When a smiling Democratic donkey is poised to shake hands with a happy Republican elephant, odds are you’re witnessing a high-stakes card game. A new deck illustrated by 52 students from four art schools commemorating the Illustration Conference (ICON5) increases those odds. The reason: the five of clubs carries an illustration by Jamie Stroud, a May 2008 graduate of the Master of Art in Illustration program at the Fashion Institute of Technology, showing the two party symbols about to engage in a forelimb grip.
As a top-tier “Partner Sponsor” of ICON5, July 2 to 5 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York, Xerox worked in partnership with ICON5 to produce the deck of cards as a commemorative gift for the 400 or so illustrators expected to attend. ICON5 organizers arranged for top students from three New York design schools — the Fashion Institute of Technology, Parsons The New School for Design and the School of Visual Arts — and the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, to contribute their original illustrations and designs.
The playing cards are an excellent example of the inspired work that’s possible when educators, grass-roots professional organizations and technology industry leaders team up to showcase the dynamic talents of tomorrow’s illustration stars. It’s also another fine example of how digital color presses are successfully reproducing some of the most demanding illustration and design work being created today.
To develop the cards, each school was assigned one suit — clubs (FIT), diamonds (MICA), hearts (Parsons) and spades (SVA) — and the school’s chairpersons or deans overseeing illustration programs selected 13 students to provide card designs.
To produce the cards, Xerox engaged Tucker Printers, Henrietta, N.Y., a Consolidated Graphics Company (www.tuckerprinters.com) and a member of the Xerox Graphic Arts Premier Partners, a global network of more than 730 leading digital print providers (www.xerox.com/xpp). Rendered in Adobe InDesign CS3, the cards were printed on a Xerox iGen3® 110 Digital Production Press, on Xerox 100 lb. Elite Gloss Cover, laminated and die-cut. The box also was printed on the Xerox iGen3 press, on 18 pt. Xerox Folding Board, showcasing the power of digital color printing in short-run packaging applications.
Bob Wagner, Vice President
Xerox Creative Services Business
and Premier Partners Program
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Here’s what some of the people involved with the project had to say about it:
“As illustrators, we don’t go to an office everyday, so ICON5 is a great opportunity to be around people who do what we do, to talk about trends and issues and to get re-inspired. It’s important for ICON5 to use projects like the deck of cards to engage our future attendees. And for the students, it’s a great opportunity to get exposure to a few hundred of the world’s top illustrators, designers and others who can influence their careers. And from an academic perspective, the project fits well with contemporary educational models of blending creativity and professional development. It gave students creative freedom and realistic deadlines.”
— Whitney Sherman, President of ICON5 and Chair of the Illustration Department, Maryland Institute College of Art
”I like producing works that are usable, and I also like playing cards — plus this project is a great opportunity for exposure. I do a lot of pattern design, and I have an interactive website where I generate patterns based upon basic questions like, what is your favorite color? I pulled a pattern I liked from that project and worked with it to better fit the diamonds theme.”
— Jessica Neil, MICA ’08, designer of the nine of diamonds and Junior Designer at Spur Design LLC, Baltimore
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Democratic and Republican party symbols are poised to “grasp five” on the five of clubs card designed by recent Fashion Institute of Technology graduate Jamie Stroud for the ICON5 deck.
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Heekyung Hur, Fashion Institute of Technology, displays the queen of clubs card she designed for the ICON5 deck.
At drupa, I caught up with industry analyst and all-around good guy Andreas Weber who is working with the German Association of Communications Agencies to increase awareness of digital printing. He made the point that colleges and universities need to do more to educate young marketing students as well as future communications professionals about new capabilities of digital printing technology. As a Chief Marketing Officer it’s a topic that is top of mind. Because there’s a real opportunity for companies like mine and others to make stronger connections with all the stakeholders involved in the changing world of graphic communications.
That means spending more time with advertising, design and production experts who play a key role in the printing value chain – long before anything hits the press.
Many people think of drupa as a printing show. It’s even billed as “The Olympics of the Printing Industry”. That may be true, but I can tell you Xerox isn’t at drupa to be in a printing competition. We’re there to win the gold medal in Communications.
Why do I say that? Because the real prize isn’t given to the company who does the best job of putting ink on paper. It’s awarded to the company that knows how to help partners and end users profit from high-impact marketing and communications.
Printing is one of the enablers. But as a CMO, it’s not my top priority.
My job is to create a superior brand experience, to communicate our message, to influence customer behavior and ultimately to grow revenue. We do that through “Big brand” and “little brand” strategies. Earlier this year, we launched a good example of a “Big brand” initiative when we re-launched our corporate identity. It was in full view at drupa. But more marketers need to realize that “little brand” experiences are equally important. That means leveraging everyday documents like bills, statements, and manuals to convey your brand image and market your offerings.
Because when we use “little brand” touchpoints to communicate in more relevant ways, we convey a “Big Brand” message. That message says: We’re listening to you … We understand who you are … And we want to earn your loyalty.
And that’s worth a gold medal any day. To hear the podcast of our conversation, click here or on the podcast link at the top of the page.
Mike Mac Donald
Chief Marketing Officer
Xerox Corporation
Before the start of drupa the event was being referred to by many as the Inkjet drupa. I have to say I may have been the person who started this phrase after the end of drupa 2004. I did however moderate my wording earlier this year when I stated that perhaps drupa 2012 would be the real inkjet drupa. My reasons for saying this were that from what I was seeing I felt that inkjet would not be competing with xerographic (electrophotographic) approaches using powder or liquid toners in challenging four-color offset for print quality. What I was seeing were new high-speed continuous feed print engines that were setting new standards for printing color at speed, but where the quality was not comparable to that from most of the xerographic printers. let alone the best ones. What we were seeing was improved business color. Business color is the term created to define the color produced by the Kodak (then Scitex) Versamark high-speed inkjet printers that been the sole players in producing color at high speed before 2006.
Continue reading "Was This the Inkjet drupa?" »
I may have discovered the most loyal Xerox customer on the planet at a reception the other night. Martin Rosenbaum, director commercial of Buenos Aires, Argentina-based Copygraph said his company was a user of the first Xerox product, the 914 copier, and now has a fleet that includes two Xerox DocuColor 8000 Digital Color Presses. Since getting that first 914 in the early 1960s, he said, “We have never bought any equipment but Xerox.”
He was at drupa to look at the new Xerox iGen4 Digital Production Press and to learn about transpromo and one-to-one marketing applications. “We’re trying to be the leader in transpromo and one-to-one marketing,” he said. “We’re just beginning now, and some banks are doing it. We came here to learn more.”
That’s why he attended the Xerox Graphic Arts Premier Partners learning and networking session in Dortmund, Germany, the day before drupa opened. “It was a very good experience for us,” he said of the meeting.
Will Copygraph be the first company to migrate from a 914 all the way to an iGen4 press? “We are fascinated by the iGen press. But I’m not sure our market is prepared for it.”
He was far more definitive about his relationship with Xerox. “We are the most loyal client of Xerox that Xerox has ever had.”
Shelley Sweeney
Vice President, Data Processing Service Bureau and Direct Mail Segment for the Worldwide Graphic Communications Business, Xerox Corporation
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Martin Rosenbaum of Copygraph and his wife, Christina.
One thing I noticed really taking off at drupa 2008 is the ability of the exhibitors to frame their solutions not from the perspective of the speeds and feeds of the big iron—though clearly there was lots of big iron there!—but rather in the context of a business problem the print service provider can offer its customers. More specifically, these are being portrayed as specific applications. Many are running those applications live on the show floor, and provide materials that help visitors understand what infrastructure—hardware, software, media, etc.—is required to successfully produce each application.
This is a critical business approach that should be adopted by print service providers as they work with their customers. Hanging out a sign that says “We Do Print” is just not cutting it anymore. And adding “Value-Added Services”, while a start, is not the answer either. Customers don’t necessarily think in terms of mailing or fulfillment or web-to-print. They think in terms of getting orders to their customer quickly, or making materials available for easy access by franchisees, remote sales personnel or agents. And they are always looking for new, different and better ways of getting their work done.
From a truth-in-lending perspective, I need to disclose that I spent ten years at Xerox, and was lucky enough to be involved as a sales person in Silicon Valley when the DocuTech was launched in 1990. One thing the company did very well with that product was to position it in the context of the applications it could produce more efficiently, or new applications that could not have been produced until the advent of the technology. Being in Silicon Valley, I—and my customers—benefited from the work behind defining the best way to execute print-on-demand manuals. By the time I moved, on, we had installed some 150 DocuTechs running about a half a billion pages of tech-doc on demand each year! We solved a business problem for these companies, and they ate the dogfood, big time!
At drupa, I saw that Xerox had taken this concept to a new level. The stand was organized around 50 real customer applications. Not only were they showing HOW they were produced, but they provided a nice spiral bound booklet where each page identified the goals the customer was trying to achieve, the workflow that was used to produce the application, production notes, sales tips and green advantages. These 50 applications were divided into several application areas: Books and Manuals, Collateral, Digital & Offset Together, TransPromo and New Business Applications. This made it easy for visitors to quickly migrate to the area of most interest to them for their business. And each area was equipped with a comfortable Conversation Station where visitors could speak one-on-one with experts to get their questions answered. I spent time in the Books and Manuals area and spoke with John Conley, who ran the books on demand operation for RR Donnelley prior to coming to Xerox. So these were truly experts!
I am pleased to see suppliers to the industry making this shift, and congratulations to Xerox on its benchmark performance at drupa!
Cary Sherburne
Whattheythink.com
Sherburne & Associates
www.SherburneAssociates.com
While most of the attention at drupa was on both the new high-speed continuous feed color printers and the new sheetfed electrophotographic and inkjet products, there were also a significant amount of announcements in the field of industrial printing. Industrial printing is printing in areas other than on sheets or reels of paper. It is an area of printing where flexo and screen printing has been the principal technology, but is now one where different digital technologies are now coming to the fore. In fact the preview of future Xerox inkjet technologies show technologies that are predominantly destined to be for industrial printing applications and packaging. The following are a few of the interesting announcements I found during the drupa show.
Continue reading "Industrial Printing at drupa" »
The doors have closed at drupa now, and the last trains are leaving the station. As I've noted previously, this show has been about many things. But from the presentations I've listened to and the technologies I've seen, drupa 08 is really about how virtually all types of printing are becoming more closely integrated and that applications will continue to drive the choice of press, while increasing the scope of what can be done.
As my colleague Cary Sherburne noted on WhatTheyThink.com, applications have been everywhere at drupa, showing what can actually be done with the latest technology rather than just talking about potential and leaving the "how to do it" up to the imagination. This approach has been growing over the past few years and goes a long way towards helping print providers see how they can get a return on the substantial investment most modern digital presses require. After all, people buy what products do, and what a digital print engine is supposed to do is make money for a printer and help him or her grow their business.
The type of device on which the applications shown at drupa will be run is another matter. For the time being it's still going to be predominantly toner and there is nothing the proponents of inkjet can do about that. With only Kodak, InfoPrint, Océ, and Screen actually having production-class products available in the market, and there being numerous concerns and skepticism about exactly where inkjet fits for all but a handful of applications, IJ has a ways to go before it is widely accepted as a real alternative to electrophotography. This is okay, because it is a new technology, and just as EP took a while to get going, IJ will take a while to gain traction. Just remember one thing: no printing process is perfect and each has its strengths and weaknesses.
Meanwhile, a couple of industry pundits have been bickering over which one first dubbed this the "inkjet drupa," as if it matters. The fact is, to my mind drupa 08 is many things, but the lighthouse show for inkjet it is not. Sure, inkjet machines littered many stands, but even in large format where IJ is the de facto standard, some machines were smoke and mirrors and not even running. In almost every case at drupa, the IJ boxes getting the most hype won't be available until sometime next year and even then will be going to a very limited number of customers.
There are those who say the inkjet train has left the station while others, like me, say it is still loading --and that some of the passengers are missing their luggage. And moreover, inkjet will not become this magical replacement for offset that some claim it will be. This is not to imply that inkjet won't become an important printing technology, but no printer should bet the farm on inkjet anytime soon. Although a technology can be an enabler, it is the application ultimately drives how something is printed, not the other way around. The print providers who are successful five and ten years from now are going to be the ones who use an intelligent mix of offset, EP and IJ systems and do so based on the applications they need to run. What this drupa showed beyond all doubt is that the digital printing train has left the station and among the cars and engines being added at each stop are inkjet printers that will ultimately help the train go faster and be able to do more.
Noel Ward
WhatTheyThink.com
Brimstone Hill Associates
Every time I come to Drupa I like first to take the overall sense. I mean, despite seeing specific questions I try to realize what is beyond the whole set of machines and technologies exposed in the show.
This Drupa reflects what we see in the world today in terms of the printing markets.
In one hand we could see a strong visitation and expositors coming from the emerging markets where the questions about volume are still updated. On the other hand the search for value added and lean and automated manufacturing coming from the mature markets visitors.
Both markets reflecting the competition today where emerging markets are growing faster while the mature markets are declining in real terms.
Anyway, for both markets the same reality: printing industry is definitively depending on IT solutions. All workflows, MIS, CIM, processes integrations, etc. are on that way. This is the IT era. This is the IT Drupa. Not a surprise at all. The surprise is still seeing printers being surprised.
Hamilton Terni Costa
AN Consulting
I normally don’t cover the digital print engines in my work with WhatTheyThink, preferring to focus on the front end stuff, which I generally find more interesting. But at drupa, I did spend some time looking at inkjet offerings. Well, after all, it was supposed to be the inkjet drupa. What’s a girl supposed to do?
There certainly was inkjet everywhere you looked. Even Heidelberg is bringing an inkjet offering to market! Screen was showing the prototype of a sheetfed inkjet press that looks to be pretty interesting, perhaps an easier way for sheetfed printers to take advantage of this approaching freight train of a trend. But what I found most interesting were the inks various suppliers were touting, from HP’s Latex inks to Océ’s CrystalPoint technology with TonerPearls, to Xerox’ toner gel technology demo.
Continue reading "A Look at Inkjet" »
I had the honor — and pleasant responsibility — of hosting the Public Printer of the United States and his small entourage at the Xerox stand on one afternoon of drupa — and again that evening at a reception for North American members of the Xerox Graphic Arts Premier Partners.
Robert Tapella became the nation’s 25th Public Printer last fall, overseeing one of the largest print buying operations in the world, ordering as many as 1,000 printing jobs a day from private vendors, on behalf of federal agencies. At drupa, his agenda includes investigating the latest digital printing solutions and sustainability initiatives to support his vision for the U.S. Government Printing Office of the future.
We had plenty to show him. One of our longer sessions in the stand was a demonstration of our new web-fed color and black-and-white devices (the Xerox 490/980™ Color Continuous Feed Printing System and the Xerox 650/1300™ Continuous Feed Printing System, respectively) that are good candidates for the books that are his primary product. We had another good conversations in the innovation area, where some of our future technologies are on display.
That evening, his team joined us for drinks and dinner at the Hotel Schnellenburg, a pleasant setting overlooking the Rhine River. About 75 of our top North American customers were there, and many told me they were absolutely thrilled to meet him.
The irony wasn’t lost on us, that our top North American print providers were meeting with one of the leading print buyers in the United States — in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Tom Wetjen
Vice President, Worldwide Graphic Communications Business
Xerox Corporation
Robert Tapella, the Public Printer of the United States, right, and Tom Wetjen of Xerox at the Xerox Premier Partners reception at the Hotel Schnellenburg during drupa.
During my visit to the Xerox booth at drupa I stopped by the Xerox Business Development Seminar center where Xerox was hosting eight daily sessions on digital business opportunities.
In between sessions I had a chance to speak with Andreas Weber, one of Xerox's Business Development Seminar speakers. Andreas is principal of Andreas Weber Global Communication GmbH, CEO of Mainz, Germany based magazine VALUE Verlag AG and founder of German-based digital printing online community Digital Druck Forum.
Andreas shared with me his white paper on Smart Communication: Reaching Engaging Communication Beyond Ourselves. In the paper Andreas states "Communication in this age should be easier. Technology abounds to ease the process of communication. But as in other areas of technology, the various systems are not completely integrated for seamless use." Andreas suggests tools need to be developed to facilitate the search for information, and facilitate peer-to-peer transparent discussions.
The concepts Andreas presents in his white paper follow the "mega trends" Xerox has been speaking to for a few years: Personalization - the ME generation; Collaboration - about us working with each other; and Digitization - the realization of it all coming together.
Adam Dewitz
WhatTheyThink.com
Print CEO Blog
A group of executives from Stevens Printing of Portland, Ore., came to drupa to investigate digital photo specialty products applications for their Xerox iGen3® 90 Digital Production Press. In just one afternoon, they found much of what they needed in three stations at the Xerox stand.
Their afternoon began with an hour-long presentation, “Digital Photos: how to break into the digital photo products market and take advantage of a $2B opportunity,” by Chris Jordan of Jordan & Jordan (to listen-in click the podcast button at the top of the page.) It's one of eight sessions in the Xerox Business Development Seminar series that runs throughout drupa, offering insights on key business opportunities.
In his talk, Jordan referenced a Xerox business tool that helps print providers initiate a photo products business, with a sample marketing plan and sample applications, templates and source files. Stop No. 2 for the Stevens entourage: the station where that Xerox ProfitAcccelerator Picture Me Profitable Kit was on display.
Their third and final stop was the photo specialty products section of the stand, where they saw the binding equipment and electronic creation and ordering systems they would need.
In the course of just a few hours, the Stevens team learned from an expert about the photo books opportunity, saw the equipment they would need to build a solution and perused the support tools that would help them establish the business.
Their mission to build a profitable new application was off to a smooth start.
Gina Testa
Vice President, Channel and Customer Business Development
Production Systems Group
Xerox Corporation
It’s great to see all the conversation about sustainability at drupa. But as a marketer, I think we have a lot more work to do to “green up” the way we present our offerings and communicate our brand value propositions. Xerox issued a news release today that summarizes some of what we’re trying to do. And we put together a factsheet that talks about how we tried to build our stand in an eco-friendly way.
It involves everything from the materials we use in our exhibit, to the lighting, collaterals and carpet – all the things that surround our products and services (which themselves are pretty green.) We also showed a video talking about sustainability through the eyes of the next generation of Xerox people. Check out the green gene here.
As proud as we are of the efforts we made to design a green booth, they are small steps that need to turn into greater leaps moving forward. In a related blog post, Andy Tribute pointed out similar efforts by many other leading printing companies at drupa. But more needs to be done. The International Consumer Electronics Show is America’s largest annual trade show of any kind. This year, CES made an effort to produce a carbon neutral show, working with CarbonFund.org to invest in energy efficiency, renewable energy and reforestation projects to offset the emissions created by every inch of CES space. The printing industry has spent a lot of time focusing on creating sustainable technology and services. And that’s the right place to start. Now we have to put additional focus on sustainable marketing. That means working with creative agency partners and printing partners – every link in the value chain – to ensure that we are marketing our offerings in ever-more sustainable ways. There’s no doubt that the next drupa will be even greener. And even though I’m barely over the jet lag from this year’s show, I can’t wait for 2012.
Ed Gala
Vice President
Corporate Marketing Services
Xerox Corporation
Note: to listen-in on Andy Tribute's comments on the "greening" of the print industry, click on the videos link to hear more.
Xerox's Shelley Sweeney gives a case study example of Staples - the North American-based office superstore about the value of building customer relationships through targeted, 1:1 marketing.
Listen-in on the conversation and click the podcast button at the top of the page.
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