Ironies abound in our society, such as radio commercials that promote hearing aids and Braille dots on drive-up ATM keypads. The printing industry also has its ironies. They began with the abbot of Sponheim, a small city not far from Gutenberg’s Mainz.
About 40 years after the invention of printing, the abbot wrote a book called In Praise of Scribes, extolling the glory and superiority of the handwritten book over the printed book. To get his message out, the good abbot had the book printed, because handwritten books would take too long to produce.
US Postal Service uses email
Even the US Postal Service realises the advantages of the immediacy of electronic communication. They are about to cut the number of days of delivery and continue to raise postage because they never planned for the paradigm shift that the internet engendered. Some day, parents will tell their children that there once was a time when you could send physical letters to others. Package delivery services will still offer overnight delivery and the Postal Service has partnered with them. It may be that in some cities, private services will arise to deliver circulars, pamphlets, and even mail to homes and businesses.
Digital kit promos printed offset
Some manufacturers of digital printing machines print their promotional material with offset litho. Their print buyers realise that long runs are still more cost effective with offset litho. The advent of high-speed digital printers, especially inkjet, could change the equation. If inkjet people establish a meaningful ROI, we could shift more analogue printing volume to digital. Most of what we print digitally is short runs of static material. Variable or versioned printing is a miniscule volume – held down by complex VDP workflows. The new PDF-Variable could save the day if suppliers realise that it is in their interest to embrace real standards and make the process easier.
Offset press manuals are on CD
Most parts manuals are provided on CD or online but not on paper. Big litho, gravure, flexo, and even digital presses come with less paper than ever before. Call it heavy irony. This is also true
for many manufactured products, except for those little white manuals in six languages that come with gadgets, gizmos and appliances.
Operating manuals as PDFs
When was the last time you received a manual with your software purchase? They put the CDs in the same size box, but the rest of the content is air. Many programs are downloaded so there is definitely no paper. Electronic search is a key advantage and it is reducing the need for traditional indexers. Libraries are evolving into digital repositories with limited archives of old books. Go to the reference section and try to find print versions of many directories. There is a version of the PDF that is said to be Archival so that PDFs can be read 100 years from now. I can’t read Word files that are nine years old.
See next month’s issues for more industry ironies.
Frank Romano is professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology
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