Find, below, some of the things we should all know about printing
What do we mostly print?
According to recent statistics, the most printed items include advertising material, packaging and direct mail.
Due to increased use of tablets and Smartphones, newspapers, books, technical documentation and periodicals are not in printing demand as they used to be several years ago.
Types of printing companies
Based on the type of printing that printing presses do for their customers, there are 4 types of printing companies. These 4 types of printing companies serve most of the world’s needs. They include:
- Commercial printers: They print a very wide range of products ranging from stationary to brochures and magazines. Commercial printers also include some niche kind of markets including, wide-format printing, direct mail printing and security printing e.g. bank notes.
- Packaging printers: Package printers focus mainly on printing that is done on packaging material including tags, boxes, labels, bags, cans and cartons.
- Publication printers: These include printing of books, newspaper, magazines and directory printers. They often target bulk printing work in a certain market. A good example is also coffee table book printing.
- In-House Printers: In-house printers focus on the printing needs of a single organization. They do all the printing for the company that purchased the printers.
There is no denying that digital media has had a profound effect on publishing and printing. Digital media and the e-book revolution has been quite brutal on many publications and yet printed books are still more popular than electronic books.
Many people think that printing as we know it will die soon, but that is still yet to be seen, and most likely will not happen anytime soon.
Some advantages that we still find in printing as we now know it include;
- Printing will most likely always still be found on packaging material including tags, boxes, labels, bags, cans and cartons.
- Some forms of print media have yet to be replaced and still have a large consumer base albeit a reduced readership compared to the past glory days e.g. newspapers and magazines.
- Print is still easier and cheaper to distribute in many places.
- Some people just don’t seem to want to get over media that you can touch and engage with more personally.
Who knows what the future of printing will bring. As illustrated above we can see that some of the advantages of modern printing are unlikely to be overtaken by events and technology. What is more likely to happen is that some aspects of printing will evolve while others will be replaced. At the same time, current technologies used in printing will improve and become more efficient and green.
Jack is a printing equipment expert. He has witnessed the continued evolution of printing and the impact it has on businesses. He now engages in coffee table book printing. For more information visit his website.
