Letter from the Publisher, Patrick Howard – Print21 Feburuary 2014
Words are powerful, words are magic, words can create their own reality.
I’ve always been a big fan of job titles, believing that when they are right they not only describe someone’s role but also direct the individual’s motivation and efforts. Most job titles pass unnoticed until an inappropriate one causes all sorts of problems when it comes to lines of responsibility.
The same applies to industries and organisations. Printing has always been a difficult expression: it means not only the action of making print but also the final result itself. A printer can be someone operating a press, running an enterprise, or a company that produces and sells printing. Print itself can be anything but most often hides itself in what it comprises e.g. books, packaging, magazines.
It is a truism that no one buys print; they buy something that has printing as part of it. Only within the industry do we talk about print as if it was something separate from its end product. And perhaps it is time we stopped.
I was talking with Tony Bertrand, marketing manager of BJ Ball, the other day and the subject of what we should call the industry came up. Tony is a dynamic marketer, deeply engaged in his company and the industry. He is convinced the printing industry needs to engage with the designers more. Indeed he encourages his representatives to spend as much if not more time with designers as they do with printers. He laments the lack of connection between the two graphics sectors – design and printing.
Our conversation came around to that old chestnut; what should the peak industry body, Printing Industries, call itself? It is over a decade since it changed from PATEFA (Printing and Allied Trades Employers Federation of Australia) to the italicised, Printing Industries. It was a good move for the time and surely anything was better than the 19th century style of PATEFA. But is it time to move it on?
Certainly Tony Bertrand thinks so. He is convinced the entire industry needs to broaden its remit and bring in something about what we are actually doing. His preference is along the lines of Print Communications. It is not a bad call.
The information age
Printing is a form of communication in the information age. It may no longer be the primary form and there are many other ways of accessing information but printing is still a vital element in the communication matrix. Everything we produce is conveying information in words and images. Communication is what we do; printing is how we do it.
To my mind, the benefit of a change in the description of the industry is the same as with an appropriate job title. Print Communications says it all; not only what and why we do what we do but also how we do it. It positions the industry across a broader, more contemporary, sector of the economy and loosens ties to our craft-based origins that are increasingly irrelevant in a technology-empowered world. It will likely be more appealing to young people looking to enter the workforce.
Most importantly it will define to ourselves with what we are engaged and why. If the communicative potential of printing becomes part of our industrial DNA we will break out of the old-fashioned suffocating industrial mindset. Technology may be able to solve our production problems but only we can change our attitude.
Printing Industries has its annual general meeting in May. This time around let us urge the management committee to take some time off from weighty industrial matters and make a decision on projecting the cultural image of the industry.
It’s time for the Print Communications Industry of Australia to step into the light.