IPEX 2010 Blogs - Andy McCourt Number 3

Simon and I fired up the Quattro last night. What does this mean? It's an expression used by DI Gene Hunt in the masterful Brit police drama Ashes to Ashes – when the 'scum crims' are up to no good and he needs to tear off in his 1981 Audi Quattro; the first of the all-wheel drives and a mean machine that enables sideways parking into a niche in a row of parked cars.

I'm addicted to Ashes – it's set in the early 80s but features the stunning Keeley Hawes as DI Drake, a modern policewoman somehow transported back into politically incorrect 1981 after being shot. Hunt is a hard-bitten action cop whose method of 'helping police with our enquiries' usually starts with a fist to the solar plexus. The sophisticated DI Drake is apalled at his methods so he nicknames her "Bollinger Knickers" or Bolls for short.
 
Hunt's one-liners are legend in this great example of TV drama as it should be; e.g. when insulting a fellow police officer: "You great, soft, sissy, girlie, nancy, French-bender, Man United supporting POOF!”
 
So we fired up the Quattro (okay, Vauxhall Astra) last night and headed not for a curry, but to a country pub for an in-depth debrief on the first action at Ipex. Turns out we are both Ashes fans – highly relevant as the main topic of convo here is ash of the volcanic kind. Lubricated by a pint or two of Abbiott's real ale (and noting UK's drink driving limit is 0.08), we mused on the day's first offerings – a prepress supplier releasing a B2 digital press and an offset supremo re-entering digital and saying B2 digital is rubbish.
 
Will this be the main debate at IPEX? Didn't the Indigo E-Print get rubbished at IPEX 1993? Sure the first model was not commercially ready and were problematical but look at HP Indigo today! As DI Gene Hunt might say: "An illiterate Orang-Utan could sell anyone an Indigo today mate." Sure, the B2 digital sheetfed market needs testing and analysing but should we not leave our prejudices and misconceptions at the door when doing this?
 
Take photobooks. Big metal offset vendors tend to pooh-pooh this market because it has the word 'photo' in it. For gawd's sake stop it or you'll go blind! They are books – mostly hard-covered, cased in and sometimes section-sewn, short-run, full colour, easy-to make, high growth, wonderfully profitable, eminently sellable BOOKS! So what if they are printed in onesies-and-twosies? The largest digital press sites in Australia, the USA and Europe are printing photobooks. Think they're onto something?
 
A B2 digital press can print 8-up signatures and finishing can be on standard MBOs, Stahls etc. This reduces manufacturing costs over B3 digital, increases paper choice and fits in nicely with existing B2 workflows. Infotrends claim Photobooks are growing at around 26% per annum - and the corporate market remains hardly touched. "Hello Mr Smith, here's a book explaining the history and achievements of Jones & Co since my grandfather founded it in 1892, we only had 50 printed but I'd like you to have a copy."
 
Look, B2 digital presses are not going to take over the B2 offset market while I am still around and neither do they want to. They are an extension; an imaginative extension, of this glorious communications industry of ours just as relevant as Apple rolling out the iPad when it already had the iPod, iPhone and iDiditmyway.
 
To misquote a more noble sage than DI Gene Hunt: "B2, or not B2 - that is the question."
 
Ignorance of the realities surrounding change can lead only to pretty eulogies: "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust ..." Yes, change means loss. You can't have change without loss. Get used to it, today, tomorrow or the next day, but set your agenda at your own pace.
 
If you need help, I'll fire up the Quattro when I get back; I'll be doing IPEX autopsies at special nights put on by the LIA and Galley Club for starters. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I'm listening to the questions.
 
In closing, a special DI Gene Hunt-style compliment to the IPEX organisers, press office crew and  all who have laboured under trying (including Ashes) circumstances to bring this event to the world. " For a bunch of canapes-munching, Chardonnay sipping hooray Henrys and Henriettas whose idea of a good time is a long weekend in Benidorm, you've done a magnificent job on this IPEX."
 
I hope they'll let me in today.