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camera, also activate rich media and inter- active content. Many printers have seized upon these two technologies, especially QR codes, to, as the phrase goes, "make print interac- tive." But there remain tremendous advantag- es for printers in another aspect of mobile media: digital publishing itself. "I'm pretty sure that, for a lot of print- ers, digital publishing can be considered the enemy because it takes away from printing," said Erica Aitken, president of Rods and Cones. Founded in 1996, Rods and Cones began offering workflow and color-management services for the graphic communications industry. Last year, they introduced Pixels and Motion, a digital publishing division that helps graphic designers, agencies, and print providers develop apps to deliver content to mobile devices such as tablets. Aitken admits it has been a bit of an uphill battle. "It's not so much resistance," she said, "but more 'I'm not going to touch this because it's hurting our industry.'" How- ever, she has begun encountering print- ers who don't see it that way, and some momentum is starting to build. "It has started to take flight," she said. "We're a little early as far as adoption goes, espe- cially with printers, but we're beginning to make headway with it and we're very excited." Large publication printers are no strang- ers to digital publishing, but are there applications for smaller commercial print- ers who don't specialize in publications? Aitken thinks Pixels and Motion and the products they are advocating have a wide variety of applications. "Magazines and catalogs," she said are the obvious candi- dates, but also "any collateral, any market- ing material. Anything that's not a book." No Programming Required Rods and Cones is supporting, as the digital platform of choice, a product called Twixl. This is a plug-in to Adobe InDesign that takes page layouts that have been created for print and converts them to HTML5. Although the Twixl plug-in will work—after a fashion—with InDesign 5, it is better suited to version 6 or later, which offer the "Liquid Layout" feature. Once installed, Twixl "will leverage all of InDe- sign's interactive features," said Aitken. "If you know InDesign, within a day of train- ing you'll know how to create interactive content. You don't need to code; you don't need to do anything like that. "The model for printers," she added, "is that they have a ready base of clients who may want to do this and already have their content. Printers would have a discussion with their clients, and they would bring in the interactive content like a slide show if they have an annual report, or a movie if they have a product that is 'static' when it's printed. Then the printer would have a designer in-house or use a third party to convert that to an app. You build it using Twixl, and then you go through the process to get it in the Apple App Store." At present, Twixl supports the iPad, Android tablets, and the Kindle Fire. Sup- port for phones is forthcoming by the end of this year, but has proved problematic. "You can't easily convert to a phone," said Aitken. "Things that work on a tablet are too small or unwieldy on a phone. "This is a solution for people who want to control their design, know InDesign, and are ready to manipulate the content to fit the size of the tablets," she said. Killer Apps? Publications—large and small—who eschew digital publishing may be doing themselves a disservice. "Printers that specialize in serving the publications market have offered digital publication services for years," said Julie Shaffer, VP of Digital Strategies for Print- ing Industries of America. "For this group, it's critical to manage both the print and digital production of a publication, because that's where we have to evolve. We're not just the provider of ink on paper, we are content and supply chain managers. We enable delivery of a publica- tion's content to the consumer, whether that be print or electronic consumption." But digital publishing is not just for large publication printers. More and more content of all kinds is being delivered via mobile apps, often bypassing the "tradi- tional" Web entirely. "For 'general commercial printers,' those that don't specialize in the publications market, there's a case to be made for offering mobile marketing solutions," said Shaffer. "We all have a mobile device in our hands at almost all times, and mar- keters are pouring money into reaching customers via mobile." Printed "action codes" like QR, are a good first step. "If printers are indeed becoming marketing service providers, this would have to be one of the most critical services they can provide," said Shaffer. But at some point, delivering content directly to mobile devices may become just as important as linking offline and online media via codes, just as offering direct e-mail marketing services became as important as offering direct print mail services. At the end of the day, content is content, and graphic communication is graphic communication. The physical medium by which that content, that communication, is delivered, may become irrelevant—and in some ways already is. ◗◗ A u g u s t 2 0 1 4 / Q U I C K P R I N T I N G 25 w w w. M y P R I N T R e s o u r c e . c o m Lost opportunity: The print firm that reproduces fashion photographer Carlos Luna's promotion card (left) had to outsource tablet conversion for an iPad ad to a separate design agency, which is comfortable working within magazine apps. Such non-print phobia is commonplace.