Where in the world is Frank? Episode 1

The Circumspect Circumnavigator

By Frank Romano

April 4th, 2008 - On January 13, 2008 I embarked on the trip of my lifetime -- an around the world cruise on the new Cunard Queen Victoria, en route to my 9th Drupa. While other passengers enjoy cucumber sandwiches and tea in the Queen’s Room, I have been teaching a distance-delivered course, writing reports, and meeting with printers in the 23 countries we visit.

I have made presentations in Auckland, New Zealand, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, Australia, plus others in the Pacific Rim, from Singapore and Kuala Lumpur to Vietnam and Dubai. In Vietnam, I spoke to 150 printers, representing about 10 percent of the entire Vietnamese printing industry -- all in one room. After we land in Southampton at the end of April, I have a speaking tour in Italy, Belgium, Poland, Prague, and Vienna, then on to Drupa, via Mainz, where I will pay homage at the Gutenberg Museum.

By the time you read this I will be in Dubai, after over twelve weeks at sea, with three weeks to go. Thus, I am starting this series after I have seen and heard enough to talk about. It will not be a travelogue as such, although I will provide some local color. Rather, this short series is a look at print around the world, or at least the places in the world that the ship visits. Like Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle I have formed some opinions about the evolution of print (but not print creationism).

I have learned a lot about world trade, global competition, technology adoption, and more from many people all over the world. The ship can hold 2,000 passengers if every bed was filled, but we have about 1,800 souls. About 800 of us are on the full world cruise and others are on for segments -- New York to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Sydney, Sydney to Singapore, Singapore to Dubai, and then Dubai to Southampton. 31 nationalities are represented, with the majority from Australia, UK, and USA.

We left New York City on a clear cold night where all three Cunard Queens met at the Statue of Liberty. We then stopped in Ft Lauderdale. In the first few weeks we visited Aruba, where most major printing is done back in Amsterdam, transited the Panama Canal, visited Puntarenas, Costa Rica where the “ticos” are very friendly and most printers are centralized in the capital of San Jose, and hit Acapulco where printers are outnumbered by cliff divers.

In Manzanillo, Mexico I visited the Incan pyramids in Colima and a quick printer with equipment just as old. In Los Angeles I did a luncheon presentation for 76 members of the Printing Industries of Southern California. There was simultaneous translation. At my table three companies had just acquired their first digital printer. They told me they no longer want to know about how great digital printing is, they want to know how to make money with it.

They had to forcibly get me back on the ship in Honolulu, a beautiful city. The Arizona Memorial was quite moving. Hawaiian printers rival their continental counterparts and tourism and agriculture are the main industries.

I was advanced from polywog to shellback in the ceremony officiated by King Neptune and the QV Captain as we crossed the equator. I was slapped with fish and covered with green slime (which was later on the menu . . . in French).

Pago Pago, American Samoa is a 13-mile long island where most printers are screen printers and residents bury their relatives in the front and back yards. All I had was a swing set for the kids. Lautoka, Fiji was like Paradise and everyone says “Bula” which is like “Aloha” on steroids, and printing was the last thing on my mind. I see why Fletcher Christian mutinied. Most of the Fijiian printing is done in New Zealand and Australia.

My hat is off to the earliest seafarers who risked their lives to discover and map the world. The South Pacific is the largest expanse of water on the planet. In the Carribean we passed many cruise ships and freighters. We saw almost none of them in the vast South Pacific but as we approached New Zealand and Australia, their number increased. Around and in Hong Kong, their number was unbelievable.

RIT students
In 1974 I took the Queen Elizabeth 2 to Europe and visited the print shop on board. There was a 12x18 AM Multilith with a shallow fountain which caused the water to slosh out as the shipped rolled. The printer was from Liverpool and appeared to have worked with Gutenberg.

In 1985, the ship was refurbished with electrically-driven engines, which effectively ended the age of steam ships. Also, at that time Cunard and RIT partnered to create the most unique cooperative education program on the planet. RIT students are trained in Rochester and flown to any of the now three ships in the Cunard fleet, the QE2, Queen Mary 2, or Queen Victoria. The QE2 has been sold to Dubai, but in 2010 the new Queen Elizabeth comes on line.

On this this trip, Arina Kotlyarskaya and James Wegner are the RIT printers. Arina, now Chief Printer, has been in some of my classes, but James has been lucky enough to escape them. The print shop is located amidships on the A deck and off limits to passengers.

The QE2 upgraded to a Heidelberg GTO but that was changed to a Printmaster, which served the QE2 and QM2 very well. Carnival went with two Hamada presses on the QV (for backup) but on the trial runs of the ship, both had to get their sea legs. They use a run-of-the-mill laser printer for plates but halftones are muddy. A Xante system would be better for their purposes.

There is a cutter and a folder/stitcher but most printed sheets are collated and folded by the room stewards as they place them in passenger cabins. Waiters place menus in leather folders.

Adobe InDesign is the program of choice. It was Pagemaker for the longest time.

The printers are busy from morning to night. They get newspaper feeds of US, UK, German, Japanese, and other newspapers. When we crossed the equator, they printed every passengers name on pre-printed certificates -- 1,800 of them.

They print invitations, forms, and a plethora of other material. The biggest job is the list of all passengers, which is saddle wire bound. It is truly a floating quick printing company. Their workday is from 9am to 9pm. Although many cruise lines have placed passenger information on cabin TVs, including menus, paper is still the Cunard communications medium of choice.

Arina leaves the ship after Singapore and will have training responsibility for the 17 Princess ships. On the first day on board I ran into her and her mother. Cunard has a program where family members can accompany crew if there is room in the cabin. Mom was on until Los Angeles.

During my visits to the print shop there was a constant flow of people coming in with copy for menus, special events, even Valentine’s Day cards. Arina and James have to balance a variety of requirements and daily deadlines and they always find a way to get the jobs done.

I am always proud to see students succeed both inside and outside the classroom. Just being on board with them makes the trip a little more special.

It was only when I reached Malaysia and Asia that I realized how the print world has changed. Because we focus on so-called commercial printing we fail to see how package printing has affected print volumes. When Thailand decides to package their fish rather than send it to another country to be packaged, it means that a lot of printing moves to Thailand. Over half of all printing in Singapore is exported, and that includes tons of gravure-printed packaging.

When you see thousands of containers stacked at container ports you realize that world trade is important, but it shifts manufacturing to other countries, and with it, printing. When China outsources printing to Vietnam because labor rates are lower, we can sense that the world is changing faster than we realize.

It has truly been a voyage of discovery for me and I have learned a lot about countries and people and printing and trade and more. You may say “I only sell printing down the street,” but today, with advanced telecommunications and transportation, China is literally down the street.

The next article will cover printing in New Zealand, Australia, and countries in the Pacific Rim.

You can track Frank’s location here

http://www.richtextandgraphics.com/Wheres_Frank.html

The Queen Victoria bridge cam is here (with lots of pictures of water)

http://www.cunard.co.uk/bridgecam/qv_cam1.asp

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