Hello, InkWave is my little spot on the internet to keep up with what's happening in the world of printing.  Someday when I don't have enough business I will put some details of my company here.  In the meantime you can browse the categories I find interesting and hopefully you'll find some interesting stuff there too.  If you like the site then show me love by pointing others here as well.  I get my validation by happy people so if I made you happy with something you found here then by all means tell me.

Another thing I really like is to play pool.  Back in the day I was close to pro speed but life and the wife took me in another direction.  Now I just have the table at home.  I promised my buddies I'd plug them on my website.  So if you need a good place to buy billiard supplies and pool cues or pool table felt then check out the folks at CueSight. I buy from them all the time and they rock.

Adios, Gary......

Yesterday’s webinar at WhatTheyThink on postal rates and reform drew over 500 registrations and was a very active discussion of the topic. I know because I fielded the question emails and was flat busy for over half the webinar with just that!

I encourage everyone to connect with the archive if you weren’t at the live event. Well worth the time. [Archive link]

One questioner wanted to know what states were considering “Do Not Mail” lists similar to the much publicized “Do Not Call” phone lists. Adam Dewitz did the tough work and dug up some great resources in a post over at his blog Printmode.

Looks like he found that Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, and Washington are all considering such legislation.

Magazines may not be following the way of dinosaurs and passenger pigeons, at least according to Mark Glaser, host of PBS’ MediaShift. Glaser “digs deeper” in an interview with Samir Husni, chair of the University of Mississippi’s Department of Journalism, known as Mr. Magazine. Read the entire interview here - there are some great thoughts about how to balance online and offline content.

Glaser quotes Husni saying, “As long as we have human beings, we are going to continue to have ink on paper. I’m not an ostrich who puts his head in the sand because I know there are some things that print cannot compete with the new technologies. But there are also ways that the new technology cannot compete with print.” Husni said he believes people will always want print periodicals, even as new media and online sites gain in popularity, but print publications should shift to more analysis and add more photos.

Postal rates and reform - What’s a mailer to do? Where to turn for answers?

We’ve put together a panel of experts from across the gamut of those involved in mailing: printers and print service providers, mail service providers, periodicals publishers, and direct marketers. On Wednesday, May 9, at 12:00 PM Pacific/2:00 PM Central/3:00 PM Eastern, join me and my all-star panel as we look at options, alternatives, and strategies for dealing with these challenges. On the roster are:

• Ben Cooper, Executive Director, Mail Moves America, a coalition organized to deal with the emergence of state - and potentially - Federal “Do Not Mail” legislation.
• Kate Muth, Vice President, PostCom, the Association for Postal Commerce, which represents those who use or support the use of mail for business communication and commerce.
• Jerry Cerasale, Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, The Direct Marketing Association (The DMA).
• Leo Raymond, Director of Postal Affairs, Mailing and Fulfillment Services Association (MFSA), the national trade association for the mailing and fulfillment services industry.
• Rita Cohen, Senior Vice President, Legislative and Regulatory Policy, Magazine Publishers of America (MPA), the trade association for the consumer magazine industry.

Among the topics we’ll be discussing are:

• The latest postal rate increase - at least part of it - is going into effect shortly. And mailers are still under shell shock from the size of the jump! What can small circulation periodical publishers and short-run catalog mailers do to avoid rate increases of 20-30% or more? What about other direct mailers?
• We have a handful of states threatening “Do Not Mail” legislation, and there is a rumor that the FTC might put together a registry like the “Do Not Call” registry. Hundreds of millions signed up for the DNC list… How would a DNM list affect our industry? Find out what you can do!
• Is there really such a thing as “Postal Reform?” What will the new USPS look like? Will we have yet another rate increase before we see the next “version”?

Join us; this will be a very lively and educational discussion! There will also be an opportunity for you ask your own questions and we will answer as many as we can during the webinar. We will get written answers for any questions we don’t get to and will post those for eveyone to read.

Register for this webinar!

You may have noticed this at WTT earlier in the week:

Transcontinental CEO addresses the Web Offset Association

I wanted to point you to the full text of the speech as well, and point specifically to this part:

a new technology does not make the previous ones disappear: radio did not eliminate newspapers, television did not eliminate radio and the Internet won’t eliminate all the rest.

It seems to me there is some truth to that, but elimination is not the real challenge. Dealing with a shrinking market would be. This is where new innovations in VDP, especially things like TransPromo seem to hold a great deal of promise in diversifying the output and sustaining the printing industy as some printed content - like newspapers - invariably moves online.

Desjardins also makes some great points about new concerns about the environment and challenges of globalization. Love to know what readers might think about his speech - any of the topics covered!

(via MediaPost) According to custom analysis by Nielsen//NetRatings for the Newspaper Association of America, more than 59 million people (37.6 percent of all active Internet users) visited newspaper Web sites during the first quarter of 2007, a record number that represents a 5.3 percent increase over the same period a year ago.

Not surprising really. It seems the only time I read a printed newspaper anymore is when I’m stuck in an airport or otherwise have time to kill without wifi. Page views are up. Unique readers are up. The trend should probably continue. What does this mean for the industry as a whole? My guess is that certain types of information is going to move online (has and is), while other information stays in printed format. The key is finding the areas of growth for the printed word.

Love to know what you think in the comments…

While everyone was headed to Boston for On Demand Expo, excitement was building for a different event in Montréal. Salon Grafik’Art 2007 – an event held for the fourth time since 2003 – took place on the heels of the Boston event on April 19, 20, and 21. After we battled high winds, rain, snow, rain-filled basements (ask Noel Ward), delayed planes – you name it! – we all agreed On Demand was a great show.

Rather than hopping a plane back to Seattle, I headed on for yet another event. Cozier – around 6000 participants – and more general, Grafik’Art offered a wide range of solutions for the small to mid-sized printer in the eastern provinces of Canada. A few folks from “out west” attended, as did a few dozen from “down south” (the US).

Around 150 exhibitors displayed products and services that ranged from pre-press, to small offset press and post-press. Mixed in with wide format printing, digital printing, and off-set printing were solutions such as “laser printing” for sign makers. Now this isn’t the “laser printing” we think of, but laser etching that produces images on glass, plastic, wood, metal, and other substrates. By the nature of its location, Grafik’Art had a very different feel – and sound – from On Demand; French, of course, is the dominant language. I had a chance to chat with a few exhibitors – in English, since my French is pretty rudimentary. Here’s what they had to say.

Tony Karg, Senior Director of Business Development & Marketing - Graphics, from Fujifilm Canada, said “We want to be a long-term partner with the mid-range printing company. We want to help commercial printers capture all the media opportunities to support their customers’ brands.” Tony talked me through an entire campaign developed for Louis Garneaut, a sporting company. From prepress to production and finishing, each step was demonstrated in the Fuji booth. The Garneaut campaign demonstrated dye-sublimation on jerseys, offset printing of point of sale materials, and a VDP project – a customized catalog.

Karl Belafi, President, KBR Graphics (with sons Kevin, left, and Karl Jr, right), serves the eastern provinces and eastern Ontario out of Quebec, where 35-40% of the Canadian printing industry is located. “We’re seeing so many changes in the industry; the challenge is helping people work through and accept those changes,” said Karl. Balafi and sons offer everything from duplicators to 80” presses, including the Hammada Press and KBA DI presses.

Pierre Dionne, Regional Sales Director, from GBC Canada welcomed both pre-qualified customers who wanted to “kick the tires” of the equipment they were planning to buy as well as prospects who were exploring their options. “We deal directly with the customer, whether they are small, medium or large companies. They are all looking for training, advice, support and a long-lasting relationship,” Pierre told me.

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Here are a couple more folks I caught up with in Montréal.
Carl Bérubé, CEO/President, TGLC (left), which offers PerfX Color Management Pro software.
Louis Bernard, Event Promoter (right), planning the next event. Vancouver BC, anyone?

Heidelberg’s Print Media Academy (PMA) is a multinational educational network that has mentored industry members from more than 70 countries in everything from learning to operate folders to earning advanced degrees in print media management. The PMA also has a multimedia publishing program that has released some of the best general material we’ve seen for knowledge-hungry print professionals.

Case in point: Behind the Scenes of a Successful Print Shop, the latest in the “Concepts & Solutions” series of management guides. Available free of charge as a 65-page PDF, Behind the Scenes is presented as a “real interview” with an anonymous print company CEO who’s described as “an ideal entrepreneur”—a boss with a clear vision of his strategic goals and a methodical system for achieving them. Under his leadership, readers are told, the company’s staff size and sales volume have more than tripled over the last four years.

In keeping with his emphasis on adding value, Behind the Scenes actually is two books. The second segment is a conversation with a “successful sales rep” who describes a goal-driven, highly structured, and scrupulously time-managed personal strategy that embodies all of the top-down tenets articulated by the CEO.

To be successful as a print shop proprietor, says the boss, it’s necessary to take six principles to heart:

“1. Set a company goal. Think about where you want your company to be in three to five years.

“2. Inform your employees. Make the goal palatable to your employees and explain how they will benefit.

“3. Establish a paradigm. Develop a paradigm, anchor it in your employees’ minds, and make it the basis for all action.

“4. Define management principles. Work with your managers to develop principles for taking action.

“5. Formulate goals. All managers and staff should establish partial goals as milestones and capture them in writing.

“6. Define indicators. All managers should define indicators for all work done, so that the results can be monitored.”

The sales rep expresses the house rules as selling strategies in his own way: “Tap sales potentials. Establish priorities. Set partial goals as milestones. Create added value for customers. Act positively. Inspire trust.”

Formulaic though he may be, the boss has a maverick streak. Asked how he managed to turn around what had been “a floundering printing company” in less than a year, he answers, “I familiarized myself with the individual processes, investigated customer complaints and moved my desk to the middle of the in-house sales department.”

What about pressure from customers for discounts? “We reward staff who successfully avoid granting them,” replies the CEO. “If the average discount a sales representative gives over the course of a year doesn’t exceed a certain percentage, he receives a cash bonus.”

There’s much more to learn from Behind the Scenes of a Successful Print Shop, and we’d like to hear your comments on the quality of its advice. While its prescriptions for management excellence aren’t really new, its presentation of these evergreen concepts is straightforward and persuasive. It’s hard to disbelieve the boss when he declares, “We practice a consistent management style that is free of contradictions. And we have attained a level of management quality in our print shop that lets us generate lasting value and realize our vision.” Compliments to the PMA for opening a window onto the thinking of this “ideal entrepreneur,” whoever he may be.

This was sent by one of our readers. I have seen versions of this but not all listed in one spot.

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.

2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.

3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.

4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don’t really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts.

5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn’t mind running the country — if they could find the time — and if they didn’t have to leave Southern California to do it. (more…)

There’s nothing to add to the WhatTheyThink editorial team’s outstanding coverage of the AIIM/On Demand show in Boston last week—kudos to everybody for exceptional reporting and commentary. But I did want to put in a word for a little gem of practical knowledge that I discovered at the stand of Mohawk Fine Papers Inc.: the Via Vital Information Fan Deck.

Set up like an ink swatch book, the Fan Deck consists of 38 tabs printed on various finishes and tones of Mohawk Via—a line of “value” papers that are manufactured using wind-generated electricity. It may be the handiest pocket digest of basic tips for designing and executing print projects that I’ve ever seen, and that’s because the essence of the “vital information” it conveys lies in its simplicity. As the first tab states, “It’s not rocket science, just a set of tried and true rules, measurements and definitions that you can refer to again and again to make your work a success.”

Tired of dividing (or is it multiplying?) by 6 and 12 to convert inches to points and picas? The chart on page 2 does the arithmetic for you. When you can’t quite remember the difference in size between an A3 sheet and a B4, turn to the ISO Paper Sizing list on page 10. Never heard of the classical “golden ratio,” a/k/a the “divine proportion,” for layout? That’s on page 11. You also get three pages, with diagrams, on envelope styles. By the time you reach the final tab, you’ll have been refreshed on graphic file extensions, keyboard shortcuts, typeface anatomy, folding, and much more.

A couple of the tabs have nothing whatever to do with printing: they’re just whimsical flash cards on some of the amenities of everyday life. I have no idea, for example, why Mohawk saw fit to include a page on “Proper Eating Style.” But as a southpaw, I was gratified to learn that dining with the fork in my left hand places me suavely in the Continental mode.

You can request your own Via Vital Information Fan Deck by clicking “Order Samples” on the Mohawk Fine Papers home page; you also may call 1-800-THE-MILL. I’d like to see copies of this little gem made available to every student of printing and graphic arts in America. It’s another example of the wealth of first-rate information about printing that some of the paper companies have been producing for years. Equally valuable sources include International Paper’s Knowledge Center; the Resources section of the Domtar Cougar and Lynx home page; and the SAPPI Knowledge Bank. If you know of others, please send their information along, and we’ll be happy to promote them here.

EDSF, the organization dedicated to the document management and communications industries, hosted its Annual Industry Leaders’ Luncheon on April 17th at the OnDemand Show in Boston. The event was packed with industry leaders from Xerox, Kodak, Pitman, EFI and many leading print firms.

EDSF honored the 2007 Excellence in Education and Educator of the Year Award winners. We heard from EDSF scholars who shared their stories about how EDSF has helped them with their education. Frank Romano gave a very inspirational speech - about the importance of education and why all companies in the industry need to donate their time and resources to furthering the education efforts through organizations like EDSF.

Watch the video of Frank’s speech here.

For more info about EDSF, visit www.edsf.org