Obviously there’s the small matter of whether the ‘N’ word will finally change the print industry as we know it come the end of the year. But according to our experts, 2014 will also be the year of inkjet developments, inline digital finishing, new colour standards and faster, cheaper 3D printing. Oh, and a new trade show entitled ‘IT’ and time travel, if Frank Romano’s more mischievous predictions are anything to go by…
John Charnock, director at Print Research International
”Inkjet, Scodix and Highcon and photonic printing will come good this year.”
"We’re two years out of Drupa. Landa may not have quite got there, but a lot of the stuff that was launched at Drupa is now coming good. Ipex always has been the real world after Drupa.
Nanotechnology still promises to be extremely exciting. Alongside that I think inkjet will come of age this year. You’re certainly seeing that in books and in direct mail and Kodak Prosper installations. We’re seeing more and more substrates that are cost-effective to use with inkjet.
Finishing is critical in all of that and finishing is absolutely one of the things that is coming good for the digital age. It used to be about trying to bolt on a traditional finishing line, but now the digital lines are coming forward with very fast makereadies and very fast format changes. The Duplos and Horizons of this world have put more automation in their lines. Then, on the industrial side, Kolbus is doing a fantastic job on its book lines, and Muller Martini has taken onboard digital manufacturing
of books.
I’m really excited to see where LumeJet photonic printing is going for the photobook market. The other thing that will really come good this year is Scodix and Highcon. Those have been around for a while but they’re now adding glitter. So again it’s about digital technology adding value in finishing.
I find the opportunities of print electronics absolutely fascinating. What is futuristic is taking a piece of cardboard and attaching actuators to turn it into a speaker. It will get easier for printers to apply these kinds of things. You can do it silkscreen, litho and flexo at the moment, but not digitally. But it won’t take long, I’m sure, before the digital press manufacturers provide an ink that’s electronically capable.”
Mike Fairley, founder of Labels and Labelling consultancy
”Brands will get even more interested in personalised labels and packaging… we’ll see more inline digital finishing.”
"Over the past few years print technologies have advanced so fast that they’ve moved beyond the thinking of most print providers and even brand owners. The opportunities provided by digital printing are only just coming to the fore in package printing.
We’re looking at bringing the potential of short runs, versioning and personalisation, which have been evolving in labels over the past few years, into the world of package printing over the next five to 10 years. I think the Coke campaign has stimulated massive interest in that potential. Heineken has just announced it’s going to do a project.
At the moment for cartons the interest is very much in digital offset, which is largely HP. It’s where Landa’s nano printing will be. It’s not quite where Xeikon is with its food-safe toner technology. Inkjet is certainly not of interest to cartons at the present time. The quality’s not there. But it is becoming very interesting for flexible packaging – the small sachets and pouches.
But then the research energies of inkjet vendors are very much in providing food-safe inks. They’re beginning to get there. The same applies to some degree to other digital vendors. It’s all moving very very rapidly.
Whereas up until now, digital presses have been standalone machines, what we saw at LabelExpo was people like Xeikon putting carton cutting, creasing and forming machines inline with the digital press. And you had HP working with many of the big partners in finishing technologies. Even conventional press manufacturers are now looking to put digital printing and inline sachet conversion onto the ends of the presses. So I think inline finishing will become much more interesting over the coming year.”
Phil Reeves, managing director of additive manufacturing consultancy Econolyst
”Industrial 3D printers will get faster and cheaper and use even more materials.”
"We’ll definitely see professional 3D printing machines get faster over the next year, without a shadow of a doubt. Typically what we’re seeing is a slight attrition in the cost of machines on a year-by-year basis, but an increase in productivity. The cost of the professional machines has reduced somewhat, but that’s no more than about 5% in the past year or so, and I think we’ll continue to see a slow 5% reduction.
What’s really moving fast is the number of materials available. That’s just exploded. All sorts of companies have cropped up with different materials. Nylon wasn’t possible before, and some interesting eco materials like polymers and ceramic dust are coming out. And you can now get systems to make your own material from your waste. The Ethical Filament Foundation has been launched, looking at sourcing filament from waste pickers in the third world.
The jury is still out though on what this all means to 2D printers for the coming year. I wouldn’t say there’s been a ground swell of printers jumping on this. The issue is demand, and some companies have been doing this for 25 years already.
One area printers might get into is prototyping, whether it’s aerospace, automotive, electronics, art and design or fashion. The second area is 3D printing for someone selling online, dolls for example. Those companies typically aren’t interested in investing in hardware themselves.
The main thing I predict happening this year in 3D print is a wealth of retail brands offering digital data online. We’re already seeing the likes of Nokia putting designs for phone cases online for people to print. Consumers will become very interested, but then some will get commercial printers to actually make the products. There’s a symbiosis between consumer and professional 3D printing. I think one feeds the other.”
Frank Romano, Professor Emeritus at the School of Print Media, Rochester Institute of Technology
”QuarkXPress will see a major return to prominence… Quick printers will use time travel”
"Here is my list of fearless predictions for next year and beyond:
- Instead of toys and prototype parts, 3D printing will be able to ‘print’ furniture and even small houses. It will get weird when 3D printers make other 3D printers.
- Some time in the future, we will discover that paper is a miraculous product that enables communication and recycles back to paper.
- Foldable display screens will be invented. Remove them from your pocket, unfold them, and connect to the internet instantly.
- Plateless printing will really take off. Think re-imageable image carriers like the Dicoweb... that actually work.
- CIP10 will become a standard that everyone will embrace without tricks and proprietary approaches.
- QuarkXPress will see a major return to prominence now that Adobe is forcing us onto the cloud.
- Three offset press manufacturers will eventually merge.
- Three digital printing suppliers will eventually merge.
- Three finishing manufacturers will eventually merge.
- The three resulting companies will then merge.
- Inkjet will continue to offer more alternatives than we can deal with. Inkjet will keep us busy this year as more and more devices are introduced.
- Inkjet tattooing will be a new business opportunity.
- Quick printers will use time travel to deliver jobs yesterday. Customers will still complain this is not fast enough.
- Amazon drones will deliver products to your door. Harrods Predator drones will shoot them down.
- Pantone will patent the visible colour spectrum.
- The colour of the year will be white.
- All remaining trade shows will merge and be called IT. “Where are you going?” “I’m going to IT.”
- Chinese printing will become too expensive and their print needs will be satisfied by printers in Birmingham.
- Lastly, print will still be with us in the future and all those who said it would die will have died.”
Paul Sherfield, founder of The Missing Horse Consultancy
”Printers will need to get their heads around ISO 12647-2… new pre-press launches will continue featuring tweaks only.”
"One big thing is the final release of the next version of ISO 12647-2. That’s to recognise the very bright paper with optical brightening agents. People are going to have to be aware of that being launched in the first quarter of 2014. It means people are going to have to change dotgain profiles on presses, and just be aware that they may be getting files colour managed to these new standards. So it’s really a sort of heads-up.
The software people have will all be okay with this. It’s a major change, but people will be able to adjust to it. Printers could, though, do with being more aware of colour management and how to use what they have better in 2014. Pre-press and colour management kit is pretty mature already really. Good software has been out there for five or six years.
Even if you look at Agfa’s recent launch of Apogee 8, which came out at Drupa, it’s a nice improvement, but it’s incremental. Most of what the big software suppliers are doing, both in the CTP world and the Quarks and Adobes, is just speeding things up and adding a few nice features. Most of the improvements coming in with workflows will be looking at how they can work with digital technology as well as presses. If you look at Adobe, it’s a lot about preparing files for other media.
So I think printers just need to be more aware of what’s out there. The whole area of device link profiles is still not well adopted in the UK. A lot of the later presses come with this built in, but printers don’t generally use it.
There are also other standards coming out this year covering RGB and process-agnostic printing workflows, which people should keep an eye on. It’s having seven CYMK master profiles, which don’t directly relate to any printing process, you can use when you’re not sure where your images are going.
That gives you an idea of how the ISO TC130 committee is thinking. It’s thinking four or five years ahead to where the industry will be. And that’s digital- and inkjet-based for a lot of mainstream printing. We’ve seen the alliance between Fuji and Heidelberg and I’ve got printers who are not buying new presses at the moment and just wondering what’s going to happen with the larger format Landa type presses. That’s really going to be a game changer.”
