2014 INDUSTRY:
STATE of the
Digital Drives
Increasing Change
Photos © iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Interactive technology
and market demands
drive the continuing
changes in the graphic
communications
industry By Bob Hall
ant a sure sign of an ongoing sea change in the printing industry? How
about this: "With more than 95 percent of government information being
published digitally, the time has come for our name to reflect that." That
quote came from Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks in congressional
testimony on her proposal to change the name of the Government Printing Office
(GPO) to the Government Publishing Office to better reflect the "broadening menu
of digitally-based services to serve the information product needs of Congress, federal
agencies, and the public."
W
Name changes usually follow substantive
changes. As communications technology
changed, American Telephone and Telegraph
morphed into AT&T.; As printing technology
changed, the National Association of Printers
and Lithographers (NAPL) evolved into the
National Association for Printing Leadership
(NAPL)—a clever name change without loss
of a well-known brand. NAQP tried to polish
up its image with a name change to PrintImage International, thus trading a known
brand for meaningless buzz words until they
10
QUICK PRINTING / January 2014
came to their senses and changed back.
Lately, the folks who put on Graph Expo
and PRINT have been insisting that we are all
part of something called the "graphic communications industry". I'll go with that until
something better comes along. In any case,
let's look at how this industry has evolved
and where it is headed.
What We Produce
The industry still produces marks on
paper, but now digital inkjet and toner are
w w w. M y P R I N T R e s o u r c e . c o m