The New Wave of Customization

One of the many highlights of the annual convention of the International Association of Printing House Craftsmen Club a few months back was a visit to the Rochester Institute of Technology, arguably the premier graphic arts institution in the country. RIT possesses working presses of almost every sort, all donated, which are used primarily for research. Paper manufacturers and others in the printing industry buy press time to test new products.

While we were there, RIT officials put on quite a show with four of their newest presses. And what we learned, aside from additional press information, is that a whole new level of customization is a reality. With time to consider that day more fully, I’ve also realized that this new generation of presses (and others we haven’t even heard of yet) will affect every facet of our industry— not always in ways we might expect.

The Presses. The demonstration included the Quickmaster DI, a direct imaging press from Heidelberg; the Indigo, a sheetfed variable imaging press; the Xeikon, a webfed variable imaging press; and the DocuColor 40 from Xerox.

Technicians placed all 150 of us in a conference room with a large screen in front and monitors along the side. Microphones dangled from the ceiling. Then a tour guide and camera operator went on the floor and actually toured the four presses. We could see what they saw, and they could hear our questions. It worked quite well.

And we did learn more about these particular machines. It was compelling to see firsthand how the DocuColor produces as many as forty full-color, single-sided pages per minute, how the Indigo allows last-minute changes without reprocessing and how the Quickmaster DI eliminates film, developing and stripping.

The Demonstration. My favorite part of the demonstration, though, took place on the Xeikon. As each of us arrived that day, we were clustered in groups of about ten and a photo was snapped of each group in front of a blue screen. Then, while we were seated comfortably in the conference room, asking a whole host of questions, prepress technicians merged those fifteen photos into two groups, printable on one long sheet.

As we left, we were each given a finished press sheet. The interesting part was that every one was different. Mine reads, "Where’s Milt Vine?" Each of the other attendees received a photo asking where he or she was. (Yes, we all felt like Waldo.)

Pretty nifty, right? Certainly a graphic demonstration (pun intended) of the Xeikon’s capabilities, and possible because of variable imaging. The image was redrawn by computer for each impression (i.e., a new plate was made) and the Xeikon used inkjets to produce them. The photo is four color, and the quality is acceptable for many applications.

The Possibilities. And those applications are what I’ve been thinking about since. For if the intended message was that ultimate customization is now available, the secondary message was that our industry has yet to figure out every possible application.

Direct mail is the most obvious use, but what about others? I know an Indigo press has been used in the Seattle area to produce customized proposals, less than thirty in number and high in quality, each with the logo of a particular potential customer printed prominently on the front. Now that’s impressive. And more uses are being dreamed up every day, as they should be.

But beyond the pressroom floor, the direction is perhaps not so clear. With variable imaging, prepress should take less time, but might require more skill. My perception is that extremely short runs on a very quick turnaround will continue to be poor fits with an outside processor. Finishing on those jobs will most likely be done in-house. And I think that’s okay, because I don’t imagine this slice of the market will replace current jobs, but will function instead as additions. The process will work much like the rise of the cell phone, which hasn’t replaced your home phone, but has added to your phone usage in general.

Still, I think the customization market does offer business to postpress houses. More handwork might be needed, or more creative die-cutting that changes several times on one job. The options are there. We simply must discover how to use known methods on new products to make them unique.