I had a rather intense discussion today with a custom printing vendor who had offered to trim a step-down brochure printing job by hand to save my client the cost of the die, but who was now having trouble due to the complexity of the job.
I just read three interesting articles about the future of magazines: “The Future of Magazines” by Thad McIlroy, as presented on the website The Future of Publishing, “Size and Segmentation of the Magazine-Publishing Market,” by Jay Delahousay, of Demand Media, and “The State of the News Media,” by the Pew Research Center. All three are available on the Internet, and I would encourage you to search for them.
As a commercial printing broker and designer, I think that certain avenues for graphic design are still expanding, in spite of the drop off in others. I've read a lot over the last few years about the growth in label production (particularly personalized labels), flexible packaging, and large format printing.
I read a short article yesterday about digital enhancements IKEA has incorporated into its 2013 print catalog, plus IKEA's strong commitment to maintaining a print catalog presence along with its digital marketing initiatives. What I find interesting is that in an era of dour predictions forecasting the death of custom printing, some avenues for print seem to actually be growing. Here is an example of one: the print catalog.
A book printing client of mine reviewed the hard-copy proofs of her job today, and a few issues came up that I thought you might find interesting and instructive. She found four pages that needed simple text edits and one correction on the back cover of the print book.
Large format printing is big now, not just in terms of size but also in terms of popularity. Just look at the sides of buildings, buses, and cars, decked with large format print work. Ink jet printing has revolutionized advertising in the last decade. Therefore, it behooves us to understand some of the options for finishing, within the arena of large format printing, as well as understanding how the ink is sprayed onto the paper or plastic substrate.