Road Trip Verifies Survey Results: Creatives are Showing More Interest in Digital Printing
The 44th annual Print Design Survey from Graphic Design USA came out while I was on the road at the HOW Design Conference in Atlanta (June 10-13). The survey corroborates what I experienced in my travels, that creatives increasingly are embracing digital printing.
At HOW, I presented on “The Urban Legends of Digital Color Printing” in a program with my Xerox colleague Mike Riebesehl, who offered a number of application tips in his presentation on “Designing for Digital Color Printing.” We drew a nice, interactive crowd of about 100 designers.
Among them was Amy Garey, a graphic designer for the Capital Group, a financial services company, who was attending her fourth How Conference. Her division recently brought most of its printing in house to save on costs and consolidated the operation in Los Angeles to improve color management. Her team has struggled recently to match Pantone colors on its Xerox color printers.
“The session came at the perfect time,” Garey said. “I was able to ask what we needed to do to set up our corporate color palettes, and I got the answers we needed. It was great. Now we’re fixing all of our palettes. Seriously, this one thing made the whole trip worthwhile.”
Many other attendees also asked good questions during and after the session, and showed equal enthusiasm for the digital printing medium.
The Graphic Design USA readership survey quantifies that enthusiasm. “Use of digital printing continues at a record levels,” the survey states. “Like last year, nearly three-in-four respondents … report using digital short-run printing in the past year. And more than one-third of respondents — up from one-quarter last year — report that they are buying or specing digital printing more often.”
Increasingly, creatives list customization and personalization as one of the top reasons for choosing digital, according to the survey. And one-quarter of respondents said they worked on cross-media projects involving print and electronic media design during the past year.
According to Graphic Design USA Publisher / Editor Gordon Kaye, the embrace of digital printing is happening because color and image quality keeps improving, designers are learning more about the technology’s advantages and the services are more accessible. “The value proposition for digital short-run printing — fast, clean, customizable, efficient and seamless to the digital workflow — perfectly captures the spirit of this design era,” Kaye observed.
I can verify that it also captures the spirit of the HOW Design Conference.
Bob Wagner
Vice President, Creative Services Business and Premier Partners Program
Xerox
robert.wagner@xerox.com