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Even though I’ve been working on the Printing Innovation with Xerox Imaging Awards (PIXI) program for several years now, I still wait in anticipation to receive those special entries where I look at them and say “WOW!”. When they start coming in, it’s like getting presents on your birthday. I can’t wait to unwrap them and see what’s inside – will it be a cool new application I never thought of producing on digital equipment or will it be a piece so stunning that it takes my breath away? Last year we had earrings! I would not have thought in a million years that jewelry could be part of the print business.
We created the program to celebrate achievements and innovation in digital printing and to reinforce partnerships between printers, customers and other key printing players and every year we are truly stunned by the work that is entered. There's always excitement at this time of year – the entry period – as I’m constantly sharing the amazing new pieces I have received with my colleagues. This year will be no different – I’m quite eager to see what innovative and pioneering pieces we’ll be able to showcase! Plus, there's an added bonus – in the past I’ve only seen entries from North and South America – this year we’re GOING GLOBAL by combining both the US and Xerox Europe PIXI programs, so I’ll be able to see submissions from over 50 participating countries.
After a rigorous judging process by industry experts, the best of the best are chosen. Then I get the distinct pleasure of contacting the winners personally. I have to tell you, there is nothing better than hearing the enthusiasm and excitement in their voices… especially as we acknowledge the entire value chain of the printer, the designer and the client.
To celebrate this honor with our winners, we host an incredible ceremony to celebrate their prestigious accomplishments. They simply beam with pride as they stand up on that stage to be presented with their PIXI Award. The most memorable happened last year when a design student was part of the value chain that won Best of Show. You could tell that she was in awe of the evening’s events, the attention this brought to her work and having her picture published in various media throughout the country.
I am looking forward to another great year… as entrants will be showing us what they’re proud of!
Cindy Hamann
Marketing Program Manager
Xerox Production Systems Group
Nonprofits love print. Mostly for historical or emotional reasons. A nice brochure or an annual report provides tangible validation to themselves of their existence. This is often enough in itself, judging by the boxes full of undistributed and out-dated printed materials so many of them have lining their offices. I can say this – I run a nonprofit myself and am as guilty of this as any.
For as long as we can remember, printing has been a necessary, but complicated and expensive part of nonprofits’ lives. But slowly they are starting to understand the many competitive advantages of the Web. And it is teaching them about accountability in a whole new way. That web content can be quickly and easily updated is major for overstretched and under-resourced nonprofit professionals who have so little time to spare. That they can measure responses easily is big. That it can be used to connect and link and collect money all on its own – with no opening of envelopes and going the bank - is a huge one. And the distribution? Well it may not be free – but it does feel that way.
I just received an email from a nonprofit asking for Cyrano’s help. It says that they want to have their website: “work as another employee would - bring in donations, educate the public about (us) and market us …”. Well that does not sound like good news for their printer.
But fear not. The tactile, tangible, pass-it-around, look-at-it-together, emotional quality of a nicely designed and well written print piece cannot be replaced by the web. Yet there is a challenge – if printing continues to be complicated to buy and expensive and slow to revise and respond, then nonprofits’ printing orders will dwindle. Like Michael J’s Generation Google they don’t care how it works – just make it easy to use. Give them control over their printing at their fingertips. Don’t make them buy more than they need. Don’t make them choose between too many variables unless they specifically ask for them. There are over a million and a half nonprofits in the US. A tiny percentage of them are sophisticated buyers of printing. The rest just need to find an easy way to get it done and not cost too much. There is getting to be a real choice and the web piece is getting easier and cheaper and more powerful. So, even though nonprofits still like their nice shiny annual reports, the printing business will have to work at the relationship to keep it healthy.
Michael Pollock
President, The Cyrano Project
 Thank you to Gavin Smith for organizing a lunch time meeting at On Demand of some folks who are not selling equipment and care deeply about the printing industry. Gavin posed some interesting questions and for me, it was worth the ride to Boston to see something in a new way.
What I saw was who was in the room. I'm pretty sure that everyone around the table was a baby boomer. Not a surprise, given that it was a group that was selected for their deep experience in the industry. I am baby boomer. Born in 1946, I've always enjoyed being at the leading edge of the "pig in the python". Best of all, I've spent the last 6 years teaching and working with the next generation of creatives at a premier design school.
I've learned that they are different. I like to call them Generation Google. They started using the Internet in 5th or 6th grade. Right behind them, are the kids who never knew a world without the Internet. The leading edge is now about 30 - 35. They came to the Internet later in life, but just as Vietnam defined my generation, the presence of the Internet is defining theirs.
From what I can learn, their attitude to printing is very different from ours.
First, they love printed products. I can't tell you exactly why, but I know they do. That's the good news for us.
Second, they are not impressed by the expertise needed to prepare a PDF file that prints., Or the difficulty of getting it out the door at the right price. They don't know or care how Google works, they just want to know that it does, all the time, every time. As soon as it doesn't they will happily move to whatever does.The long discussions we have about quality, workflow, technology are irrelevent to Generation Google. They don't really know or care about the difference between digital and offset printing..except that offset printing takes much longer and is much more expensive and is often hard to buy. They expect to be able to do everything through a web browser. And to be able to produce whatever they want, when they want, where they want. The best of them are fearless in their youthful arrogance (reminds me of us 40 years ago.) They believe they can learn anything they have to, in order to be able to get what they want.
Third, they expect things to work. Lulu.com is not amazing, merely another functionality. Youtube is not amazing, just part of the infrastructure. And as far as I can tell, MySpace is not cool anymore, but as of yesterday Face Book is the networking platform of choice. Buying photo books from Ofoto to send a gift to grandpa is not amazing, it's merely a sweet, appropriate way of capturing and sharing memories.
Until the tipping point, about two years ago, boomers who got it where called thought leaders or evangelists. But now that Generation Google is coming on the scene, we have to run to catch up.
I'm hoping that I can get some of my Generation Google friends to post here. And perhaps you might ask your Generation Google clients or kids to do the same. If we can get a vibrant conversation going, we might be able to understand the future better... by listening to the future growing in our midst.
So... to see if we can get it going...
I would like to ask: What is it that makes print so wonderful?
Michael Josefowicz
Josefowicz Associates, LLC
I hosted the Digital Print Roundtable Tuesday and it seems fitting to quote a famous author born in Massachusetts in 1904….”Today was good./ Today was fun./ Tomorrow is another one”. Theodor Seuss Geisel. It is the subjects we discussed that fuel our eagerness to participate, to influence, to innovate and possible ignite a change.
Even though we talked for an hour I think we all wish we'd had more time. As we said after it was all over, if there's anything you didn't get to say, we can continue the discussion here on the blog. Also, keep an eye on the when the podcast is released. I encourage you all (even if you weren't around the table) to post a comment and ask questions.
I want to give you Xerox’s sincere gratitude for everyone's participation. It was clearly engaging and to my surprise I only had to play “the foul card” a couple times.
Gavin Jordan-Smith
Vice President, Commercial Print and Prepress Business
Xerox Production Systems Group
What continues to be the hottest application in digital printing today – photobooks! Where else can you get $2 - $3 a page for your digital output?
I am at On Demand in Boston this week and everyone wants to know how they get started.
One of the shows keynote speakers was Frank Cost , from RIT who helped me early on see what technology was making possible (get his fun book The Book as Child off the Internet at Lulu). He shared the podium with John Lacagnina, ColorCentric (a power iGen photobook printer!!) and the audience quickly flocked to the Xerox booth to see first hand what is happening after their talk. Frank came by and told me he is even considering as part of the RIT curriculum offerings a course based upon this application and technology.
Getting into this market is simple when you partner with Xerox, first you need to GET pictures (I recommend for starters MyPhotoFun (you can see them at the Xerox booth if you are at the show), next and most important you need to PRINT (I recommend iGen – we have the iGen book factory on the show floor), and then last FINISH (I like Powis for an entry level solution – also in our booth).
Even outside of the show photobooks are making news, when I arrived Monday the Boston Globe ran an article “Publish beautiful photo books” about how consumers are telling their stories in photos, words, and making books.
Hope you get a chance to come by and see me at the booth.
Brian Segnit
Manager, Photo and Book Printing
Xerox Production Systems Group
Yesterday was the opening of On Demand. It was an exciting day for Xerox--we launched new products, added new customer support programs to our Profit Accelerator programs, and showcased new workflow solutions. More importantly, we hosted many, many customers, and showed them how Xerox could help them with a very wide range of applications.
From collaterals on demand, promotional statements, manuals and books, to direct marketing materials and photo memory books, all the applications show how communication continues to evolve, with print remaining a critical element of communication. The technology and workflow available today is truly changing the economics of print. It is also reducing the time it takes to print complex, relevant documents. And to the consumer, time and cost are both important.
Which is more important? Well, that depends….I’d love some feedback.
A show like On Demand gives customers the opportunity to shop and learn, to see and understand what’s possible for them. And regardless of how deep the expertise of exhibiting print providers runs, they come because they always learn too. That's what keeps this industry going as we all strive to lead by providing customers with innovative, relevant communications.
Barb Anselm
Vice President, Marketing Communications
Xerox Production Systems Group
Wow! It is officially announced! The fastest cut-sheet, duplex print engine available: the Xerox Nuvera 288 Digital Perfecting System. As a research scientist who has worked to develop the toner used in this engine, I am very proud to see the product launch with such fantastic performance. Early customer experience has validated what we set out to do in the first place. That is design a toner, the Emulsion Aggregation or EA toner, which provides great image quality on a variety of papers at the same time as enabling more prints per bottle of toner. It's the smaller size of the toner that enables more prints from the bottle, and it's the uniform toner size and smooth shape that contribute to the great image quality. Our research on the toner design was done specifically for application to this engine. We optimized the components of the toner as well as the hardware parts together to ensure we got the best performance possible. Combine that with the research that was done to develop the advanced paper path, and the result is this fantastic printer delivering 288 high-quality, black-and-white prints per minute.
It has been great to play a part in the development of this outstanding product.
Patricia Burns, PhD
Xerox Research Centre of Canada
Mississauga, Ontario
Canada
My title is a twist on the long-time DuPont mantra “Better Things for Better Living … Through Chemistry.” DuPont stopped using it 25 years ago when the drug culture proclaimed “Better Living through Chemistry,” spoiling it for corporate America. But what Xerox is doing is clearly legal.
One of the big Xerox stories at On Demand centers on EA toner in Nuvera. EA is short for Emulsion Aggregation, the way Xerox grows the toner particles for the new members of the Nuvera family – the 100/120/144 EA Digital Production System plus the 288 Duplex press. As a life-long technologist, I am delighted to see that the materials folks, who are usually taken for granted and hidden in the labs, are being featured right in the title line. The four Nuvera systems introduced at On Demand are the first Xerox heavy production systems to use “chemical toner.” Of course all toner is chemical, but we mean that the small toner are formed in a vat of magic chemicals as contrasted with being ground down from large slabs of plastic, as we have been doing for decades. Ten toner particles fit across the diameter of a human hair, and it takes about a billion to add up to the size of one M&M.
I do have one concern with this EA branding. To some, it sounds like those gasoline or oil additives that you pour into your oil pan or gas tank that make your car run smother, get better mileage, perform better. . . and who knows what all else?! No such luck. You can’t just pour some “EA” into the toner hopper any more than you can put diesel fuel into your gasoline engine to get that better “diesel mileage.”
The Nuvera family being introduced this week represents a major engineering effort over the past few years. The new development system works hand in hand with fusing, and this new EA toner for Nuvera produces sharp matte prints that have the look and feel of the best offset prints. The images are made from smooth uniformly-sized toner particles which, customers tell us, deliver the top halftone photos and tints in the industry.
EA applied to three systems – oil-less, higher gloss, mono IQ (matte, thin, sharp) – what next? As part of the presentations I have been delivering to our customers, I have been talking about EA toner for a few years, explaining that EA is a process for building “smart materials” which are essential for simpler, more reliable printing systems.
So far, Xerox has applied EA technology to three products. We have built new plant facilities to satisfy the demand. First we put a little bit of wax/oil inside every toner particle so we could stop oiling the fuser roll, simplifying our color office multifunction systems. Then we mixed a new formula, EA HG, which gives higher gloss and brighter colors, still keeping the wax/oil advantage. This month, you see EA applied to production monochrome printers. And we are a long way from running out of places to apply this technology. Stay tuned!
Peter Crean
Senior Fellow, Xerox Innovation Group
Xerox
Shift Happens… Like a wildfire, through the video blogs there is a phenomenal video that brings change into perspective (you should check it out on Printmode). Needless to say, sometimes we move forward so quickly that we forget where we will end up let alone where we started. Make no mistake there are many changes going on in multiple industry segments today. The communications print industry is experiencing such as shift that is not only challenging the leaders to keep up but also providing tremendous opportunity for the new comer. I look forward to exploring this further in the blogging roundtable on Tuesday… See you there but based on the weather the challenge might be getting there. Safe travels...
Gavin Jordan-Smith
Vice President, Commercial Print and Prepress Business
Xerox Production Systems Group
We have lots of cool things in booth 914 at On Demand this year, including new products, a giant Xerox iGen3 configuration that has never before been shown in public, and some fantastic print applications – many of which are completely finished in line in true “On Demand” fashion.
One application I am most excited about showing off is a new end to end solution called Collateral By Request. It is exactly as its name implies, a web-based solution that anyone from sales reps and distributors to executives can use to order the marketing literature they need. It then gets printed and delivered – and voila, the person has exactly the collateral they need, in the quantity they wanted, when they required it. And – the collaterals ordered can be personalized with regional information, photos, or anything else – you can even upload a database of names and addresses and send out personalized postcards – all automatically. The power of this solution is truly amazing – just think about insurance companies, for example, who have independent agencies everywhere – there must be thousands of them – and they can each order what they need, when they need it. Plus, instead of using a sticker to put their name and address on the back of brochure, it’s nicely printed as part of the brochure. How cool is that?! The thing I think about is that those insurance agents can sell many different brands of insurance – but don’t you think they will be more likely to sell the brand that they have nice, easy, personalized literature for? The types of businesses that can benefit from this go on and on – from product manufacturers and automotive to financial services and retail.
I may be biased, but I think the show overall will be focused on applications like this—teaching printers how to better use the technology, rather than just talking about the latest specs of a product. At least from our perspective at Xerox, the technology to do some of these cool applications has been around for a little while – but now we’ve put it into one package and wrapped the implementation services around it – making it so much easier to get into this type of business. And – if extra help is needed, we have analysts who can come in and set up everything for the customer – including programming the templates and standing up the web site.
So, stop by and say hi, and let me know what other cool applications you’re seeing.
Tracy Yelencsics
Manager, Worldwide Production Color Marketing
Xerox Production Systems Group
Next week at On Demand, I’m privileged to be the host of a roundtable on the subject of digital print. Big deal, right??? We talk about the transition to digital at Xerox all the time, so what is the difference?
Well, we’re bringing together a group of people around a table that have never sat together before… A people with a passion for PRINT. And we’re just going to talk.
Since many in the industry “are just not there yet” when it comes to the implementation of digital print, the goal of the roundtable is to generate discussion about how to help others get there. In reality, it’s going to be a small table, so I couldn’t host you all—but I can invite you to offer your two cents here on this blog. With your input before and after the virtual blogging table could be limitless.
Below are a couple of the starter questions I’ll be throwing out to the group. Let me know what you think — you’ll be helping us jump start the conversation in Boston:
• What are the key printing applications print providers should be selling in 2007?
• What are the top technical and educational issues vendors should be addressing when working with customers looking to transition to digital?
• What steps are vendors overlooking when it comes to teaching printers to sell digital/articulate the capabilities of digital?
• What should print industry vendors be doing to help print providers grow their volume?
• Where do you see the industry in the next 10-15 years?
Thanks in advance for your input. As for the actual discussion at On Demand, we’re going to podcast and post it here on the blog. Stay tuned…
Gavin Jordan-Smith
Vice President, Commercial Print and Prepress Business
Xerox Production Systems Group
It’s crunch time here at Xerox. We’re all going a little bit crazy preparing for one of our biggest shows of the year—AIIM/On Demand. It’s really the only show that covers the entire document lifecycle—from data capture to the printed product—and therefore touches every facet of our business. As a result, we’re going to be talking about it here and over on Big I little t for the next three weeks.
Here on In the Balance, those of us attending the show from the Production Systems Group will be sharing our experiences and observations from the On Demand side of the show—new and improved print technologies, market opportunities, attendee feedback, industry issues and more. Please join us—the intent is to interact and collaborate with our colleagues in the larger printing community.
If you’re attending the show, come see us at booth #914 (Hall A). Our theme this year is “Show Me,” meaning we’re not just going to talk about growing your business—we’re going to demonstrate applications that help identify and exploit growth opportunities. Give us your feedback in person or here on the blog. If you’re not attending this year, we invite you to use this as a resource for what’s happening at the show and to join the conversation with your own comments and opinions about what’s important to the printing and graphic communications industry.
See you in Boston!
Tom Wetjen
Vice President, Worldwide Graphic Communications Industry
Xerox
One of the most lucrative segments in digital print remains an untapped opportunity for most print providers. If you are one of them, you’ve probably already made all the investments you need to…so what are you waiting for?
What segment am I talking about? Photo products of course. And I really could talk all day about it…but I did that in the On Demand Journal this month. So here are the highlights:
You can charge as much as $2-3 per page for photo books, greeting cards, calendars, date books, posters and anything else you can think of that’s not a traditional 4x6 print.
Do the math: margins are fantastic, enough to change the calculation for justifying a digital color press.
The market is still in an early adopter stage and can be captured with the right planning. Photo cards and specialty prints—enlargements, framed photos and collages—are the most popular now, but photo books and calendars are the items of the future.
Consider what you can offer with your current equipment, then consider ways your present customers might use the products.
Like I said, you probably already have the skills and the infrastructure: efficient production workflow, the capability to produce book blocks for photo books, wiro binding for calendars, oversize prints for posters and collages, etc.
Remember to pay closer attention to image and color quality with quality control and regular maintenance. For $2 to $3 per page, image quality expectations are justifiably higher.
So, stop waiting. Savvy firms are already building strong specialty photo businesses, and the high, early-adopter margins won’t last forever. The demand is there—customers want these photo applications. If you don’t fulfill them, someone else surely will.
Brian Segnit
Manager, Digital Photo and Book Printing
Xerox Production Systems Group
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