New Printing Technology

After touring the Print West facilities in Woodinville, WA (www.printwest.net) I learned a great deal about high-end offset lithography and digital printing, and got to see some really amazing machines, including a 1,000,000$ Komori 4-color offset that was running full-spreads at several hundred a minute. During our tour, we learned about a new technology, the HP Indigo, which produces crisp and vibrant colors like that of a traditional offset, but with digital features, and off-press processing built directly into the machine (die-cutting, gluebinding, etc) .

Another thing I learned about, is a method of marketing called "variable-data printing" this process involves collating information about users into a database, that is then turned into custom advertisements targeted towards each person and/or demographic. Similar to what is being done on the web already (ip-based locations, welcome messages, etc) variable-data printing has been seen to increase ROI (return on investment) significantly, from the standard projection of 1-2% ROI to 7-16% — pretty dramatic difference.