Category Archive

Pete Gjerness, long-time in-plant print executive, tackles the main questions that drive requirements for evaluating an inkjet press.

There’s more at stake than pretty print – files that are inefficient, or just plain bad cost a lot of people time and money. Designing for inkjet comes with great responsibility – are you ready? Or should we find you a radioactive spider?

The current challenges with online advertising underscore the need for print including direct mail, on-statement marketing and point-of-purchase advertising to drive marketing return on investment. Inkjet is a key player in this mix.

To successfully integrate inkjet into your print workflow, focus on 8 key elements to create a clearer path to success. Whether you are in high speed, industrial or packaging, the Great Eight will empower a process, reduce production preparation and down time and pave the way to on-board projects with more profitability.

Inkjet technology serves a vast array of segments. While the needs of each segment vary, the continuous announcement cycle might leave you confused about which innovation applies to the type of business you operate. Not every announcement you read nor every innovation that gets the spotlight may apply to your business. What fits for Transaction and Transitional printing?

Shift can happen anywhere in the printing process, but if the process is set up with visual expectations which can’t possibly be matched, the process is set up for disappointment. Here’s how to help internal and external designers create files with a better understanding of Machine, Ink and Media or MIM.

Production inkjet printing page volumes outstripped both traditional and toner-based page volumes in the first quarter of 2019 for the first time in the history of printing.

Since the dawn of the age of high-speed inkjet presses buyers of those presses have been encouraged to buy their ink from the hardware vendor. Good reasons were given, including concerns about contaminating print heads and print quality. The reasons still stand – but options are emerging.

Inkjet is still new to the masses and its differences are easier to “see” than verbally explain. Seems crazy, but this is why we use these multi-million dollar print workflows for one or two finished proofs.

Inkjet Insight maps out I.T. Strategies North American print volume data to explore opportunities for production inkjet technologies. The map looks packaging, publishing, and document application categories. Production inkjet has been successful with applications that have light ink coverage printed on uncoated stocks … namely, transactional, direct mail, and some book applications. Many of these applications were converted from high-speed roll-fed toner devices and inkjet provided economic and process benefits and by adding color. Inkjet also provided the ability to add value to printed pages. It’s useful to look at the entire market to help put this area of success in perspective and to think about the requirements for expanding adoption.

Few companies have embraced the concept that production workflow in a competitive organization is something that needs to be continuously improved. Only when we understand and accept the limits of our workflow can we be cognizant of ways to improve it.

Part Three in the Inkjet Economics series by Elizabeth Gooding. This time discussing how simple assumptions about timing can have a big impact on evaluation and profitability.

Building your own inkjet press might seem like a radical approach. Each year brings more options for speed, print resolution, and finished print sizes in both cut-sheet and web-fed formats. For some companies the option of building a custom press provides opportunities for differentiation that are worth considering.

Regardless of whether you are new to production inkjet or trying to work through production challenges, success often comes with a well-rounded approach that includes filling knowledge gaps and executing critical process steps.  

We are about halfway through the series that leads us to an understanding of CIELAB and how it is used in managing color. In this post John Seymour takes a humorous look at how color could be managed using the Munsell color space, and the limitations that CIELAB can address.

After the trainers leave and before you develop buyer’s remorse, there are tricks to living with your press that will allow you to maintain your inkjet excitement. That is the purpose of this series, starting with this first episode on dealing with ghosts.

Print samples are usually fulfilled as part of the sale process. But what do you do if you are just trying to get your own executives to the table? Here are a couple of options.

The catalog market looks unexpectedly bright for 2019, both due to retail brands embracing direct mail and advances in inkjet technology to meet the needs of this challenging application segment.

Inkjet Insight considers developments in the production inkjet market for 2019. This is Part 2 of a series and covers product news that we anticipate throughout the year. Part 1 covered topics including supply chain issues, page volume growth strategies, and new market opportunities.

With the complexity of Internet of Things (IoT) networks expanding and the cost and frequency of breaches climbing, printers must take advantage of every resource to protect their security and their reputations. We discuss 2018 trends in security and print environments including links to research from Ponemon, Aberdeen and Inkjet Insight.