:

1900 1950 2000 2020

Print 61 57 49 25
Electronic - 18 36 65
Other 39 25 15 10

(All in %)

3. b. Establishment of digital printing in the marketplace
Digital printing has become established in the market with an added value based on certain merits and characteristics that are important for the rapidly changing environment in print media such as: shorter production times; faster delivery; printing on demand; personalization. However, this is not the whole story; the installation of a digital printing system can also cause a company to change its behavior, both internally and in its relationship to its customer base. In some cases, digital printing can act as an agent of structural change in organization and management. This behavior can be found
in enterprises where digital printing is seen as a complement offering customers new possibilities, rather than an alternative to lithographic printing. [Pira, 2000]

One way of doing business is to use both new and old technology in an integrated way. Here old is gold, and new also welcome. For example, conventional offset printing can be used for the first print run for the highest quality, for offset still achieves this better than digital printers. Then subsequent print runs can be done digitally in line with demand, to ensure a safety net, on the contrary, short digital runs can provide real test-case scenarios for a book in a particular market before more expensive larger runs are pursued. [Sulaiman-BPN 2002b]

Thus the industry is under pressure not just from its traditional print customers but also from alternative media markets. In terms of quality, digital presses have many benefits to offer their clients and customers such a high quality color with a short turn around time, exact quantity printing, customization of documents with variable data, and then there are added dividends, such as the option of revising documents at the last minute.

Print management agencies and printers sometimes specialize in a particular market segment, and promote their organization as one which understands the needs of customers in that sector. These companies can enhance services and processes which pinpoint on industryspecific needs, and can anticipate solutions to their problems.

The print marketplace has become extremely competitive because it is no longer enough to seek differentiation from competitors through speed, quality or cost of service, many printers are seeking different ways of enhancing their attractiveness. Specializing, is one way of achieving this, but is not enough on its own. Hence many are looking to develop new services. [Parker 2001]

3.c. Importance of variable data to cross media

Digital data in a prepress stage implement established digital technologies. This means that technologies such as PDF find an innovative application regarding printing. An example of this is PDF documents, where mass communications can be encoded easily and flexibly with PDF documents, in ISO Standards with PDF/X-1:2001 and PDF/X-1a:2001 of the PDF/X family [Driessche, 2002].

The advent of latest ever changing technologies in the web-based print publishing solutions are also to be added to the mix. This is a lucrative mix for the whole printing industry for present days media where we eat media, drink media, sleep media and dream media. Web publishers want to ease print production into multimedia broadcasting. It is nothing but to take digital files, prepared for print, and convert them to formats that will publish on the Internet. This is of interest to for instance, newspaper companies, who want a web version of their printed newspaper, for customers who prefer their news that way, but also for revenue generated from web advertising. And these advertisements revenue can be earned in international currencies such as Dollars, Pounds, and Euros.

Companies like Macromedia, which specializes in web publishing and Adobe and Quark, which target print publishing tools, share an interest in developing standards for cross media publishing by using XML. This is also the case of the CONTESSA project [Tsakali and Kaptsis, 2002] where the theory is that XML files are the created as the primary files for content, and then these can be further utilized to publish to various devices, such as mobile phones, PDAs , PCs and of course to paper.

The importance of this trend is that there is the opportunity to create a strong case for variable data printing that is feasible and not hampered by the existence of conflicting formats.

4. Conclusions

Moreover the degree of penetration of innovative digital printing characteristics in print media markets is hampered by obstacles that have come about for reasons concerning both technical and management/marketing issues. The technical issues refer mainly to disruptions to the production workflow such as delivery of digital files by the customers or subcontractors and the need for greater competence in the processing of databases for variable printing. Problems of lesser degree are those that occur in processes such as pre-flight, ripping and job management.

[Preflight (suite of software programs to check that data sent for printing are correct as it regards fonts,
resolution, file missing etc].

[Ripping (transforming digital data from the prepress in order to be mapped on any output machine
such as computer to film, Computer to plate or digital printing].

Customer or market-oriented hurdles refer to the difficulty in understanding the innovative characteristics of digital printing by the customers and issues dealing with pricing of digitally printed jobs, especially those in short run and fast delivery.

The degree of penetration in the traditional print market can be strengthen if the graphic arts professions are to undertake some of the following important roles:

create the necessary environment to help the market mature and accept new products;

research new materials and substrates in order to offer the traditional customers their old product with new features in a controlled way;

enhance their knowledge about the local media markets and begin to search for the needs and new requirements for printed products;

start adapting to these new requirements with the development of new-upgraded marketing and customer oriented strategies;

The industry is booming in a stupendous proportion. Technology is there to help. Now the ball is in the entrepreneurs court. They have to execute the proper promotional mix and to exploit the opportunities offered by the information age.

Provided by ArticleGOLD: Articles Directory - Article Directory

About the Article Author

About the author: Post Graduate in Mass Communication. Pursuing PhD. in Mass Communication. A senior lecturer in media studies in a leading Indian university. A columnist and an academician; contributed many articles on diversified topics.