Recently I stood before an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls. I pondered if they were the Dead CD-ROMs would they still be viewable after over a thousand years? Print can last almost forever. Try to find a vintage floppy disk reader from the 1990s.

The history of recorded media is the story in humanity’s quest for social interaction, knowledge, commerce, religious expression, and entertainment. Print was the right medium at the right time – it helped to give us the Renaissance which formed the foundation for modern civilisation. Dominance by any technology or medium never lasts as we seek the better, the faster, and the less expensive. Today we can accomplish communication electronically by using a computer, mobile phone, or pad reader. The digital world has usurped large swaths of the analogue world.

But old technology does not always disappear. It returns in new forms; it finds new approaches and new markets. Print, the ultimate analogue communication, will prevail as we emphasise what makes it great and develop what will make it new. Some print products will be replaced by electronic alternatives. Some print products will be augmented by them. It is not a case of print or electronic; it is a case of print and electronic.

The internet has changed advertising models and trends in communication. When new media enter an arena, advertising budgets do not expand. Budget funds are spread among the new media and the old media. This occurred when radio and then television broadcasting entered the mix. In a world where advertising messages abound, print still has a beneficial calculus. I spend an inordinate amount of time deleting ads from my electronic communication, but even when I discard print, a message still registers on my psyche. Thank goodness we cannot click to delete print.

There have been developments in the last few years with social media channels, mobile technology, printed electronics, 3D printing, labels and packaging, security printing, RFID, printed textiles, VDP, data management, and functional industrial printing. Printers today are making money with products and technologies that did not exist 30 years ago. Wide format inkjet only came about in the mid-1990s. Flatbed inkjet on thick materials came soon after. Personalised printing in colour came in 1993.

At one time letterpress printing dominated and, when offset litho arose, it was considered to be applicable only for quick and dirty printing. This was also said when toner and then inkjet printing entered the market. At one time, the number of colour pages was very low, but scanners and presses and other technology advanced. Today, most printed pages contain full colour.

Printers must keep abreast of new developments. It can be predicted that printers will discover and apply new technologies and products in new markets. But printers must seek them out: at trade shows, in publications, through their associations, and via other avenues.

We, as an industry, will still sell a service that deposits a substance on a substrate. Ink on paper will be a mainstay. But different substances on different substrates are a part of our future. It is all about the new world of new print.

Frank Romano is professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology

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