Would you/will you encourage your own kids to join the printing industry?

Yesterday I spent some time at the Stationers' Foundation annual Careers Day. Coincidentally, before setting off to Stationers' Hall (and without the event even being mentioned) a contact remarked that "he wouldn't be recommending a career in print" to his teenage son. As it happens this particular contact is involved in a notably difficult sub-sector of the industry, which no doubt goes some way to explaining his sentiments.

But watching the students milling around at the Stationers' event did make me ponder this issue. It was amusing to see that the biggest draws (while I was there at least) involved some pretty rudimentary technology. The young folk clustered eagerly around an Adana in order to print their own greetings cards; while a foil blocking press was in constant use adding initials to leather bookmarks. That said, I must add that Canon's digitally-printed Lily Allen posters were also much in demand.

Students were captivated by the tactile and the stuff they could smell and touch, whereas a somewhat static display from Adobe was notable for the colourful button badges on offer, but little else. To my mind this illustrates the challenge. How can we best get across to upcoming generations the scale and scope of the different career opportunities in what is an increasingly high-tech industry?

Putting aside the current malaise, I truly believe that print in the wider sense, along with its related disciplines, offers some great career opportunities for the next David Mitchell or Mike Taylor lurking among the spiky-haired ranks of today's students. But at grassroots level, do print's parents feel likewise?