The lessons of 100 years in print ... Print21 magazine article
Print: half digital, half analogue. Half craft and half hi-tech. Where is it headed in this second decade of the 21st century? As a starting point, Andy McCourt looks back 100 years to his 1911 edition of what was then the industry bible – Penrose. What was happening then has scary parallels to today – and not just because Frankenstein really was part of the industry in 1911!
Friends, anyone who knows me will attest to my love of ink on paper and particularly the offset process. I am always ready to bore people with extracts from my collection of books on printing history, such as all 74 volumes of Penrose’s Pictorial Annual of the Graphic Arts, or the very earliest Australian trade journals Wimble’s Reminders.
Here’s an example, a stanza from John McCreery’s 1803 poem ‘The Press’:
What Printer ever since thy distant days
Hath touch’d the strings responsive to thy praise?
With trembling hand the boon let me bestow;
Hear then, ye nations, what to him ye owe.
If you’d really like the other 100 or so verses, drop me an email!
But if collecting Mr Penrose’s excellent annuals from the 1895 edition on has taught me anything, it is that our industry is in a state of constant change. Each year, apart from wartime, Penrose catalogued the past year’s advances in graphic reproduction from craft, technology and creative angles. Its pages are replete with tipped-in samples of print, many of which were performed by short-lived and long-forgotten processes.
I feel that after the economic mayhem of the past two years, 2011 will be a special year for the print communications industry, but we need to be prepared to execute changes that will rock many boats and ruffle many feathers. With willpower, Australia and New Zealand are positioned better than most other advanced economies to effect these changes due to our population, isolation and a history of willingness to adapt to change, even if it means making uncomfortable decisions.
Lessons from 1911
To underline these points, I dug out my 1911 copy of Penrose’s Pictorial Annual to see what its accomplished editor, Mr William Gamble, had to say about changes in his industry 100 years ago. It’s quite an eye opener with statements such as:
“The continuous progress which has been made in process work has bought it to such a degree of perfection that it hardly seems possible to surpass its present accomplishments.”
Yes, photo-mechanical process engraving was taking over from woodblock engraving but the artisans who hand-engraved incredible detail into end-grain boxwood for illustrations in newspapers, catalogues and magazines would have nothing to do with this newfangled lower-skilled upstart. They sneered at it, even as they saw their own craft decline as publishers switched to process blocks which also enabled three- and four-colour work as the blocks could be faithfully duplicated for each colour (try registering four hand-cut blocks!). By 1920 the woodblock engravers had all but disappeared. Sound familiar?
One hundred years ago in 1911, Penrose reveals another familiar issue:
“To the outside public it might be thought that a business whose products are in such widespread demand must necessarily be a prosperous and profitable one, but as those who are behind the scenes know very well, it is far from being so, in fact, with the smaller firms it is a struggle for existence.”
Déjà vu? Gamble goes on with another scarily contemporary scenario:
“The fact is that there have grown up with the business some most pernicious trade customs, which prevent the craftsman getting a fair reward for his industry … It is obvious that such a system must come to an end sooner or later, for no business can go on continuously losing money.”
Sound familiar? Pernicious is a lovely word. It means causing great harm, destruction or even death. Gamble certainly didn’t gamble with his words. 2009-10 proved that no printing business can go on continuously losing money and yet, in 2011, I see many firms that expect a magical return to the ‘good times’ while doing little or nothing to create their own magic or adapt intelligently to the changes that are all around. Remember the boxwood engravers and be determined not to go there.
The backwardness of offset work
Hold the brickbats…that’s not my subhead; it’s Penrose’s in 1911.
“Offset printing does not seem to have quite made the progress expected of it in the past year. More and more machines have been installed, but we still do not see turned out of them the class of work we have been led to expect,” wrote Gamble. He identifies ink transfer issues and density as major problems; and goes on to laud gravure, intaglio, lithography, collotype.
Of course, this ‘backwards’ process went on to trounce letterpress in the 20th century, and many other reproduction processes too, such as the charmingly named ‘Immediography’ – a process patented by a Dr Schumacher of Klimsch & Co. It was basically CTP – Camera to Plate!
Do I hear a familiar echo of this century-old criticism of the upstart offset process when it applies to digital in 2011? Die-hard offset printers often sneer at digital for similar reasons that wood engravers and letterpress/rotogravure/intaglio printers sneered at offset 100 year ago. What they overlook – and this is particularly relevant in the online, mobile and social networking era – is that no one cares about the process of information delivery so long as they get access to the information in a way that satisfies and ticks all their personal boxes.
Before we leave 1911 and get to my point, here are two delightfully whimsical pages from Penrose of that year, an ink advertisement from a firm named ‘E.N. Frankenstein & Co’ of Finsbury, London. They don’t name ‘em like that anymore, Igor. Very apt for today’s industry.
And, facing page 88 is a plate entitled ‘Australian Life’ which I have scanned for you (does anyone remember scanner operators?). It is a three-colour process image that was sent to Penrose in London by the Government Printing Office in Brisbane. The gentle image of horse-drawn timber drays still looks great after 100 years. Now called GoPrint, they are still there in Woolloongabba and of course affected by the awful floods. We’re thinking of you guys, all the best.
Digital monsters offset
So what’s my point? Is this just a walk down Memory Lane or can I impart anything helpful?
Well, let me share this. Following the events of the last two years and changes in business and consumer behaviour, I think the ANZ business model for all but high volume and trade offset printing is broken. Not the wonderful process quality or demand for it, mind you; it’s the self-inflicted business model.
• The investment levels are too high
• The returns are too low
• The growth is static or declining
• The supply capacity is bloated
• The print buyers demand unrealistic (pernicious?) prices
• The consumables cost too much
• The competition both onshore and offshore is – pernicious
• The environmental perception stinks
• The skill pool is dwindling
• The business originators are retiring.
I emphasise this does not necessarily apply to high-volume (web and long perfecting sheetfed offset), packaging and trade offset printing. This sector holds sway by sheer press power and versatility when needed. Also, trade printers strip their costs down to the bone and offer profit margins to their trade customers that often out-perform their ability to print the work themselves.
Over the break, I read the latest Infotrends report on digital colour printing between 2009 and 2014, two years of actual data and three years of calculated projection. Without going into the statistical data, it is obvious that not only is the number of colour digital presses increasing globally, but the average monthly print volumes (AMPV) going through them is heading North too.
The highest percentage growth of new placements is in the higher monthly volume – 1 million impressions plus - machines in both sheet and web-feed. That means HP Indigos, Xerox iGens, Konica Minolta bizhubs, Screen Truepress Jets, Infoprints, Canons, Kodaks, Impikas, and so on.
The installed base of digital colour presses capable of 10 million or more (A4) impressions a month is forecast to rise by over 36 per cent between 2009 and 2014. AMPVs are forecast to rise by 6 per cent on each of these new installations – to an average of six million impressions per month. Surprisingly, the cost of producing each impression will decline by 8 per cent over the same period. What does this show? That you have a growth industry sector with falling costs of manufacturing versus a declining offset sector with increasing costs.
Some of this growth will be the conversion of black-and-white digital to colour but a fair slice will also be displacement of offset work. Yes, digital has limitations on paper stocks, weights and formats but we are also witnessing changes in print buyer behaviour than can adapt to this. With print commanding a diminishing slice of marketing budgets, product substitution is happening.
What can you do? Perhaps, rather than ‘going with the digital flow’ and gradually responding to market shifts, 2011 might be a good time to nudge the market into changing its print buying patterns. Make each run shorter and more frequent and therefore less wasteful and more up-to-date, almost a ‘JIT’ philosophy. Educate clients in the benefits of digital distribution and remote site printing. Be in control of the offset-to-digital shift and not a victim of it. The business model for a digital printer has lower overall costs and better profit margins – and is far less likely to lose work to China or other offshore centres.
Play your trump card
In the latest issue of manroland’s excellent house magazine Expresis Verbis is a marvellous report by Steffen Peters, who dissects PIRA’s Future of Global Printing 2009-2014 study. The growth percentage in Chinese printing for the five years is stated as 42.8 per cent, with some categories such as magazines, advertising and packaging in the 60+ per cent region. This, of course, is mostly offset production, with only flexo at 66.6 per cent showing significant growth in other processes. With low labour costs and a controlled currency, China is becoming the world’s long-run print centre.
Digital is of course growing in China, but this is mostly for domestic consumption, and here is the clue. Digital favours local consumption. It takes about 18-24 days from order placement to receive printed matter from China and the print run needs to be on the long side. With digital production, the print run can be from a single copy up – and it can be delivered within 24 hours.
That’s the trump card that smaller to mid-size Australian and New Zealand printers can play by changing print buying patterns. You don’t want to produce long runs – farm them out to your friendly trade printer. Chase the shorter, profitable runs for a broad group of clients and in all formats from huge (flatbed UV and roll wide format), to web (reel-fed inkjet) and sheet (toner and maybe new breeds of inkjet). Your finishing/bindery department will need attention too, but much of the equipment used in offset can be used for digital finishing.
Some of the short-run work can and is being produced by automated offset and DI presses, nothing wrong with that because the business model is along the lines of an all-digital workflow. Most printers with both offset and digital I speak with say their digital side is the fastest growing by far. One has recently shut down his offset side. However, the mixed approach works too, especially if you have one workflow and MIS backbone to drive digital presses and CTP.
This year is a good time for the industry to work on new, even revolutionary, business models and to take the focus away from processes and past conventions. Have a great new year.