Happy 564th

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By Frank Romano

December 18, 2007 -- 2008 is the 564th birthday of the printing industry. Born in the heart of medieval Europe, printing spread throughout the world and brought literacy and learning to everyone touched by it.

Printing survived cinema, radio, and television. Printing survived censorship, poor writing, and bad ideas. Printing survived war and peace, boom and bust. Printing survived mechanization, automation, and interminable technology upheaval.

Printing will survive the Internet and e-books and all those misguided souls who say that “Print is dead.” Print is more alive than at any other time in its history.

Because you cannot achieve with pixels on a screen the look and feel of ink on paper. A beautiful brochure says as much about the product it promotes as the text and images. The medium truly is the message.

Try to reach every person in a selected community by e-mail—there is no way. However, you can get a mailing list by zip code and mail to them. Printing is democratic in that it is accessible by anyone, anytime, anyplace without special readers or energy.

Read a book to a child. The book becomes the embodiment of what the book taught. The child will treasure the book, but will not treasure an electronic file and fall asleep with it.

Some print will decline as we substitute electronic methods. This is to be expected as technologies clash and certain printed products lose to more effective approaches. But new printed products will evolve to fill the void because printing technology is not standing still.

If all printing disappeared and someone invented communication on paper, the world would proclaim it to be a marvelous invention.

That already happened - 564 years ago and the future of print will still be print.

- Frank Romano

What do you think? Please send feedback to Frank by e-mailing him at fxrppr@rit.edu

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Frank Romano has spent over 40 years in the printing and publishing industries. Many know him best as the editor of the International Paper Pocket Pal or from the hundreds of articles he has written for publications from North America and Europe to the Middle East to Asia and Australia.

He is the author of over 44 books, including the 10,000-term Encyclopedia of Graphic Communications (with Richard Romano), the standard reference in the field. His books on QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, and PDF workflow were among the first in their fields. He has authored most of the books on digital printing. His latest book is the 800-page textbook for Moscow State University.

He has founded eight publications, serving as publisher or editor for TypeWorld/Electronic Publishing (which ended in its 30th year of publication), Computer Artist, Color Publishing, The Typographer, EP&P, and both the NCPA and PrintRIT Journals. His columns appear monthly in the Digital Printing Report. He is the editor of the EDSF Report.

Romano lectures extensively, having addressed virtually every club, association, group, and professional organization at one time or another. He is one of the industry's foremost keynote speakers.

He has consulted for major corporations, publishers, government, and other users of digital printing and publishing technology. He wrote the first report on on-demand digital printing in 1980 and ran the first conference on the subject in 1985. He has conceptualized many of the workflow and applications techniques of the industry and was the principal researcher on the landmark EDSF study, Printing in the Age of the Web and Beyond.

He has been quoted in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Times of London, USA Today, Business Week, Forbes, and many other newspapers and publications, as well as on TV and radio. He has partnered with InfoTrends on strategic information for the printing industry.

He continues to teach courses at RIT and other universities and works with students on unique research projects.