I visited a retail clothing store with my fiancée today. I went in because she wanted to see the shop, but I quickly got lost in the way the décor of the store, its wall and floor signage, lighting, wall paint colors, merchandise tags, music, and avant garde employee attire all came together to create a coherent, bold atmosphere. (Let's call the store B&B, to make it somewhat of a hypothetical example of good marketing and design.)
I read an interesting article today about the future of digital custom printing. It seems to be very, very bright. The article on WhatTheyThink.com, entitled “drupa 2012, the Inkjet drupa...Again? The New Face of Print” notes that “...there were 46.1 billion color digital pages printed in 2010, and that number will jump to nearly 130 billion by 2015.”
A colleague brought to my attention an article from Zdnet.com, “The Print Tech That's Turning Saving Pixels into Saving Millions,” written by David Shamah and reprinted from Tel Aviv Tech.
As I've said many times in past PIE Blog posts, I'm always looking for growth sectors in commercial printing. Not only do I believe they exist, but I'm also seeing proof in the articles I read every day.
My fiancee brought home new printed sheets last week, and I was truly impressed with the strides that have been made in digital large format printing on fabrics. The sheets were covered with handwritten letters and images of envelopes spread across the large, queen-size format. Handwritten text in some areas included drop shadows in gray type, and there were stamps printed in orange and black.
Wikipedia defines an annual report as “a comprehensive report on a company's activities throughout the preceding year.” It is “intended to give shareholders and other interested people information about the company's activities and financial performance.”