Welcome to the 2013 Wide-format report

There's no doubt that wide-format print, in all its many guises, has been relatively resilient against the tough economic climate.

The reasons behind this resilience are almost as varied as the sectors that utilise wide-format print as part of their marketing mix. In fact, it’s this broad range of applications that also make wide-format a massive area of interest for commercial printers looking to diversify their product offering into a field that offers a fairly modest barrier to entry.

To illustrate this point, we’ve dedicated three pages of this year’s report to entry-level systems, which offer wide-format newbies a great introduction to this growing market, as well as a similarly themed piece on the application du jour – textiles printing.

However, if wide-format digital is not quite a mature technology, it’s certainly well established, so for older hands we’ve got some great features on subjects ranging from the importance, or otherwise, of droplet size, the myriad substrate options and what customers really want, direct from the horse’s mouth.

We’ve also combined this year’s report with our Fespa 2013 show preview for the first time, because with the world’s leading wide-format show literally on your doorstep at the end of this month, well, it seemed silly not to.

I hope all these elements ensure that this year’s Wide-format report is a must-read for anyone interested in the sector – and if you’re not interested, it hopefully illustrates why you should be.