As all of us involved at the coalface of graphic communications know, few industries have been so deeply impacted by change in recent times as ours.
My own journey in this great sphere of human endeavour has involved transitioning photography from film to digital – I published Australia’s first all-digital colour photograph on returning from the American Newspaper Association expo in 1987; to changing from typesetting to DTP from 1984 – when the Mac and then Windows/PC emerged; helping to launch true digital printing in 1993 – I was in London at the time where I first met Indigo pioneer Benny Landa; pushing wide format up to professional colour standards by combining Epson printers with Oris Colortuner Rip software – even the Americans and Germans turned to Australia for guidance on that one; and using/promoting internet messaging, networking and file transfer years before it was mainstream. You could add the first 3D printing seminar for printers just last year but that’s far too much about me.
So, not just for me but all of us in printing and graphic communications, change is not something we are suddenly faced with; it’s our way of life – in our DNA.
It has always been so for printers. Once mass communication became possible to an increasingly literate populace; humanity’s top minds were put to work to improve and change the way we communicate. The advent of consumerism spawned the now mighty packaged goods industry, with printing and converting the driving force behind it. Precision printing technology enabled the post-war electronics boom and silicon chips and continues to push new boundaries with nano-technologies.
The pioneers of change have always been akin to wounded forward scouts who get the first arrows in their backs; the brave men and women who put their houses, lives and health on the line to finance technologies of astronomical cost; the mentoring elders who nurture young and ambitious neophytes into our industry; the adaptive inventors who come up with better ways of doing things; the risk-takers, the employers of thousands, the loyal employees who stick by the firm through hard times; the bleeding warriors and foot soldiers of printing, packaging, publishing, converting and all kinds of business-building services: - these are the people who know about change and how to effectively deal with it.
Some accuse those who try to preserve the best of the past with the advances of the future as being “Dinosaurs trying to hold onto past glories. But if some of those are perceived as ‘dinosaurs’ it is a badge we wear with pride; with a reminder that the closest relative of the dinosaur still around, is the saltwater crocodile – the most successful amphibious predator of all time; content to wallow and watch for long periods of time, but fast, furious and rapacious on occasions.
Just ask the editor of the NT News newspaper.