Posted on Thu, Sep 02, 2010
by Eric Owen
A century ago, Henry Ford would sell you a car any color you liked, as long as it was black.
Fifty years ago, several hundred million Chinese could choose any color Mao suit, as long as it was blue, gray, or khaki.
Now color is everywhere and choice is everywhere, too. In America and around the world, consumers want choice and individuality in every aspect of their lives.
In the end, that’s why digital printing is so important. It’s not just a technology. It’s an approach, an ethos, almost a philosophy. It moves printing from being the most inflexible and dictatorial of manufacturing activities towards a world of color, choice, individuality, and relevance.
Think of a printed piece that could not be improved and made more valuable with imaginative use of variable data. There will be some content – government regulations and so on – that will need to be unalterably fixed and set in stone. But think of the level of personalization and choice we all now take for granted in an online setting, and think how different our printed materials would be if they reflected our individuality the same way.
The printed newspaper on my breakfast table could be pieced together to include the subjects that interest me and omit the astrology, cartoons, and celebrity gossip that don’t float my boat at that time of day.
The catalogs I’m sent could show me more of what I wanted to see and less of the stuff I always skip over.
We’ve seen preferences driving offerings on the web. Now we’ll be seeing it happen more and more in print.
This is a sea change that couldn’t start until the costs of digital printing came right down. And it wouldn’t be welcome if consumers and B2B customers felt they were being fed tacky, low-grade material, so quality is important, too. That’s why the launch of Kodak’s Prosper 5000XL has significance far beyond its immediate commercial value.
Now that we can have digital without compromise, inkjet without the trade-offs, the potential is there for print to steal the limelight – and the budgets – back from the online marketers. It’s nothing personal. It’s just business. But by making what we print more personal, we’re going to be doing a lot more business.
Thank you for following my blog.
In the next few weeks I will be publishing a feature article with more of my thoughts and opinions on the Prosper 5000XL’s digital without compromise and its effect on the business of print. Let me know if you would like me to send it to you.
Posted on Mon, Aug 30, 2010
by Eric Owen
We all know most inventions don’t succeed. Like new restaurants and start-up businesses, most inventions are doomed to fail, disappoint or be ignored.
If you want to build a better mousetrap, the best strategy is usually to take the best existing mousetrap technology and improve on that. There’s less risk and more chance of success.
So why did Kodak go to the trouble of inventing a whole new approach to inkjet technology, rather than refining one of today’s proven systems? Why take the risk?
There’s a simple answer to that. We were prepared to play for high stakes because we saw a way to transform a large part of the printing industry.
Not just change it or make it slightly more efficient.
Transform it.
If we could build an inkjet press that delivered offset-quality color, great productivity, and a cost basis that was directly comparable to offset, our customers could start to migrate offset work onto inkjet. And if the costs really were the same, then they’d be getting the advantages of digital for free.
They’d be able to print variable data and make use of digital’s incredible short-run flexibility without compromising on quality or having to charge premium prices.
It was a seductive idea. But it was a million miles from any starting point that could be reached with existing continuous inkjet or drop-on-demand systems. To get speeds up and prices down so dramatically, we’d need a new technology that could deliver ink droplets many times faster than ever before.
Kodak’s Stream is that new technology.
Traditional continuous inkjet breaks up the flow of ink using a vibrating crystal in the nozzle to form droplets. It’s like tapping the end of a garden hose to break the flow. Unwanted droplets get an electrostatic charge and the charged droplets are steered away by a deflection bib and collected for recycling.
Stream technology uses solid state heaters that flick on and off instantly, changing the surface tension of the high-pressure ink stream and introducing “kinks” that make it break into droplets of different sizes. Big drops land on the paper, exactly where they are aimed, while the smaller drops, where no ink is wanted on the paper, get blown aside by a continuous airflow system.
This is really fast stuff. Stream technology can already form droplets 400 kHz 2.5 times as fast as regular continuous inkjet systems and ten times as fast as the theoretical maximum for drop-on-demand. And there’s plenty of headroom for pushing the speed up. We’re just at the start of what this can do.
Which means, of course, that we’re just at the start of what printers and marketing service providers can do with this equipment.
We’re just at the start of the era when migrating color work from offset to digital is possible, practical, and affordable.
For thousands of printing companies, all round the world, this is the moment the rules were changed – in their favor.
Posted on Thu, Aug 26, 2010
by Eric Owen
A couple of Drupas back, love was in the air. People had glimpsed the possibilities of digital and they loved the idea. It was going to change the business, change the world. “Offset is dead,” they cried.
Well, not quite.
Offset is still alive and kicking and delivering a lot of very fast, high quality work. So that wasn’t quite right.
And there were very few people wandering around at that time forecasting a credit crunch, with collapsing banks, economic chaos, contracting industries, and disappearing budgets. If they had predicted all that, no-one would have bought them a drink. Who wants to stand next to some Cassandra who’s full of gloom and doom and about to be proved right?
We’re in a different world now, and all of us know it. As business starts to recover, offset and digital are working side by side – the one not dead yet, the other still far from fulfilling its true potential.
But at least digital has carved out some substantial roles for itself. Kodak’s VL workhorse has quickly built up the widest installed base of any inkjet system, though it has never claimed to be an offset-quality press. And the Prosper S10 Imprinting System has been an instant hit.
This award-winning device is a key forerunner of the Prosper 5000XL, as it’s the first commercial product to use Kodak’s revolutionary new Stream continuous inkjet system. Customers I’ve talked to have loved the quality and speed it offers – and the fact that they can easily move it across from one web press to another. A 4-inch wide print head is not a press, but it has been the test bed and proving ground for the Prosper 5000XL’s core technology.
Because of this, Kodak and its customers can already point to tens of millions of pages produced using the Stream system. It is a wholly new technology, and new technologies carry risks, right through to the point where they are pushed hard, day after day, in a real commercial environment.
That’s been done now, and it was the S10 that proved it all worked as it should. As one of my colleagues said: “Great. The inventing is over. Now it’s just engineering.”
What Kodak has engineered, using Stream and other new technologies like ink with micro-milled colorant particles, is a fully-featured, fast, and flexible printing press.
It’s digital, but without the compromises we’ve all had to accept in the past. So it’s real offset quality. It gives great productivity. And it can deliver offset-style work at offset prices. But if you ask me why I’m really excited about it, that’s not the reason. The real punch line is the potential. All this is just the beginning.
Posted on Mon, Aug 23, 2010
by Eric Owen
You want to be a marketing services provider? Why not? No-one seems to want to be a straightforward printer any more.
The logic is impeccable.
Add value to your clients’ marketing efforts and you’ll boost sales. Boost your clients’ sales and they’ll increase their profits, step up their activity and come back to you with bigger plans and bigger budgets.
No holes in the argument there.
But there are one or two factors that could get in the way of that dream scenario.
One is competition. You’re not the only one who’s thinking aggressively along those lines.
The second is method. How are you going to add clear, measurable value that’s directly attributable to your work? Probably by adding something that was not there before – such as variable data and subtler levels of personalization – or by offering quality, turnaround times, and flexibility your client has never dreamed of. Either of those approaches should work, in the right circumstances.
That just leaves one little question. How?
I’ve watched digital make its mark on the industry, picking up all kinds of high value, high quality niche work and playing a vital role in the development of high speed variable data tasks like transpromo campaigns.
What I haven’t seen is digital inkjet printing elbow its way into the mainstream. I haven’t seen customers migrating jobs that demand high quality, high speed and low cost off offset and onto inkjet presses. And we all know why.
Digital has always meant trade-offs. Get the quality, but sacrifice the productivity and take the hit on cost. Get the chance to add value by using variable data, but watch the quality go down. It seemed to be written into the rules – you couldn’t have both ends of the seesaw up at the same time.
That’s why I’m so excited about our new Prosper 5000XL. Suddenly, you CAN have it all. Kodak’s marketing people came up with the line “Digital without compromise”, and for once they’ve got it dead right.
If you want to be a genuine added value marketing services provider, you’re in the right place at the right time. Digital, without the compromises, is going to get you there.