Here at House Of Print we are often faced with comments such as ‘Print is dying’ or that is an ‘outdated technology’, usually from people who don’t truly understand what printing is or how much it impacts the daily lives of almost every single person in the country.
In actual fact, print is not dying but it is changing. There are a number of new processes which are all part of the printing process. We make use of a number of different printing techniques to allow us to produce the high-quality work which we handle for our clients. We make use of conventional litho printing presses, we have large-format printers for our point of sale and point of display pieces and we use a range of colour and monochrome digital printing presses for our short-run and short turnaround time work.
In the markets of North America and Europe, printing is seeing a resurgence as marketing professionals see that it is only through a complete multi-channel approach that marketing campaigns can achieve their full potential. Education is another area where it has been proven that the printed word is more effective than digital content. Research has shown that the retention level of information from the printed word is considerably higher than for the same material in digital format.
New technologies are also expanding the gamut of printing. This includes things such as 3D printing where items which previously were difficult, costly and time-consuming to make can be easily printed. This has been used for applications from engineering concepts through to the creation of prosthetics for amputees. Functional printing allows printed images to be placed onto irregular shaped items such as printing directly onto glass bottles or the creation of electronic circuitry through the process of building up the circuit one layer at a time.
So, in response to those people who think that printing is outdated just because it is almost 600 years old, think again. There are some very old printing presses still in use, but none of them are here at House of Print. Printing is a new and growing process with some cutting edge discoveries still to be made.