Last week I had an interesting chat with someone who's working on a new project that, if successful, is likely to generate lots of additional printed items by the simple expedient of making it easy for people to do just that via social media.

Shall look forward to learning more about it, and will of course be writing about it properly once it's officially made public.

Per blogs passim, I love hearing about how digital media success stories have resulted in a desire for real, tangible products. The Angry Birds range of toys, books, t-shirts, stationery - and now playing cards - being a case in point.

Elsewhere it's good to see online behemoths making the most of the media mix in terms of their own marketing. Via IOS/Lateral Group's Jason Cromack, who highlighted this blog by John Battelle, I learned that Facebook is using direct mail to promote its advertising options.

And Google is also known to send out the odd DM piece, too. Actually the volumes are rather more than "odd".

Talking of Google, while studying today's Google Doodle homage to Gideon Sundback, inventor of the zipper, I stumbled upon something else - the Google Doodle store. Here I can buy t-shirts, posters, mugs and more featuring what seems to be the complete archive of Doodle artworks. I'm already thinking of someone who might well like an Eadward J Muybridge t-shirt.

The Doodle store is powered by Zazzle, a remarkable company that came to my attention a couple of years back when it cropped up in a Help Line question.

My point in all of this is that if we view demand for print wearing blinkers based on what was the bread-and-butter print work of old, then it's easy to focus on decline. But there really is jam today and tomorrow for those whose eyes are open to a whole world of potential new print opportunities.