Silas Amos

Digital Print. A Bigger Spectrum.I

N

ASSOCIATION

WITH

First printed November 2015,on an HP Indigo Digital Press

You’ll already know that digital print allows each ‘copy’ to be unique. This one is yours.

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Digital Print. A Bigger Spectrum.

Silas Amos

IN

ASSOCIATION

WITH

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ForewordIdeasLimitlessAgilityScale & SurfaceIndividuality PerspectivesBrave Everything

by Mark Bonner

a bigger spectrum of opportunity

editions without end

thinking small and thinking big

the new creative canvasses

interactive and personalised print

a spectrum of expert opinion

new world, new rules

you ever wanted to know about print (but were afraid to ask)

You might not have realised it, but print has been quietly re-fashioned via technology in our lifetimes. Like us, ‘Print’ is mutating too. Today it’s possible to print directly onto walls, or to project onto water vapour. We can replace our message every second, via the Internet. We scan and shop with it. We are tracked by it. We animate it, we share it, we augment it, we interact with it, we geotag it and we can distribute it globally in an instant and watch and learn as our audience adds to it.

Print isn’t the past, it’s the future. Print is changing shape and we’re changing with it.

Now is the perfect time to be creative. The ecosphere we work within can be compared to the Industrial revolution of the 19th century. The ferocious pace of change that delivered mechanisation via steam, is mirrored by the rise of the screens. The wheel continues to turn, and we turn with it. We evolve to revolve. Sir Christopher Wren was a world-class botanist, mathematician, writer, philosopher as well as the renowned architect we know well. Change is the prism that splits light. We’re brighter for it. Once again, the polymath is on the rise.

Our audience is on the move and we need to move with them. Which media will they consume our story in first? Our ideas need multiple front doors. We need to catch our target in a triangulation of crossfire to get our messages heard. And no one knows where the ‘magic bullet’ will come from. The old model has been turned upside down from the rigorous pyramid of consistency we preached in the 80s and 90s. The logo is no longer king. Now, we consume brands via their events, content and conversations and checkout of the experience via the logo before returning to see how things have changed. The pyramid has been inverted and our relationship has deepened. We love brands that entertain us, we enjoy the dialogue and we buy to take part. We are addicted to change because we love playing the game.

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Re-imagine what you can do with your abilities in today’s world. The seismic effect you can have is limited only by your own determination. The modern creative will become a jack of all trades, and master of most. Flexible in the extreme, not only will you be central to a brand’s very way of being, but you could change the way the world thinks and acts.

We instinctively defined ourselves by a category or a skill, but in an era where convergence is all encompassing, the only discipline that matters is excellence. Our industry is thriving thanks to a new generation of creatives and clients that collaborate to elaborate, colliding the disciplines in order to cut through. It’s a mind-set we need to encourage amongst emerging talent. It’s ‘No Fear’ creativity without boundaries for a new generation of mutant, dangerous, young minds.

Clients today want to be partners with creativity. They best understand how we can be their secret weapons, their competitive advantage. They want a flexible, creative ally, who can help them shape their brands, products or services in myriad ways. They want joined-up thinking, not surface decoration. Prototyping is replacing caution, and we have technology to thank for our liberation. Despite a growing bravery, age-old needs remain: they want work that matters, to be talked about, to be remembered.

Modern brands need to be constantly sculpted to fit their evolving audiences and designers have all the tools. We have society on one hand, art on the other, and problem solving in our hearts. Our abilities collide the disciplines.

Technology is our time.

Foreword by Mark Bonner

In this technological revolution, we’ve an opportunity to make work that matters. We’ll need to be a many headed hydra, a kind of creative mutant who knows no fear; we’ll work online, on mobile, in social media, in apps, with strategy, on naming, via campaign, events, PR, interiors, on issues like sustainability, social responsibility, new product development, with copywriting, typography, sound, film and last but by no means least... good old-fashioned print.

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What gunpowder

did for war the printing press has done for

the mind.Wendell Phillips

Wendell Phillips was a nineteenth century American abolitionist, advocate for Native Americans, orator and lawyer. He had

important ideas, and he needed to get them across to the world.

Some say digital print is the biggest leap in print communication since Guttenberg. It will enable the expression of bolder ideas by those smart enough to figure out the creative and technical possibilities.

This book looks at this widening spectrum of creative and strategic opportunities. I am sure the examples we are sharing, much like the first printed books, will soon look crude and dated. But that’s the exciting part. We are lucky to be living at the birth of a revolution. As Roxy Music put it, “This is tomorrow calling”...

And as Ferris Bueller put it, “Life moves pretty fast sometimes. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it.” The speed at which technology is evolving is dizzyingly fast. It’s hard enough to keep up with the ways our culture and our lives are changing, let alone to fully understand or predict their trajectories. Digital print is only a small fragment of this story, but in all this apparent chaos the fun thing is figuring out how we might connect the dots in entirely new ways.

In a nutshell, the technology of digital print and its consequent implications are easy enough to grasp. Digital print is produced using ‘bits and bytes’ information rather than analogue printing plates. That means that each impression can be completely different within the overall run. Its lower set up costs, quicker speed of turnaround and ability to allow us to change designs on-press make it vastly more flexible than ‘traditional print’. It’s ideal for shorter runs, and tactical creativity. And helpful for the poor designer who realises he has released artwork with a typo just as the first proofs start running off the machine. And the agility of this ‘electronic’ process also means it can directly connect and respond to electronic information flowing in from the consumer – the ‘big data’ marketing is obsessed with harvesting.

That’s the dry version. But the implications of this are immense and exciting.

It means that packaging will have the agility to ‘act’ almost in real time, on both a global and very local level. It means that print can keep pace and integrate with online communication with greater dexterity, direct mail will be truly addressed to the specific recipient, point of sale can keep pace with sports results or the weather.

Ideas and a bigger spectrum of opportunity

Developments in printing and communication technology act as catalysts for shifts in society. Moveable type led to the mass communication of pamphleteers and so to pilgrims on the Mayflower. Lithography was a key propaganda tool for the radicals of the Paris commune amongst others. At the close of the 19th century an explosion in printed advertising wallpapered the city in graphic art. Through this and printed labels for packaging, lithography acted as midwife to the birth of brands. In our own time we can see how the internet is accelerating social change and ferment, not always for the better.

For brand owners, it offers security in risk. Brand managers will be able to test things in market on a micro level before having to place really big bets. This safety net will enable them to take bolder leaps without the accompanying fear that typically results in risk averse but mundane work.

What connects all these points? Limitless Targeting.

It is easy to look at digital print’s ability to create endless iterations, and conclude that it’s about producing lots more ‘stuff’. This is to miss the bigger opportunity – digital print has the ability to deliver a wide reach, but it can also be used with sniper-like precision.

A sales catalogue can harness data in order to trim 200 pages to just the 50 you are actually interested in seeing. In packaging, a ‘brand in the hand’ can now have a much more specific personal relationship with you. In communications, a global message can easily be spoken in a local accent.This is not a case of ‘more is more’ but rather of something that is ‘less, better targeted and more effective’. If each printpiece can be unique, just consider our ability to talk to people on a much more human level.

From my perspective as ‘an agency person’ clients can often be hard to please, and sometimes impossible. In the company where I cut my teeth we had a ‘label’ for such characters: “That guy would only be happy if we could invent him a brand new colour”.

We still can’t quite manage new colours. But the advances in digital print have given us a far bigger range of techniques and opportunities through which brands can operate in genuinely new ways. The only real limit now is our imagination and willingness to experiment and think differently.

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The Printers Dot

10

11

The Universe

The potential of something very small that changes everything is ours to grasp.

Limitless editions without end

As pilot schemes go, ‘Share a Coke With’ was a big one – 800 million labels in the first big push alone. That number is now closer to five billion worldwide (and constantly growing). It began in Australia as a local initiative to reconnect with young people who were no longer ‘feeling the love’ for the brand. On the back of its success, the campaign was replicated in 32 European countries, with 150 popular names used for each one. Digital and analogue techniques and the absolute requirement to faithfully reproduce the brand colour added to the logistical challenge. But this push led to an worldwide 4% rise in sales across the markets where it appeared.

For a brand the size of Coke, that kind of incremental increase in sales is big news indeed. ‘Share a Coke’ is regarded as a watershed moment in branding – when design and advertising collided; when personalisation became mainstream; when a global Goliath became nimble and quick-footed simply by embracing a new and agile technology.

The campaign’s success saw many other brands follow in its wake, typically also using personalisation ideas. In truth, many brands and agencies have claimed they had the same idea ‘years ago’. This was arguably an idea waiting for its time and technology to arrive. What made the Coke design work brilliantly was the adaption of the famous iconography to carry the message.

As brands increasingly use digital print to ‘change up’ their look and feel, those with the strongest iconography will have the best chance to retain recognition whilst playing with ‘the codes’ of their designs. In other words, the stronger a brand’s design backbone, the more flexible its owners can be in how they utilise it.

Limitlesseditions without end

The ‘Share a Coke’ campaign was arguably the ‘tipping point’ when digital print as a creative opportunity on pack registered for many of us. Limited editions had long been used to create a little buzz around a brand. With their series of ‘named’ packs, Coke signalled the shift towards an era of limitless editions.

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Diet Coke

Not a brand to rest on its laurels, Coca-Cola has continued to push the potential of digital print technology for limited editions. In Israel, a packaging design campaign took Diet Cokes ‘stay extraordinary’ tagline as the jumping off point for the next chapter in breakthrough limited editions. With Share a Coke, the company produced thousands of distinctive, personalised packs. With Diet Coke, that notion of personalisation was taken one step further to produce two million absolutely unique patterned bottles. Clearly, such an ambitious initiative would have been impossible had each bottle been designed and artworked ‘by hand’.

*‘Mosaic’ is the word one hears used in conversation

to describe this software. Its more official name

is HP SmartStream Mosaic. Just so you know!

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This is where HP’s Mosaic* software comes in. The programme took 23 base patterns, and turned each of the two million bottles into an ‘only one like it in the world’ design, by changing scale and arrangements within the pattern. The campaign was supported with personalised digitally printed t-shirts, bags and iPod cases produced ‘live’ in retail outlets alongside the bottles.

The idea of such a big brand doing something ‘just for you’ created buzz and increased sales in the test market (2% growth in awareness and 3% increase in sales, if you love statistics). Stocks sold out in three weeks, then started cropping up on ebay at the kind of prices that make sense only to collectors. Uniqueness was clearly meaningful for the brand’s devotees.

Brand

Diet Coke

Agency

HP Indigo Creative Application Dept

Printed on

HP Indigo WS6000 Digital Press by SLR

Image courtesy

Coca-Cola

Mad Decent Block Parties have a mission to bring new genres and cultures to light in the constantly evolving music world, whilst Bud Light’s tagline tells us it’s the brand that’s ‘up for whatever’. Together, they wanted an initiative that would amplify their spontaneous, experimental ‘anything goes’ ethos.

A collective of hand picked artists and designers began by creating 31 ‘seed’ artworks. Mosaic generated a further 200,000 unique interpretations of those artworks, which were shrink-wrapped on cans. The random and original nature of the designs produced by the algorithm played beautifully to Bud Light’s spontaneous personality.

The Bud Light VP Alex Lambrecht told Adweek “There will be more initiatives in the future, what the scale will be, we are exploring.” In other words, one approach to the potential of digital print is to trial on a short or moderate run, figure out what resonates, then scale it up. The technology is well suited for such tactical exploration, and the magic words to get things going are ‘pilot scheme’.

Bud-Light

Bud Light pioneered the use of HP’s Mosaic algorithm to create thousands of unique variations on the Bud Light cans, specifically for sale at Mad Decent Block Parties – a festival series in the USA and Canada.

Brand

Bud Light®

Manufacturer

Anheuser-Busch, a wholly owned subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev

Agency

In house - Regional Artists

Printed on

HP Indigo WS6800 Digital Press by Prime Packaging & Label

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The band’s designers were able to create 501 different tones for their new album covers. On top of background tone, a moiré pattern was placed centre of the artwork, each one very slightly, almost imperceptibly different. The result was 60,000 unique variations for the vinyl and CD sleeves.

One of the designers, Matthew Cooper, told ‘The Creators’ Project’, “If you're holding it in your hand, there is an illusion of movement like a Bridget Riley painting... and if you were flipping through the vinyl racks at a record shop, you might find two that look really, really close in the same way as if you picked up two normal record or CD covers and looked at them, and said, ‘Hold on a second, this one has a fleck of dirt on it, and this one has a slightly different colour because it was made at the beginning of the print run.’”

In the view of the designers, the 60,000 possible print combinations offered a ‘true meeting of minds’ between man and machine.

Hot Chip

Limitless editions don’t need to be eye-poppingly clashing affairs aimed at giving millennials a bigger bang. They can also be subtle if the context demands a more understated sense of discovery. In the case of Hot Chip, the cover art for their 2015 album ‘Why Make Sense?’ was an opportunity to allude to the subtle inconsistencies of vinyl cover art that has arguably been lost in the modern age of perfect digital uniformity.

Brand

Hot Chip

Record Label

Domino

Agency

Sound Performance

Printed on

HP Indigo 5600 Digital Press by Delga Press Ltd

Image courtesy

Domino Recording Co. Ltd.

KT&G

The Korean cigarette brand KT&G used their in house design team to create patterns for their own ‘limitless edition’. In this case the brand is producing some five million unique packs.

Brand

KT&G

Agency

KT&G in house design

Printed on

HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press by INP and Yooshindang

Image courtesy

HP Inc. Korea

The patterns on any specific pack look pretty wild and random, but this is perhaps a design initiative being greater than the sum of its parts. The seemingly un-orchestrated explosion of colours and shapes across so many packs adds up to a vibrant whole for the brand.

Let’s take a detour away from the printing press and into the art gallery. The thrust of late 20th and early 21st century art is one of variations on a theme, from Warhol’s Marilyns to Hirst's coloured spots, Sol Levitt’s geometrical lines to Koons' sculptural celebrations of the banal. Where art leads, popular culture follows, and where popular culture hangs out is exactly the space brands want to be seen in. So now, through a technical ability to create unlimited ‘variations on a theme’ we can see brands behaving with their iconography in the way that artists work with their ‘signature motifs’. Mass production of branding can echo the techniques and behaviour of ‘high art’ and ‘mass culture’. This allows it to be more in the swim of what’s going on, and gives branding a bit of life, a bit of a pulse.

Limitless editions are therefore in tune with the zeitgeist. And this has only become practical for branded packaging and mass print (as opposed to art) with the advent of digital printing. ‘Cool’ is a pretty hard word to pin down (and a risky one use once one is the far side of twenty-five.) But there is something a little bit cool about any brand relaxed enough to play with its iconography and loose enough to be less buttoned up about its image. It gives a sense of the brand being more ‘alive’ because it is using its iconography in creative and fluid ways, rather than remaining static.

Since the industrial revolution, faithfully replicated mass production has been our norm. It appears we are now in the era of intentionally ‘faithless’ reproduction. From the approach famously typified by Henry Ford’s “any colour so long as it is black”, we are shifting to something purposfully random or bespoke. Why?

LimitlessConclusions

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AgilityThinking small and thinking big

The Oxford English Dictionary defines agility as the ability ‘to move quickly and easily’. To be agile is to be ‘quick-witted and shrewd’.

Packaging in particular has always taken an age to go from design to shelf. Digital print gives a process that used to handle with the sluggish pace of a container ship the swift manoeuvrability of a speedboat. This leap in turnaround speed has implications beyond packaging into other channels of course, but where once ‘360’ campaigns often tended to exclude the lumbering beast of packaging, now ‘the brand in the hand’ has the ability to join the party. Beyond pack digital agility allows us to creatively hi-jack a time or a place and be ‘part of the conversation’.

Agile print can be put at the service of big ideas and long-term strategy, but it can also be used tactically with an eye for the main chance. Let’s take a moment to talk about the weather. In the UK, we are more famous for rain than for sunshine. But in 2015 we had an unseasonably early start to our summer. Iceland had its BBQ sausage packaging ready to be conventionally supplied for June, but the premature arrival of warm weather required them to scramble in order to get Iceland sausages on more BBQ grills than the competition. Alas, the traditional printing supply chain process was inflexible and booked weeks ahead for ‘volume runs’.

Using Indigo presses to digitally plug the gap, Iceland got packs from artwork to shelf in ten days. If you have ever been involved in the typical process of getting packaging produced you will know that this turn-around speed was Formula 1 fast. Some ninety thousand digital packs were shipped whilst conventional production was still getting off the ground, with no compromise on production quality or standards. Not all intelligent use of digital print is creative – and here is a great tactical example that ensured sales were made that would have been lost using traditional print methods. Sometimes it is the hare and not the tortoise that wins the race. And the ‘hare’ is digital printing.

“Geo-specificity”

Clearly any busy brand wants to be fleet of foot. But agility enabled by digital print isn’t just about fast turn-around. It can also be about being more geo- specific in our use of media, and more flexible with our content.

So the posters worked street by street, playing with local knowledge and context: “On Place Victor Hugo, parking is Misérable”, and “The Opera Quarters most beautiful ballet is cars trying to park”. Four hundred different localised taglines over some eight thousand posters were credited with creating a 27% sales bump. Agility, therefore, can also be about specificity. Over the next few pages we will look at a few more examples of thinking quick and thinking small in order to think big.

Smart Car

Car brand Smart’s agency created localised posters on a theme of ‘Outsmart Paris’. No joke in a city where a million cars are trying to squeeze into 230,000 parking spaces.

Brand

Smart Car

Agency

BBDO

Printed on

HP Scitex TJ8600 by France Affiche

Image courtesy

BBDO

Agility thinking small and thinking big

We live in a fast moving culture, where trends change from hot to not at the pace of a Twitter hash-tag. The brands that remain relevant will be those nimble enough to keep up. Most print for brands is planned and locked long in advance. Digital print is dramatically accelerating turn-around speeds, enabling a more tactical and reactive use of print as media.

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Mainichi

In common with most of the world, young people are engaging less and less with ‘the value’ of periodicals. But as the target demographic in Japan typically buy two bottles of mineral water a day this seemed a great opportunity to turn water into content, and remind young people of the power of print. Thirty one ‘newspaper editions’ were run in just a month, supported by A.R. technology on the bottle that linked the design to live news updates.

It’s hard to think of a more ‘real time’ use of packaging than this, but consider applying the same approach to topical branding, seasonal editions or tactical creativity...

Brand

Mainichi

Agency

Dentsu

Printed on

HP Indigo WS4500 Digital Press by Seikou

Image courtesy

Dentsu

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With a single bottle structure and a consistent label shape, it’s left to the graphic styling to express the diverse stories of these rare gems. The print quality is uncompromisingly high, but the agility of digital print makes the breadth of designs over very short runs a practical possibility.

Digital print combined with post-finishing allows the design to be printed on real wood, leather and metal. This is a fantastic example not just of strategic and creative use of digital print’s agility. It is also a great showcase for a premium and craftsman-like approach to technology.

Orphan Barrel

Here is a designers’ and printers’ playground. Orphan Barrel is an initiative from Diageo to seek out ‘lost’ barrels of whiskey, and package them up in beautifully designed idiosyncratic bottles. These ‘orphan barrels’ are small stocks of product with unique taste profiles. Some will only be available once, and when they’re gone, they’re gone forever. Each whiskey is therefore given a unique personality that reflects the individuality of the product itself.

Brand

Orphan Barrel (Diageo)

Agency

Raison Pure NY

Printed on

HP Indigo WS6000 Digital Press and finished on Digicon ABG equipment by CCL, located in Portland Oregon, USA.

Image courtesy

Diageo

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Irn-Bru

Scotland is one of the few markets in the world where Coca-Cola is not the leading soft drinks brand. In Scotland, Coke’s domestic competitor is an orange flavoured carbonated beverage called Irn-Bru, a drink that commands near fanatical devotion and has become synonymous with Scottish national pride. In 2014, Irn-Bru leveraged digital print technology to help them cement their brand positioning as Scotland’s ‘other’ national drink (after Scotch whisky).

Brand

IrnBru (AGBarr)

Agency

jkr

Printed on

HP Indigo WS6600 Digital Press by Amberley Labels

Image courtesy

jkr

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The new limited edition campaign was aimed at increasing brand engagement around Hogmany and Burns night through December 2014 and early 2015. For a three-month period, the distinctive blue and orange of Irn-Bru labels was replaced with the tartans of the 57 largest clans in Scotland. From Anderson to Macdonald, and 55 different clans in between, the Irn Bru campaign gave Scots a chance to celebrate their heritage.

The brand ran a social media campaign around the initiative called ‘Bru’s your Clan?’, inviting the public to find their own clan tartan amongst Irn Bru’s new limited edition set. Before the advent of digital printing, Irn Bru could have launched a limited edition pack themed around national pride but it would have been impractical to print 57 different designs in a single run. Digital print brought vitality and engagement to this initiative, rather than just novelty.

When it comes to a sense of agility I can testify that this was a nimble operation from personal experience. We rang the client with the idea and they liked it over the phone. A week or so later we had an agreed design and moved to artwork. There were pallets of printed bottles a couple of weeks later. This was a good example of creativity being able to operate ‘on the hoof’.

The campaign resulted in 18% sales uplift and 185% uplift in website traffic. A commercial success, but also a triumph on a very human level – Irn-Bru received letters from fans asking for specific clan bottles to be delivered to weddings and christenings. And with the bottles in store just in time for Hogmanay, fans could use their tartan-clad bottles to toast friends and family in Irn-Bru style!

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STORM

Few industries move as quickly as fashion, and few have as great a need to stay flexible and up to the moment. For London Fashion Week SS16 Storm produced an innovative show package of a large selection of their show models. Rather than being bound, the loose pages allow for a more limber use of the contents, and gives the casting agents that the show packs are sent to an easy way to view and cast each model.

While I have attempted to avoid falling into print nerdery in this book, I should point out that the cover packs a really powerful punch of colour. I have been surprised by how digital print can often appear to be printed out of ‘specials’. Indeed, because the usual CMYK inks can be complemented by orange, green and purple on an Indigo press with no extra set up, a far greater range of colours can be powerfully printed on digital than on litho. So I was pleased to discover that the ‘bigger spectrum’ of this book’s title is not only about conceptual applications. And while we still can’t invent new colours, we can indeed now print a bigger spectrum of rich ones than has been available in standard litho.

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Brand

Storm Model Management

Printed on

HP Indigo 7600 Digital Press by F.E. Burman

Image courtesy

Elly Payne

It also opens up great opportunities for tactical behaviour. Creative awards and kudos often go to those newspaper ads where hastily devised and executed advertising responds to a sports upset, royal birth or the passing of a notable individual. Digital printing means that packaging and in-store promotion need be no less topical (or exploitative, depending on one’s personal viewpoint). This same rapid response time must be relevant to retailers constantly engaged in promoting their offers in the on-going supermarket price wars.

We are living in a world where even the biggest of global brands and retailers see the value in thinking local – from appreciating regional food to avoiding cultural taboos. In this context it is those who are agile – and those who are relevant - who will win hearts and minds.

Aberfeldy

Aberfeldy had a unique story to tell – it was founded on the site of a gold panning venture, and used water from a river once chest deep with hopeful prospectors. Following a major brand re-launch, new owners Bacardi wanted to introduce a limited edition that amplified their brand story in the form of a unique gift set.

The initiative was a travel retail exclusive for Father’s Day in 2014 – a key occasion for whisky brands. The design extrapolated the brand story into a language of prospecting – and translated this into a unique gift set styled to look like a prospector’s rucksack. And because Father’s day occurs on different days in different countries, the agility of digital print enabled a ‘one day a year’ design to also be flexed with bespoke versions globally.

There is a wonderful description of poetry finding ‘the specific within the universal’. I think this is the creative opportunity underpinning an agile approach. Rather than, for instance, celebrating a national holiday, it can get involved in a local one. Agile communication is the branding equivalent of grass roots politics. A chance to get a little more ‘eye to eye’ with the community one is selling to. And ultimately, thinking of your customers as individuals rather than broad demographics has got to be a more effective way of communicating and being relevant.

Agility Conclusions

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Brand

Aberfeldy (Bacardi)

Agency

jkr

Printed on

HP Scitex FB10000 by Image Factory

Image courtesy

jkr

Scale & SurfaceThe new creative canvasses

Scale & Surface the new creative canvasses

Digital print comes in such a range of formats from postage stamps to billboards, and on materials from paper to vinyl to very thick carton board. It therefore makes sense to see how these different canvass sizes and one offs are being creatively and technically exploited.

If you were lucky enough to view the Barbara Kruger installation at the Oxford Museum of Modern Art you will have seen two examples of digitally printed scale. First it ‘owned’ as vast space, and secondly it was an edition of exactly one. If you didn’t get to see it, sorry, we didn’t get permission to reproduce it (there’s always Google. Search ‘Barbara Kruger / Modern Art Oxford.)

Digital print can effectively command not just book covers and bottle labels but also entire environments. It is being used for bespoke wallpapers in restaurants, and is transforming sterile environments into something special.

From a brand perspective Stella McCartney stands out for her creative adoption of digital print. She has used the medium to striking effect on the catwalk, subsequently translating the designs to the bottles and cartons of her fragrance packaging for the season. She provides a great example of the ‘joined up thinking’ possible to bring all media together.

The smaller scales of print runs possible in digital also mean less wastage. One only needs to look in the overflowing skip outside a retail outlet or printers to see how we are often guilty of simply churning out too much ‘stuff’. Given the sustainability goals most manufacturers have set themselves, printing digitally is one effective way to produce only what we actually need.

‘MAN A VR’ (2015)

Virtual reality app, custom virtual reality viewer.

SA Vinyl, E-Flute, Printed on an HP Latex 360 by Omnicolor

Photo: Jeremy Chua, Doubleshot Studios.

MAN A

Inspired by the innovative ‘dazzle’ camouflage developed for WW1 British battleships, MAN A is digital sculpture in the truest sense.

The forms surfaces are not only printed digitally; they also conceal motion- captured contemporary dance performances activated by a custom augmented- reality mobile application and a virtual reality headset (also digitally printed) by the British electronic-arts duo Gibson/Martelli.

This project has won the 2015 Lumen Prize, and is travelling the world as a quite literally dazzling piece of installation art. It’s a great example of the creative application of digital print to both disrupt and work with an environment.

If you like it, you can download and print the artwork yourself by heading to the artists’ website:gibsonmartelli.com/MANA

Scale & Surface the new creative canvasses

Digital print comes in such a range of formats from postage stamps to billboards, and on materials from paper to vinyl to very thick carton board. It therefore makes sense to see how these different canvass sizes and one offs are being creatively and technically exploited.

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‘Solid’ (2014) Giclée print on Kappa.

‘EVERYTHING IS DATA’ 2015 ADM Gallery, NTU Singapore,

Printed on an HP Latex 360 by Omnicolor

Photo: Jeremy Chua, Doubleshot Studios.

‘Big Bob’ (2015)

Dimensions and materials variable, SA Vinyl,

EB Flute, wood, augmented reality app.

Installation view ’MAN A’, Jaffre-Friede Gallery,

Hanover, USA. Printed on an HP Latex 360 by Omnicolor

Photo: Christina Seely.

Pandy Warhol by Gavin Turk

This wallpaper design in vibrant colours conceived by British artist Gavin Turk pays homage to the palette and practice of Pop artist Andy Warhol. It offers a nod to that artists ‘cow’ wallpaper and was created for the awareness raising exhibition Here Today... 2014, curated by Artwise, marking 50 years IUCN Red List for endangered species. It’s pretty striking as wallpaper, and a good example of how such digital media can be used in a tactical and temporary manner by an international contemporary artist.

Artist

Gavin Turk

Curators

Artwise

Printed on

HP Latex 360 by Omnicolor

Image courtesy

Gavin Turk and House of Fairytales © the artist. Specially commissioned for Here Today… Curated by Artwise

Whipsnade Zoo

The wall coverings and graphics for Whipsnade Zoo Butterfly and Crocodile House had to be strong and gentle. Strong enough to survive the humid conditions of the interior, and gentle enough to be kind to the delicate inhabitants.

HP Latex technology enabled the printing to be applied to many different ‘roll media,’ and while being robust enough for external use the latex inks were also very environmentally friendly. This was most important for the wallpaper used inside the butterfly enclosure. The zoo specified that the print must be solvent free and not give off any harmful gases after printing and installation, where rare and delicate butterflies would come into contact with it.

The Water Tank Project

Mary Jordan, an artist, filmmaker and founder of nonprofit World Above the Street, wanted to bring attention to the global water issue. She teamed up with artists and students to wrap 100 water tanks in New York to create awareness of this problem with The Water Tank Project.

Mary described the creative process in a video: “I spent about three months researching all signage materials. And one day we were doing some test prints with various media, and we came up with this HP product: Latex inks that printed phenomenally. And for me, it was most important that it met these environmental standards because of course, we would be scrutinized. I can tell you this was by far the most sustainable solution that we came across.”

“Once we get an artwork and it's ready to print, we're so keen to put it up, and it's all about how quickly we can move it. And no other product dried right out of the machine like that. And it was great for us because we could just roll it up, fold it up, and move and install immediately. And this saved us an incredible amount of headaches. The ability to print with such high quality in a water-based situation is really outstanding. Outstanding.”

In addition to its environmental qualities, the media delivered the colour punch needed to sing out from the rooftops when viewed from afar down at street level.

Brand

The Water Tank Project by Word Above the Street

Agency

Multiple Artists, each piece created by a different person

Printed on

HP Latex 3000 by Duggal Visual Solutions

Image courtesy

Word Above the Street

Brand

ZSL Whipsnade Zoo

Agency

MJ Group Creative Imaging - London

Printed on

HP Latex 360 by MJ Group

Image courtesy

ZSL Whipsnade Zoo

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G.F Smith

When your company’s role is communicating the possibilities of paper to the creative sector, there’s only one way to do it: show, don’t tell.

G. F Smith often find themselves acting as the middlemen between design and technological innovation – it’s their job to show designers how the latest breakthroughs in print can enhance their work. Take digital printing. G. F Smith knew that technological advances meant that printing digitally was no longer just ‘the economical option’, but the creative choice. So how could they overcome the prejudices of litho-addicted designers? By putting the results into their hands.

With HP Indigo Electroink, a huge range of G. F Smith paper stocks can be used digitally, so the company enlisted StudioMakgill to design HP Indigo Applied – a sample pack that didn’t just give designers a fistful of papers, it showed them the visual and tactile effects that the latest printing techniques could deliver.

G. F Smith are now using digital print to customize their showcase books for specific markets. As the company notes, “No longer do designers need to think about what they can do to digital paper, they need to think of the creative heights they can reach because of it.” The book you are holding was printed on G.F Smith Colorplan. It’s great for colour, isn’t it?

Brand

G.F Smith

Agency

StudioMakgill

Printed on

HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press by Pureprint

Image courtesy

G.F Smith

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This is the case with OFF BLACK magazine, which created varied cover options for its large format periodical by not just smartly using digital print, but also smartly choosing paper – running various colours of stock with an impactful use of single colour print.

The results, to my eye, are as striking as anything produced by fashion brands and magazines with far bigger budgets. A great example of champagne tastes on a beer budget coming off with style.

OFF BLACK MAGAZINE

It’s probably true that some of the most creative people have to work on the tightest of budgets and shortest of runs. They need to use technology in smart ways that will give them more ‘bang for their bucks’.

Brand

Off Black Magazine offblackmagazine.com

Agency

Bonnevier Ainsworth bonnevierainsworth.com

Printed on

HP Indigo 7600 Digital Press by F.E. Burman

Half Hitch

Half Hitch is a new, small batch gin brand that wanted to make an impact in the fiercely competitive category of artisanal gins when it launched in 2013. By using digital print to create a beautifully crafted limited edition outer case, the brand hoped to establish its premium credentials and secure a listing with some exclusive retailers. With a December launch date, the brand also needed to stand out from the clutter in the busy Christmas gifting period.

Half Hitch had high ambitions, but low budgets. With this start-up business fostering a small, niche brand, the owners needed to avoid costly set up processes and high-risk large production volumes. HP Scitex digital print provided them with the flexibility they needed.

Working with design agency jones knowles ritchie (jkr), Half Hitch launched a high quality limited edition box with an unconventional aesthetic. The brand’s visual language was inspired by the industrial age of England: it was raw, masculine and uncompromising. The limited edition box was printed on metallic substrate and accented with finishes and textures that suggested the quality of the final product as well as the care and craft of its distilling process. Digital printing allowed the distillery to have a unique serial number on every single box, cementing the feeling of exclusivity that discerning gin drinkers demand.

Brand

Half Hitch

Agency

jkr

Printed on

HP Scitex FB10000 by Image Factory

Image courtesy

jkr

46

Digital print enables small brands to produce high impact editions and short runs from packaging to posters, and some have suggested that we now have a ‘level playing field’ that if anything favours the insurgents over the incumbents.

But I believe the notion that the behemoths are not part of this revolution seems myopic, given how many are innovating and experimenting with the technology that enables big brands to act as if they were small brands. Coke – one of the world’s biggest consumer brands – embraced digital print with Share a Coke and overnight was on first name terms with half the world.

I would suggest that Oscar Wilde put it best when he said ‘Be yourself, everybody else is taken’. There are strategic and creative opportunities for every brand here - from the micro to mighty. And the most effective will be those that use their particular circumstances to their creative advantage. The giants can think small to think big. And the little guys need see format as a barrier to ambition no longer. Ink costs ink – it’s what you do with it that counts.

Sant Joan de Déu-Barcelona Children’s Hospital

Sant Joan de Déu-Barcelona Children’s Hospital boasts state of the art MRI machines that are used to perform 6,000 MRI scans and 5,000 CAT scans every year for children, a daunting experience for anyone and particularly for kids, 70-80% of whom need to be sedated beforehand. Digital print enabled a sterile hospital space to be turned into magical outer space, complete with astronauts, rockets, planets and friendly aliens. In short, a reimagining of the area turned a terrifying ordeal into an exciting adventure. Clinical tests are showing that 90% of kids formerly needing sedation no longer require it. Can there be a better use of print as communication?

Brand

Sant Joan de Déu-Barcelona Children’s Hospital

Printed on

HP Latex Printing Technology by PrintZone and Demibold

Image courtesy

Sant Joan de Déu-Barcelona Children’s Hospital and Ecotrui

I have used this section to highlight the creative use of size and format. But there is another scale most of us work with: that of operating for brands or organisations that are either ‘Davids’ or ‘Goliaths’.

Scale & Surface Conclusions

47

IndividualityInteractive and personalised print

Brand

Boden

Agency

Kin Designkin-design.com

Printed on

HP Indigo 7600 Digital Press by F.E. Burman

Image courtesy

Boden

In this context, physical communication – be it print or packaging – has some easy wins to make with an audience that understands and embraces the notions of personalisation and customisation. From Nike to M&Ms, we all want to get our hands on stuff we can call our own.

The notion of personalized packaging has obvious appeal for this audience. The May 2013 cover of Time magazine boldly defined what’s known as ‘millenials’ as ‘lazy entitled narcissists, still living with their parents’. And what could appeal to the typical young narcissist more than the sense of a popular brand creating a unique pack ‘just for them’.

In truth, the appeal of owning something just a little bit unique is timeless. So whilst our obsession with ‘millennials’ has moved on to a fixation with Generation Z, the trend to produce ‘one offs’ shows no sign of slowing down.

Boden Personalised Summer Catalogue

All children have imagination. This project gave them the opportunity to express it, designing their own catalogue covers using artwork from children’s illustrator Lydia Monks. A collaboration between Macmillan Children’s Books and family fashion brand Boden, the project was launched to raise money for children’s charities, whilst deepening engagement for Boden’s target audience.

Throughout February 2014, children were able to log onto bodenbyyou.com to create their own catalogue cover. Launched in the run-up to the Spring / Summer season, the interactive website invited kids to customize a series of summer, beach and water themed assets to create their own ‘Imagination Island’.

Each child that entered was mailed a unique copy of the Mini Boden summer catalogue featuring the cover that they designed, in plenty of time for the beginning of Spring.

Sales results show that those who participated were twice as likely to buy from the summer catalogue than those who didn’t. And of course, the project owners helped raise money for charity.

50

Individuality interactive and personalised print

We live in a world of hyper-specificity. The social media environments we inhabit and the technology we use have taught us to expect personalisation at every level – whether it’s an app that anticipates where we might like to have dinner within a 500 metre radius or cookies that ‘learn’ our preferences and tailor available data to ‘speak directly’ to us. We aren’t impressed by personalisation in the digital space – we expect it. And no one more so than so-called ‘digital natives’ – the generation of people who have never known a world without the internet.

The Book of Everyone

The Book of Everyone is an online site that allows customers to create individualized hardback books to give to friends and family. It combines personal information with interesting facts, whimsical wordsmithery and distinctive artwork to create a rich tapestry of personal information and striking design.

52

The idea came from founder Steve Hanson, who bought a number of newspapers and magazines as a keepsake on the day of his son's birth for him to enjoy when he was older. This sparked the idea of harnessing the power of the internet to create a keepsake around anyone in seconds.

Each book is created with minimum complexity. By simply entering a name, date of birth and gender, a beautifully designed 50-page book stuffed full of interesting facts, strange statistics and curveball miscellany is created – all filtered through a satirically nostalgic glance back to the day the person was born. It becomes a unique celebration of the individual. The ‘author’ can then personalise their book further by adding photos and their own personal touches.

A combination of emotive content, good design and ease of use, means The Book of Everyone is a must-have gift for those looking for something fabulous and original. The advancement in digital printing, particularly print on demand, allows individual books to be printed and dispatched within a week in paperback, hardback and deluxe formats.

53

Brand

The Book of Everyone

Agency

The Book of Everyone

Printed on

HP Indigo 10000 Digital Press by Pureprint

Image courtesy

The Book of Everyone

ZEB

The Belgian clothing retailer ZEB has the mantra ‘Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers’. ZEB produced a magazine / catalogue that appeared at first glance to be simply personalised, with the recipient’s name slotted into the copy. But it was more nuanced than that. It used customers’ data and purchase history to create a tailormade brochure reflecting their tastes and personal style. The sales boost of 20% and a 45% increase in patrons returning suggest such a direct approach works. The 7% return of ‘lapsed’ customers must have been particularly gratifying.

Being specific and targeted carries a linked benefit for sustainability. Why ship a brochure that runs into hundreds of pages that are designed to appeal to anyone, and as a result are read by no one? The flexibility of digital print allows brands to tailormake smaller, more targeted communication to send to audiences who are far more likely to find the content relevant, and respond positively in return. And an awful lot of paper is saved in the process.

ZEB believes that it generates a higher response via the medium of paper than via online communication, hence this printed initiative. But the campaign was linked (of course) to social media, with 5,000 new facebook fans notched up, 3,700 customers bothering to update their data, and so presumably a new bank of data to mine for the next incarnation of this targeted approach.

54

Brand

ZEB

Agency

ZEB in House Design

Printed on

HP Inkjet Web Press by Symeta

Image courtesy

ZEB

55

Brand

People of Print

Publisher

People of Print (In Perpetuum)

Printed on

HP Indigo 7800 Digital Press by Pureprint.

Image courtesy

People of Print

People of PrintPrint Isn’t Dead, Element 003

In the fast-paced and changeable world of digital, print is sometimes considered a slow moving, inflexible and impersonal anachronism. What better way to disprove that perception than by showcasing the very technology that gives print a fresh relevance for today?

People of Print is a collective of illustrators, designers and printers founded in 2008 with the aim of promoting the power of print media. In 2015 they launched the third edition of their Print Isn’t Dead magazine – a collection of work by 50 designers and artists aimed at dramatizing the craft, tactility and breadth of printed media. The themes for this edition spanned personalisation, digital and analogue spheres and the idea of permanence. The twist? Inviting readers to personalise their own covers by uploading their own imagery and copy (up to 250 characters), which was then typeset, printed and delivered.

By inviting readers to personalise their own books, People of Print changed what is usually a closed-door process into an act of participation, engaging its readers not just in the finished product, but also in the journey and the craft involved in getting there. That’s the copy I ordered on the opposite page. And yes, getting it in the post gave me a cheap thrill!

56

57

LibertyRuns don’t get much shorter or smaller than business cards. But Liberty didn’t want a ‘one size fits all’ solution. They used a smart selection of papers to ensure a varied result across all the staffs’ cards. And using white ink over these colours delivers a strikingly different effect from the usual ‘run of the mill’ business card approach.

PearlfisherA similar approach is taken by brand design agency Pearlfisher, using ink instead of paper choice to add a ‘personal touch’ to a personal piece of media. New starters at the company choose their favourite colour for their cards. This not only acts as a nice ‘welcome aboard’ gesture, it also suggests the company cares about the details of aesthetics – clearly an important value in the design world.

Brand

Liberty

Papers

G.F Smith

Agency

Liberty

Printed on

HP Indigo 7600by F.E. Burman

Image courtesy

Liberty

Brand

Pearlfisher

Publisher

Pearlfisher

Printed on

HP Indigo 7800 Digital Press by Moore Print

Image courtesy

Pearlfisher

58

We are on the cusp of a future in which it’s possible for a student to create a product he’s designed on his 3D printer, package and brand it using digital print, and sell it on the internet to compete with anything else that’s out there. Will we even need a marketing department, a PR department, or hordes of researchers and designers? People, of course, like the authenticity of real people, so it’s easy to see how very quickly brand or product monopolies could be dissolved. That makes the playing field much more even. That makes for a real battle between David and Goliath.

More tantalisingly, it’s easy to consider that somewhere out there is the next Da Vinci, or Einstein, or Picasso – living in the suburbs of Mumbai, or Seoul, or Chongqing – whom we would never have known about but for the digital revolution that has put power in the hands of the people.

So digital print allows stuff to be personalised and customised, and that resonates with people much more than an identikit item that’s rolled off a big scary production line. But this is just one small part of the story. Digital print is part of a profoundly exciting revolution which is democratising the process of branding, fundamentally challenging every established assumption and every theory taught in colleges. Expertise is no longer in the hands of the ‘experts’ – we are just as likely to take makeup tips from a teenager ‘vlogging’ out of her bedroom on Periscope than we are to believe anything in the pages of Marie Claire. Meanwhile in the world of 3D printing, anyone with a few hundred dollars to spend can create anything from a prosthetic limb to a piece of fashion. Innovation is open to everyone.

Individuality Conclusions

59

PerspectivesA spectrum of expert opinions

Please don’t just take my word that digital print is going to change things – I wouldn’t! For the following pages I asked some people I think have really interesting views and abilities to share their thoughts.

62

I had rejected digital printing. Working in premium and luxury spirits I saw the results as flat, the colours dull, the lack of texture and emboss a killer issue. Litho and gravure won every time. Letterpress leaves me weak at the knees. Silk screen printing the Delilah to my Samson. Micro and textured emboss, craft paper, foil stamping, spot UV varnish need I go on? Digital could play in FMCG and personalisation where the novelty of having your name on the pack could make up for flat texture.

Our technical team proved me wrong, pushing the technology in ways that surprised even the printers and equipment manufacturers. Marrying the digital press with innovative uses of techniques normally reserved for wet proofing houses, they showed me the unlikely results. I was hooked straight away. The speed and flexibility of the digital press then finished with emboss, texture, varnish and high-build silk screen suddenly gave us creative options I had never before imagined. The toy shop just got larger, it was time to play! This was no Frankenstein’s monster, the best of both worlds and more to boot.

We have since used digital printing for personalised labels and achieved quality indistinguishable from the traditionally printed labels. We regularly use them for experimental proofing early in the design process, spending a day developing designs, colours, ideas, finishes. Proofing is now part of our creative process rather than an exercise at the end. Designers at the printers, learning, changing, experimenting, collaborating – who would have thought it possible! The most exciting is the ability to think more creatively about materials, finishes, textures, layers and ideas. The techniques have opened up new possibilities for designers, and we’re only getting started.

Orphan Barrel is one of the first to benefit from this explosion of creativity. Dedicated to seeking out ‘forgotten’ barrels of whiskey with rare taste profiles. None of these pockets of stock is large enough to warrant creating individual brands, all are exciting and represent small unique offerings for the world to try. Orphan Barrel releases these rare stocks of Bourbon in a consistent bottle and using the same label profiles.

Each release offers the designer the chance to play. The brief is simple “Express the story of the barrel, the distillery, and/or the taste”. Digital print combined with post-finishing allows the creative to print on real wood, leather and metal. Variations in story and numbering mean no two bottles are the same. Everyone involved in the project provides their signature and appears on at least one label.

We have more ideas in the pipeline but they are not released yet so I’m not going to tell you about them! The future love-children of this unexpected printing union will be even more stunning.

Jeremy LindleyGlobal Design Director, Diageo

“Proofi

ng is now part of our

creative process rather than an exercise at the end.”

63

Andy Knowles Co-founder & Chairman, jones knowles ritchie

We’re living in turbulent times.

Population growth, urbanization and increasing affluence all mean that packaged good makers are set to grow. Yet, just when their businesses should be booming, many report slowing sales and shrinking profits.

Looking back over the last two decades, we can clearly see how digital technology has fermented a revolution in consumer behavior, accelerating the creation and destruction of empires, great and small.

The fragmentation of media has driven the battleground in store. Whoever connects with the customer is King. It’s why charismatic packaging has become fundamental to success.

Which makes it puzzling that more brands don’t exploit digital printing it to its potential.

Relatively high cost is oft quoted as the principal barrier to overcome, but aren’t we looking through the telescope from the wrong end? Restricting digital print to small selling lines and promotional stock may be prudent, but doesn’t it represent an opportunity cost? It’s reminiscent of the early days of mobile phones, when cautious people turned them off unless they wished to make a call.

The leading grocers aren’t so reticent. Taking their cue from ‘fast fashion’ suppliers are expected to buffer fluctuations in demand with digitally printed labels, cutting lead times and waste.But for marketing, digital print provides an opportunity to turn packaging into that most rare and precious thing – a communication medium, in the right place at the right time. And it’s a medium you own!

This is why we see packaging as a mass medium of the future. A place where we can express something of the brand’s purpose and amplify it with eye-catching design campaigns. The evidence is becoming clear - charismatic design not only helps get brands noticed and chosen, it can also diminish the importance of price.

Digital print may currently only enjoy a modest share of the packaging print market, but brands should not ignore its potential. Perhaps it’s because they have no money that upstart entrepreneurs take the lead where many corporates yet fear to tread?

So, the question to ask yourself is will digital print cost you, or will it pay you? Truthfully, it’s your choice, only you can decide.

“The techniques have

opened up new possibilities

for designers, and we’re

only getting started…”

64

Patrick BurgoyneEditor, Creative Review

There’s something undeniably powerful about a personalised version of a mass-produced product. Whether it’s a Louis Vuitton handbag with your own monogram printed onto it or an iPod with a personal inscription engraved on the back, there’s great appeal in the notion that, though anyone can buy a certain product, nobody has one quite like this.

In the early days of commercially-available digital printing, it was this personalisation factor that helped the technology break through. Magazines in particular saw the opportunity to make their subscribers feel special by creating individualised covers. One of the first I saw was by the American designer Charles S Anderson who collaborated with a press manufacturer and a paper company to create 62,000 personalised magazine covers for a US trade publication. Each cover bore the subscriber’s initials, and a relevant image from Anderson’s noted collection of retro imagery – a Robot if your name started with R, spaceman for S and so on. The logistical nightmare of getting the right magazine to the right person was solved by printing their name and address on a tab on the cover itself and sending it out in a clear plastic wrap.

It was crude but undeniably effective. Magazine covers are seen as hallowed ground, the preserve of celebrities or other note worthies. Getting on a cover is an aspiration for many. Yet here was a magazine making all its subscribers stars for a day – sort of.

Other digitally-printed magazine covers followed. Wallpaper* set up a system for its Handmade issue in 2010 whereby subscribers could manipulate graphic elements via a website to create their own cover design which was then digitally printed onto their copy. Wired added a neat journalistic slant in a 2011 issue about online privacy by creating a limited number of covers for VIPs featuring personal information that had been gleaned from the internet.

But personalisation is only one of the possibilities that digital print opens up. What the projects described above are really about is the marriage of data and print. That data could be a subscriber’s name and address, but it could just as easily be data relating to location, weather, traffic, noise levels, news – anything. So packaging can carry the day’s news, posters can be tailored to their location and a brand’s assets in print can be every bit as mutable as their state of the art, flexible identity systems demand.

And because the initial costs are so much lower in digital it should encourage brands to be braver. A one-size-fits-all approach gravitates toward the lowest common denominator, but when a product can be tailored to suit different groups, everyone can have a version to fit their tastes and interests. We can be more adventurous with the adventurous, more conservative with the conservative. And, because set up costs are so much lower, we can afford to experiment.

As someone who has worked in print for over 20 years, I’ve heard a lot of doom and gloom about the medium in recent years. Ironically, what was once seen as the threat to print – digital technology – is now giving us the tools to ensure it has a very healthy and exciting future.

“We can be m

ore adventurous w

ith the adventurous, m

ore conservative with

the conservative…”

65

Linda CaseyEditor-in-chief, Package Design

Gary ChiappettaCEO, Kaleidoscope

A Coming Storm of Singularity

Ink is in my blood. My father was a pressman before I was even a twinkle in his eye; my cousins and I ran a small commercial print shop; and I covered the printing industry as a business journalist for years. In that time, I saw many innovations from traditional offset presses to direct imaging presses to extended gamut flexo printing, but none has proven to be as disruptive of a marketing tool as digital printing.

When direct mail was queen, digital printing enabled response rates to soar as marketers began to tap into the technology’s 1:1 capabilities to create positive personal connections with consumers even when reading something as everyday as an invoice. It was exciting to witness a shift in the marketing psyche from a focus on mass campaigns to building personal connections.

Naturally, package designers and packaged goods marketers looked to VDP’s success and originally crafted campaigns aimed to replicate the 1:1 direct mail campaigns that were so successful. Today, designers and marketers are realizing the unique marketing potential of digital printing goes far beyond the inclusion of an end-customer’s name.

Like snowflakes in a storm, experiences, such as the Coca-Cola Israel’s Extraordinary Collection and Anheuser-Busch’s Mad Decent Collaboration, are delivering uniquely beautiful visual delights en masse. And these are just a precursor of what’s to come, as technology enables digital printing on more packaging material types and sizes, and marketers and designers continue to innovate and redefine how brands celebrate individuality, community and creativity.

We live in a time where democracy has transcended politics and become a powerful tool in the hands of everyday citizens. The result is a new era of entrepreneurs. There are many great examples of this movement (Uber, Kickstarter, even Amazon) but one of the best is Airbnb, which is not only disrupting the hotel industry, it’s changing the way people experience travel.

Airbnb (App) offers its customers the world, while creating one-of-a-kind experiences. I recently rented a ranch in Montana with friends, shopped at local markets for food and groceries and shared wonderful mornings and sunsets in the foothills where deer and elk roamed. On the way up to the ranch we picked up some interesting craft beer at one of many breweries around the city of Bozeman. This is a customized, local experience that is not offered by the local motel.

I don’t have to imagine a world where consumables and durable goods are produced regionally because it’s already happening. And digital printing (2D and 3D) is playing a huge role in building that future. Here’s an interesting trend: some craft brewers see the advantage of digital printing to produce short run labels and batches for either one-of-a-kind products or seasonal flavours with a limited shelf life.

At Kaleidoscope we use digital printing not only for short runs, but also for in- market test samples, sales samples, prototyping and visualization modelling. Digital printing gives our clients’ go-to-market strategies a huge competitive advantage. It allows us to develop and test new product ideas on shelf with consumers, regionally and internationally.

Our business thrives in a culture of co-creation, working with internal teams and clients to foster collaboration. We use insight analysis, rapid ideation, design, prototyping and deployment to build out ideas quickly. Digital printing (2D and 3D) facilitates our engagement strategies and allows for a high level of customization.

I love witnessing the journey from idea to creation to building and shaping— from “what if” to a tangible product you can hold in your hand. Visual interpretation, whether ink on paper or a structural representation, delivers powerful results. Like 3D printing, digital printing is democratizing the ability to “publish” an idea, from one to many. And the best part of digital printing is not just speed, but the customization that allows us to fashion individual experiences.

66

I grew up off the Old Kent Road, London SE1, an area not renowned for its high quality life experience.My father was a French polisher, my grandfather wore a suit and my mother would always buy the best. I was brought up to value and love quality products. That’s how I approach print.

I look back and admire those old printing techniques such as letterpress, because what comes off the end of them is a surprise, its magical, and different every time. I don’t find myself stimulated by, or admiring, the industrial ‘middle print’ – the predictability of every sheet.

Indigo reminds me of those old process, where the results can be influenced by so many factors, experience, skills, technology, substrates, finishes, resulting in magic. I walk past our presses every morning and see things that just blow my mind.It’s more experimental – Indigo is the ultimate proofing machine – every sheet that comes off is in effect a proof and you can have a few different sheets and try them all – just like the old days. You become the ‘creatives’ best friend. They canbe braver, but without risk, and together we communicate and make magic.

What can keep me awake at night is the fear of not producing magic, the fear of letting people down. With digital you can fix concerns on the move. And if you’ve run out of time and it still doesn't work, there's no need to panic. It buys you time to produce quality products.

Print can be creative – it can be wonderful even with your eyes closed. You can feel it, touch it. It's exciting to be in our industry at a time when technologies have combined to enable us to again produce magic. We all can and do communicate with speed and efficiency, but in my world, only print communicates with magic.

Paul Regan Director, F.E. Burman

G.F Smith have a long history of innovation, curation, exploration and of exciting graphic designers and paper specifiers across the globe. Our 130 years have been wrapped around passionately seeking out the very finest papers and materials and presenting them to design communities, marketers and printers with the sole aim of enabling brands to elevate themselves and their products up above their competition within their own busy marketplaces. We believe that every copy must rise to the occasion to have impact, to have gravitas. The choice of material is central to that goal.

We have found that older technologies of letterpress, engraving and die-stamping are being sought out to be used alongside digital print. The acceleration of this partnership of old and new over the last two years is a natural marriage as personalisation, white ink and fine printing come together to create finished print which is tactile, great on the eye and influential in positioning a brand in the mind of the consumer or investor.

There is a thirst for print in the market right now. Craftsmanship and the appreciation of perfection and the process of making is pushing print into a premium space to complement high spend digital strategies. Less units, yes, but the investment per item on the material and the print is far more flexible. Stitching, intricate foiling, blind embossing are not new but they are becoming more accessible as digital presses allow instant and easy access to print and packaging. Print is valuable.

The future is always hard to predict. However, we believe firmly that print is highly valuable and has a firm place in the marketing mix and we as craftsmen have a duty to ensure that each copy, each piece of packaging, each marketing asset rises to it. The selection of paper and pushing print to its limit is one of the clearest ways to achieve just that.

Rob Mannix Director of Sales, G.F Smith

67

When considering the implication of digital printing on businesses, many of us think about its ability to transform the ‘brand in the hand’ - making processes quicker, more cost effective and agile, and ultimately reducing the time it takes for a product to reach its consumer. However, as a Marketer, I believe the power digital printing has to bring people and products closer isn’t just physical, it’s emotional.

Today’s consumers seek, even demand, increasing amounts of relevance in the way a brand communicates and interacts with them. We are seeing this in media with the emergence of Programmatic Marketing where technology, consumer insights and creativity come together to create more connected and tailored marketing solutions. Digital printing will allow us to take this even further, moving beyond traditional media and brand expression and into a world where we can offer customers real-time, real-life brand experiences

In a world where people are looking for unique products that reflect their personality, digital printing offers customisation options the enables the expression of the individual and the brand to sit alongside each other in harmony. However, mass customisation is only the tip of the iceberg; I believe digital printing can truly ‘disrupt’ design. Not only will it help marketing, logistics, R&D and creative teams to interconnect and collaborate more effectively, it could also take the relationship between the brand and the consumer to another level, one in which the end-user not only drives innovation but plays an active role in every part of the product development journey – building deeper, more involved, consumer experiences.

Effective media requires the strategic and creative use of time and space. Digital printings ability to produce material in a more real time and location specific way across anything from pack to poster to postage stamp simply gives us more opportunities to make even better use of time and space in our thinking.

Our role as Marketers is to nurture this new reciprocal relationship to deliver even more value for the consumer and the brand. In fact as the technology evolves and becomes more widely used, I expect we will we see a blurring of on and offline marketing where the experiences brands create transition between the virtual and real world seamlessly. This will take us into interesting and unchartered territories and could see the emergence of a whole new breed of experiential branding professionals.

Tracy De GrooseCEO, Dentsu Aegis Network

“...I believe the power digital

printing has to bring people and products closer isn’t just physical, it’s em

otional.”

68

Mat HeinlCEO of Global IndependentCreative Business, Moving Brands

Digital printing is a brilliant tool for realising design in a physical way, quickly and cheaply. You can share it all over the world in real time. It’s ideal for the direction you want to take, then refining and revising.

As digital printing machines become integrated with for instance, folding machines and cutting machines, you can get into some unusual places without the capital expenditure, machinery and operations it would of taken in the past. So for example if you combined an inkjet, scanner, 3D printer and a folding machine you can create something very exciting. People are now hacking printing devices with physical forms, such as conductive ink, to make a creative idea manifest.

The fax machine was great because you were literally handing over what you’ve made to someone else. This immediacy has been lost now that you send to a device and then have to print it. I think this is underexploited at the moment, with printing being a communication device rather than just an output device.

Today we are so used to on screen collaboration but digital printing offers the chance to not only share an idea across the world but you could print it out, change it and send it back again. We’re currently exploring this in an R&D project in the studio.

Colour is an important identifier of a business or organisation but because it’s easier than ever to create a vast variety of colours it’s harder to be disciplined about its use. So when you see brands use colour sparingly, it’s unusual. Not that it’s right or wrong, it just helps differentiate. Something that helped Apple stand out for so long.

This is why you’ll see in our brand identity design work, we’re committed to determine the colour strategy as well as the creative direction around the colour and ultimately test it within an inch of it’s life to make sure it’s as it was intended to be.

In the past a brand identity couldn’t respond, it was rigid and static. Today, through technology a brand can adjust. In the case of colour, the brand identity might change depending on the time of day or how you’re behaving towards it. This puts a human face on companies rather than them feeling like distant entities. They actually behave more like the role they play in our lives. You can adjust through different design and printing techniques and refine them based on for instance, geography or different market segments. The key thing is that it has to sit within a framework otherwise it becomes less about the exact colour pantone and more about the colour behaviour.

We think of Coca Cola as red but if Coca Cola is about enjoyment and happiness you need to think about what colour is enjoyment? What is enjoyment in Mexico compared to Japan? You would never advise them to lose red but there may be a way to extend or augment red based on that core concept and that technology exists to do that in a controlled way without being controlling.

“Digital printing is a brilliant

tool for realising design in a physical w

ay, quickly and cheaply.”

69

As someone who’s never fit comfortably into just one medium, I’ve always resisted the silo-mentality of the media industry. So it’s been amusing over the years to watch emerging parts of the industry claim ideas for themselves as if they’d never existed in the world before.

As a bit of an experiment, I ran a workshop with advertising students to show them the untapped power of ‘old media’. After creating a list of ‘digital’ concepts, I asked them to create a piece of print that used the very same techniques. I wanted to see if they could make a simple newspaper ad interactive or social or real-time or geo-specific.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Their ideas immediately showed that print was a beautifully interactive media with folding, tearing, smudging, crumpling and leaving space to draw coming out as powerful techniques. Digital printing obviously allowed personalisation. But it also opened up opportunities to create ads that were geo-targeted, used social data, included intelligent recommendations and were real-time at the moment of going to print. Clever thinking resulted in some interesting games. Adding perforations made things shareable or bookmark-able. In fact, we couldn’t find a single digital concept that we couldn’t bring alive in print.

So clearly it’s not the media channels that impose limitations on what’s possible, it’s merely our imaginations.

Dave BirssEditor at Large, The Drum

Darren FoleyManaging Director, Pearlfisher

Design & digital print: back to the future

It’s clear to me that the digital print technology of today – and tomorrow – is significantly changing the way the design industry thinks and operates, and I have no doubts that it will allow us to push the boundaries even further, to create a highly customised, seamless and connected world for brands and businesses.

When I started out in this industry, almost 30 years ago now (yikes!), the mass production print process-es like offset-litho and rotary gravure were comple-mented by more craft orientated processes and finishes such as silk-screen, letterpress, hot foil stamping, die cutting and embossing. Digital print heralded a new era for design; with its ability to cost effectively handle shorter production runs without the need for expensive films and plates. But, with the print industry not being renowned for embracing change with open arms, digital’s initial manifesta-tion meant that it was often considered as little more than a glorified colour photocopier.

Today, digital print technology is truly accelerating the pace of innovation, bringing us quite literally up close and personal to brands, with Coke’s recent ‘name’ label campaign being a brilliant example of this. As designers we are now able to harness the digital process’s explicit flexibility and high quality reproduction, across an ever-increasing amount of customised materials from pre-eminent manufactur-ers such as GF Smith and Fedrigoni.

But this just feels like the tip of the iceberg. I believe that digital print is not only here to stay, but will be instrumental in changing our world, by injecting new life into industries like publishing (hopefully we’ll start to see Harry Potter style newspapers with moving images soon!). It’s going to allow brands and businesses across every sector and industry, to respond to and target very specific customer needs and demands, with increasingly customised offers and experiences.

I am particularly excited by the way the digital print revolution is giving entrepreneurs and challenger brands access to a world that for a long time has been the preserve of the big players. In the world of consumer packaging, where origination costs and minimum order quantities are often a barrier to entry, the world of digital print offers fledgling businesses workable solutions, which can really help them succeed and make a mark. Our recent work with ‘Strong’, a feisty challenger in the nutritional supplements category, harnessed digital print technology for their labels, gaining them listings in Selfridges and a number of design awards to boot.

But probably what is most interesting and inspiring for me now, is how I can see digital print’s progres-sion beyond just ink on paper. It’s the way that digital print is now looking to harness and incorpo-rate the craft processes and techniques from yesteryear, such as foiling, embossing and varnish-ing into its process. Designers now have access, in a digital space, to a world of craft that I hold dear, a world that could very well have disappeared under the march of progress.

Ultimately, these technological advances will offer brands and businesses, both large and small, the opportunity to premiumise and personalise in a way that was once thought of as impossible and I think that’s fantastic. Digital print is uniting previously detached points of the same spectrum and this will free up designers to use their craft and skills to inno-vate and exploit these emerging technologies, hopefully creating ever more memorable and relevant design solutions.

Very exciting times and a far cry from the days of the glorified colour photocopier!

70

“This just feels like the tip of the iceberg”

Bravenew world, new rules

Ever tried.Ever failed.

No matter.Try again.

Fail again.

Fail better.Samuel Beckett

We hear a great deal in marketing about creating consumer ‘brand love’. Achieving it requires bold ideas. This approach of earning ‘love’ requires bold ideas and standing for things, rather than just standing out – from product, to pack, to point of sale, to the total design experience. It’s about brands having an ethos, and knowing what to do with it.

But there is an obstacle to bold thinking. It carries risk. Pity the poor brand manager whose career hangs on how a mass of consumers will react to the limited edition or new statement that is being proposed. Bravery is all very well, but an understandable aversion to risk means that most creativity from brands tends to be vanilla and inoffensive to the point of being boring. So while it doesn’t cause a backlash or plummet in sales, it doesn’t do much good either.

Here’s where digital print could make a massive difference. Because it allows for very limited and specific output it will enable brands to test in a real environment on a microscopically small scale, to see if an idea catches fire or bombs. If it’s a success then it can be scaled. If it fails then it has not been on an epic scale. This should liberate brands to be bolder, knowing there is a safety net. I’m not suggesting irresponsibility or thoughtlessness. As Samuel Becket said, the freedom to fail better can replace the constriction of never being allowed to put a foot wrong.

Meanwhile, consider how this will affect not only research, but also the adoption of behavioural economics. Why not trial multiple messages, calls to action, and pack claims? See what works. Play with possibility. The store, once the place where everything had to be buttoned down can now be, at least at times, a creative playground.

Faint heart never w

on fair lady

For a longer patch of my career as a designer than I care to remember, the pecking order was very clear; any ‘cross agency’ meeting with the client would be attended by a full flight formation of the ad agency’s representatives. They would use up all the meeting’s time and oxygen discussing the TV campaign, and if there were a couple of minutes left at the meeting’s end whilst notebooks were put back into man bags, the designer might share what the actual product was going to look like.

Happily it’s different today. Design and design talent often get to contribute ‘at the top table’. And in a world where media fragmentation means most of us typically tune out from the five thousand or so advertising messages we are given each day, packaging has become ‘the last interruptive media’. If you want to get that shaving foam on your chin, or that soda on your lips then you have to go through the pack. We have moved into a period where the advertising can be complemented by an equally dynamic ‘design campaign’ through creative use of iconography, pack, environment, and product.

Branding was once about the authorship hallmarks of medieval guilds. Then it was about the ownership of ranchers literally burning their marks onto the rumps of cattle. With industrialisation and mass production branding became a badge of trust and quality – ‘this label is one you can rely on’. Lithography happened around the same time, bringing us advertising that sought to persuade us of brands’ virtues, and as it grew more sophisticated to seduce us with a brands’ deeper appeal. In our era there is much talk of growing brands by engendering a sense of ‘brand love’. Love isn’t about selling at people; it’s about engaging them, and bringing them in.

We have moved from ‘corporate identity systems’ to ‘brand worlds’, where design is used to create a tangible sense of a brands’ inner life. Nothing gets closer to the consumers than the designs and design experiences brands put in their hands. By this stage of the book, I am presuming you will be joining the dots between this and the creative potential of digital print for yourself. But for me, it comes down to this: digital print will be one way to represent brands ideas with agility. But brands truly live in the minds of consumers. It is consumers who define what a brand is, and how much it will be valued. If digital print is able to better express the ideas in an agency’s head than conventional print, then it will become the more effective and default printing process for powerful branding.

Design C

ampaigns

In Medieval Europe the use of chemistry and artistry to produce stained glass was boosted by two factors. In the world of engineering a leap in architecture gave us the Gothic arch. This allowed large areas of load bearing walls to be freed up for windows in churches. In the realm of ideas the symbolic significance of light in Christianity made stained glass just the ticket for representations of the Biblical story. Worshippers could look up in awe, their faces bathed in the beautiful light from the windows. Any big jump needs both things – the engineering and the ideas.

‘The Medium is the message’ was a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan in 1967. It essentially means that the form of the medium ‘embeds itself’ in the message.

For example, we have all learned the ‘grammar’ of film. Over a century different techniques were developed to take films from acted out plays to sophisticated visual storytelling that uses editing techniques and camera angles to manipulate and clarify the drama in our minds.

Digital print is in its infancy –we are arguably still at the Zoetrope stage. We have not yet fully understood its potential, how to effectively use creative techniques to squeeze the best out of the medium. ‘Our cameras’ will appear bulky and hand cranked to future print experts.

But we have a unique opportunity – the grammar of digital print does not yet exist. It is our privilege to be working at a time when any one of us can make the communication breakthrough with this new ‘toy’. We are all developing the language of the medium on the hoof. We are singularly blessed with being pioneers, whether we like it or not.

McLuhan used the example of a light bulb as a ‘medium’ that had powerful social consequences without even needing content – by illuminating a room at night it changed that space and the activity within it without even having to deliver ‘content’. We are schooled to focus on the obvious – the content being carried forward by the new technology. We might be missing the deeper effect digital print will have on our world. Perhaps the digital press, without the help of any of us, already has the potential to change society by its mere existence.

As one who is too technically illiterate to follow the demonstrations I have attended on how digital presses work, I have stopped trying to understand what happens in the guts of the machines. For me they are magic boxes, and because they are liberated from printing off the old inflexible plates they allow us all to paint with light.

The new

medium

It is not the strongest

of the species that survive,

nor the most intelligent,

but the ones most responsive

to change.Charles Darwin

To make a long story short, it was by noticing and studying the huge array of finches on the Galapagos Islands that Darwin started to frame his theory of natural selection. Different beaks were developed by native finches to best take advantage of their own particular circumstances.

Certainly Darwin’s quote opposite is relevant to our choices in embracing digital technology.

Because the future belongs to nobody in particular. Yet. We can choose to ignore digital technology, dabble in it, use it to augment conventional processes and approaches, or buy into it wholesale. It won’t necessarily be the big corporations or the kitchen table entrepreneurs who will gain most advantage from it. Rather it will be those who have the ability to adapt to the new environment, whilst being true to themselves. Its not really important what anyone else is up to.

Those who benefit most will be those who understand what already makes them special, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to smartly take advantage of the shift in technology.

The least intelligent option might be to not bother at all. As Woody Allen put it “Eighty percent of success is just showing up”.

Revo

lutio

n o

r Evo

lutio

n?

‘Convergence’ is a marketing word du jour. I believe that as digital print doesn’t operate in a vacuum, its relevance is best seen in considering how it fits within a bigger picture. Over the next few pages there are a few thoughts on how it might connect with other technologies, reframe how design is used by brands, and what that might mean for folk like us.

I’m a Luddite. Struggle to download an app. Have no interest in Snapchat. Perhaps you are the same? Nevertheless the developments in tech will affect all our lives professionally and personally, and it’s worth considering how digital print fits into the story. At the risk of sounding like I have swallowed a copy of Wired, how does digital print relate to ‘the internet of things’ ‘big data’, ‘artificial intelligence’ ‘bricks to clicks’ and ‘augmented reality’?

I imagine most of us feel we are ‘over’ augmented reality (A.R). A couple of clicks onto Q.R. codes that took us to dreary brand homepages that wanted to sell us something, and it felt like it was pretty much game over. It’s probably worth noting that this is still a technology in its infancy. And that those who ask ‘Why would I want to look at stuff through my phone?’ have failed to observe the zombie-like hordes surrounding them, staring intently into their black mirrors.

I believe that in time this channel of communication will come of age. That where packaging tended to be used as the closing ‘pack shot’ end frame on television advertising, now it will instead be the ‘establishing shot’ from which all kinds of content will pour forth. In this scenario the agility and flexibility of digital print will enable a more limber use of the pack to act as gateway to the layers of material waiting behind the doors.

My point is that there are so many online innovations going on, it’s hard to keep up, but the most interesting innovations will happen in the overlap between one medium and another. HP has already developed its LINK technology as a kind of next gen QR code. This is a digital ‘watermark’ on the paper, but what makes it interesting is that each one is unique to the copy being printed. So it can be personalised, or used for distribution logistics. Imagine how this can be used to make ‘your’ copy of a magazine tailor its digital content to your interests, or how it can help with the multi billion dollar challenge of brand forgery. Think what it could do for you aging parents medical cabinet, and your ability to track if they are still taking their tablets. This is the convergence of A.R. print, Artificial Intelligence and ‘big data’. So that rubbish Q.R. code perhaps isn’t so useless after all – anymore than the Wright brothers’ plane turned out not to be a dead end. ‘The Internet of Things’ is the network of physical objects or "things" embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enable these objects to collect and exchange data. Experts estimate that the IoT will consist of almost 50 billion objects by 2020 (ref-Wiki).

From the tag on a cow’s ear to finding your door keys, the Internet of Things is here. Via your phone’s social media accounts, your deodorant can now develop a relationship with you, perhaps help with your training regime, all with no hardware needing to be added to the pack. Frankly, I don’t want packaging I’ve used to keep emailing me for a catch up, and where this is going I have no idea. But I am sure that being able to print the ‘analogue’ material digitally to personalise and customise it will have a place in the near future.

Meanwhile, online retail is continuing to build momentum. In the UK, brands like Ocado have algorithms and distribution logistics that are head-spinning. They could easily be distributing bespoke packaging to their customers’ homes – for example, branded packaging that drops all the in store hard sell, acts in a more charismatic and iconic manner, and so works as a more effective ‘silent salesman’ in the home of the consumer. This isn’t happening yet because whilst Ocado have the ability they as yet lack the scale. When that changes I would envisage distribution becoming a much more creative avenue for brands with a bit of moxie.

And what about subscription shopping? It’s a rapidly growing phenomenon. But if that brand or celebrity I love keeps posting the same little carton through my door each month, there will soon come a time when they have delighted me enough. Yet with digital print used creatively those little boxes could quite easily continue to surprise and delight me. And rather than being ‘boxes’ to ship content they could easily behave like ‘magazines’. Ones with personalised online content watermarked in, and the ability to find your keys. My head’s about to explode...

And that’s the point really. Just like Dorothy waking up in OZ this new reality is all a bit of a head scrambler. If we want to skip down that yellow brick road to our goal, like Dorothy we are going to need friends. ‘Collaboration’ is one of those words frequently used but in reality seldom delivered in the agency world, where projects are jealously guarded, with politics and ‘ownership of idea’ sometimes getting in the way of everybody acting in the interests of the brand.

But none of us will make the leaps that are possible unless we join forces, and blend specialisms. The future is not in the hands of one or two smart pockets of people. It’s in the space between all the specialist experts, and we will get ‘there’ faster and better together. So technological progress in print and communication will require a human shift in behaviour, and the winners will be those big enough to share their thinking and the subsequent glory.

And meantime, whilst technology is speeding things up, the brain still moves at the same pace it always did. Great ideas often take time to arrive at, and far longer to be developed and allowed to grow. In the race for the future we need to ensure that they are considered valuable enough to nurture. Without them it’s all just pixels and white noise.

Technological overlap

Augmented Reality

Online Retail

Digital Print

One way to adapt to new technology is to put ‘the brand’ and ‘the big idea’ at the heart of things, then run it through the new channels, for example applying its concepts to A.R. or whatever...

The smartest brands will do something different – overlapping all the specialisms and channels to make genuine breakthroughs where one plus one will equal three. The Internet of Things

Online Retail

Internet of Things

Augmented Reality

Digital Print Brand

Brand

Everythingyou ever wanted to know about print

(but were afraid to ask)

Chances are, you don’t really care, you just want a great job and an affordable price. But to grasp the essentials can help. These pages aim to cover the real basics. As such its rule of thumb in approach, and not intended to be used as anything more than a ‘bluffers guide’.

The first digital printing presses came onto the market in the early 1990s.The greatest difference between digital printing and traditional methods such as lithography, flexography, gravure, or letterpress is that there is no need to replace printing plates in digital printing, whereas in analog printing the plates are repeatedly replaced. This results in quicker turnaround time and lower cost when using digital printing, but typically a loss of some fine-image detail by most commercial digital printing processes. The most popular methods include inkjet or laser printers that deposit pigment or toner onto a wide variety of substrates including paper, photo paper, canvas, glass, metal, marble, and other substances.

In many of the processes, the ink or toner does not permeate the substrate, as does conventional ink, but forms a thin layer on the surface that may be additionally adhered to the substrate by using a fuser fluid with heat process (toner) or UV curing process (ink).

Source: Wikipedia.

What is ‘digital printing’?

The thing about printers and print experts is they do tend to jump to product names and jargon that can leave the average person feeling a bit ignorant. You mean you don't know the difference between using an Indigo for liquid electro photography and what a Scitex thermal inkjet is for?

Which Press for which format?

From postage stamps to building wraps, labels to corrugate boxes, magazines to sign and display, most scales and substrates are possible, and the list is growing - HP alone are investing multiple billions in R&D.

There are thousands of these machines operating globally. If you hear the term ‘DSCOOP’ it refers to the HP user community. Essentially, HP operates a strong network of support and advice to ensure the machines keep running, and best practice can be shared around the world.

HP Scitex prints high quality displays,

large format and corrugated boxes

at up to 600m2 per hour on sheets

up to 160 x 320cm.

Use HP Scitex for:

Sign & display

Packaging

Decoration

HP Indigo is used for marketing collateral,

direct mail, photobooks, labels, flexible

packaging and folding carton (amongst

others!) on a wide variety of media up to

B2 format. It gives a quality comparable

with Litho.

Use HP Indigo for:

Photographic prints

Direct Mail & Transactional documents

Publishing [books & magazines]

Packaging [labels, folding cartons,

shrink sleeves, flexible packaging]

HP SCITEX

HP INDIGO

HP INKJET

WEB PRESS

HP Inkjet Web Press prints magazines,

books and higher volume print such

as direct mail, at a rate up 800ft

per minute (mono).

HP Inkjet Web Press is used for:

Publishing [books, magazines, newspapers]

Direct Mail and transactional documents

Corrugated packaging

How much of the worlds print is done digitally?

HP refers to any piece of print as a ‘page’, but a page could be a poster, a label or a magazine spread. Today Digital only represents 5% of the total 47.2 trillion graphics pages printed annually.

Printed Analogue [95%]

Printed Digital [5%]

Here is how much of each market is currently printed digitally…

Photos [100%]

Direct Mail [40%]

Sign & Display [47%]

Marketing collateral [8%]

Labels and packaging [4%]

Publishing [1%]

What’s driving packaging activity?

The global packaging market is worth some $214 billion in production billing. Only a small proportion of that is currently printed digitally, but given the numbers involved a gradual shift to more digital will be a very big deal.

I pinched this excellent diagram from Ian Schofield of Iceland Foods. Basically what it says is that the business wants less SKUs in store for less time (generally quicker), but they want more variety in products and creativity. The obvious need is for more agility, and digital print is a big part of the answer.

TODAY

2013

2020

Digital Era

CONSUMER PACKAGE GOODS: MARKET TRENDS

2000

VARIETY & SKU PROLIFERATION

Customisation/Personalisation/Versioning

LIFE CYCLE

REPEAT ORDERS

BATCH SIZES

87

When does going digital make economic sense?

The simple rule of thumb is that shorter runs and ones requiring more changes to artwork make sense to print digitally. Higher volumes will see the costs being disproportionately high compared to conventional print if the print elements are static. Two things to consider: the smart answer can often be to augment conventional print with digital in the process (or vice versa). And your print is not just about cost, it is also about value.

Security measures

Not all products need the same level of security protection. But given that in the luxury spirits market alone the issue of counterfeiting costs hundreds of millions of dollars, clearly this is an issue to be addressed. The best protection is achieved by a combination of various components, many of them based on unique ‘fingerprinting’ achieved with digital printing, such as unique codes or marks (with every individual item coded differently) that help track-and-trace and demonstrate authenticity. Invisible to the eye digitally printed watermarks, again all potentially being unique, which help check product authenticity. Microtext and guilloches which can protect brands against unauthorized copying and reproduction of their products and lastly UV invisible ink which could be used as an authentication feature.

Conventional package decoration

Unit Cost

Inventory, just in case

Digital package decoration

Quality and Accelerated Time-to-Market

Revision Control

Rapid Response to Consumer Demand

Just-in-Time Manufacturing

Event, Cause and Regional Marketing

Lower Total System Cost

Zero, Reduced or Exact Inventory

Versioning and Personalisation

Market Share Growth

Digital package decorationConventional package decoration

The opportunity to get various parts of the business to fund a digital print initiative can be reasoned by considering and costing the ultimate benefit to these individual areas. Use digital for short runs, like piloting, test marketing, product launch and ramp-up.

Use digital to facilitate design changes, while avoiding overstock & scrap.

Bricks or clicks? The logistics of online sales can give higher margins, but other costs can appear, such as warehousing or scrapping through obsolescence. Through web-to-print, print on demand, or short runs digital print has the potential to reduce these costs.

100%

0 0 0

0 2 0

0 4 0

0 6 0

0 8 0

1 0 0

1 2 0

1 4 0

1 6 0

1 8 0

150%

142%

159%

Unit cost, per unit

produced conventionally

Unit cost, per unit

produced digitally

Unit cost conventional per product

unit sold [assuming 35% scrap]

Unit cost digital per product

unit sold [assuming 5% scrap]

88

The value of print

The Share a Coke campaign produced 5bn personalised bottles in its 2013 run (post an Australian pilot). Here are the numbers. There was to be no change to the supply chain, but this involved the kind of printing complexity one might expect from a global super brand.

Lets just assume for a minute that the digitally printed label on the Share a Coke campaign costs more than a conventional label. Let’s take it a stage further and say that the label becomes 1% of the overall cost of goods for a single serving of coke and that represents an increase of 25% over a “normal” label. The question that could then be logically asked is how much incremental sales would be needed to break even or for the campaign to be “cost-neutral”.

Now I’m not a mathematical genius but given that we know how much the digitally printed label cost and we also know how much gross margin there is in a single serving of coke (53% according to their annual review!!) we can work out how many bottles need to be served to cover the incremental costs. Take the 53% margin and divide it by the 1% cost of a label giving us a multiplier or leverage factor of 50. Then take the increase in costs associated to digitally printed labels (25%) and divide that by 50 (our leverage factor) and we can establish that Coke “only” needed to increase sales by 0.5%. Given that they achieved figures of 7%, 5%, 4% in different countries and “only” a return of 0.5% was needed did the digital label represent cost or value?

Can we print more colours better?

Indigo digital presses use the four standard ink colours (CMYK). But can also print using up to seven colours – using green, violet and orange inks to extend the colour gamut that can be reached. Or alternatively pre-mixed spot colours or specials like pink, white, or a brands particular pantone colour can be added if required. This diagram was drawn by a printer to explain this to me – its not scientifically accurate, but gives you the idea...

Conventional Printing

Cyan

Magenta

Yellow

Black

HP Indigo

Violet

Orange

Green

Typical colour spectrum

Conventional Printing

HP Indigo

Human eye

What is ‘Link’?

Basically it is a trigger for augmented reality from pack or paper, via a ‘linkreader’ app on your phone. Unlike a Q.R. code it is an invisible ‘watermark’.

But the real leap here is that just as visible graphics can be targeted, varied and personalised, so too can these watermarks.So rather than going to a generic online page the experience can be tailor made and so be more engaging. And of course the marketing department is happy because this also allows for the capture of plenty of ‘big data’.

Its inexpensive, and is simple enough that it can be created even by ‘amateurs’ In the near future it will be an even richer experience as the same watermark vary by scanning locations, ‘premium features’ are added and more advanced analytics come on stream.

35

150

5

14

3

2

European countries

Names per

country

Alpha

bets

Languages

Brands

Bott

le siz

es

12

10

3

24/7

8

HP Indigo

WS6x00

Convention

al printers

months printing

2-3 shifts 24/7 operation

Digital

printers

10kArtw

orks

89

I didn’t write this page, it was provided by Moving Brands, who’s practice straddles the world of analogue and digital branding. As such it is an interesting overview on how to achieve colour consistency across a spectrum of media.

Craftsmanship of Colour

Colour has always been a fundamental tenant of brand systems, and for decades, businesses policed its use, maintaining ‘consistency is king.’ As the meaning of ‘branding’ has shifted from ‘logo’, to the embodiment of a business’ culture and ambition (and anywhere in between), has the importance of an ownable, usable colour palette diminished?

We don’t think so. Creating and committing to a strong colour palette can achieve numerous outcomes for a business:

It can act as a differentiator between peers and competitors

It can convey the character of a business, and forge a connection between a business and its audience

It can help consumers navigate complex product and service offerings

...and it can allow a brand the freedom to explore flexibility in other aspects of its identity system

Digital printing has and will continue to shape the way that we, and businesses like ours, craft colour on behalf of our clients. From exploration, through iteration and calibration, to final craft and recommendation, here is how we journey with our clients to create the perfect colour palette.

Exploration

We assess our client’s business, it’s competitor space, and take into account what they do and where the brand will live. We look at the colour in connection to the rest of the brand system we’re developing in tandem; the logo, the tone of voice, the way it behaves and interacts on screen. We begin playing with palette options, pulling these from on-screen design programmes into the real world.

We print out on low-fi, quick and local digital printers, to get our thinking on boards, to discuss and debate within our team. Low-fi is important at this stage – it’s about iterating quickly in order to explore more ground, more options.

Iteration

We collaborate with the client team, balancing the opinions of stakeholders and the business needs, and the ongoing development of other parts of the identity system, until the colour palette becomes more focused and refined. Subjectivity drives people’s response to colour – we hear “it doesn’t feel right” or “I just don’t like it.” You can’t argue that gut reaction; you can point to how colour choice is directly driven from the business objectives, you can argue colour theory, you can explain that the colour should be reviewed as part of the broader system. And you can continue to iterate.

We stress-test the colour across touchpoints, remaining mindful of the ‘real world’ – how and where this system will be used. Low-fi digital printing plays an important role; again, it’s about rapid iteration. It’s also to ensure that, even with little control over the print quality, the colours will work. If we email development work to our clients, their local digital printer is going to be how they gauge the colour at this stage, so it has to work at this fidelity.

Calibration

The work leaves the studio to be pushed by our printing partners - where more sophisticated and high tech digital printing processes are used to develop final colours. Up until fairly recently, studios like ours favoured litho printing. But the joy of litho is also its downfall; you open yourself up to the human element. When you’re exploring printed samples with 1% variation in colour, you need consistency and exactness.  Back in the studio, and with support from additional expert workshops, we produce samples in relevant materials – paper, pixel, animation, bespoke vinyl mixes, polyure-thane paint, to ensure the palate is replicable across any and every touchpoint our client’s business may demand.

Recommendation

Finally, we’re able to make a recommendation on the colour palette. All colour codes are deliv-ered (RGB, CMYK, RAL…), and recommendations are given for applications of colour (printed gloss/matt, on which materials, amount of white space…) in guidelines. No matter how robust our creation process, or our guidelining process, we know our recommendations will not always be met. Tools and materials (and humans) vary, and we aim to build systems that can adapt and thrive in the face of these challenges.

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Iteration

Exploring colour within the identity system for Tiko, an Internet of Things service.

Calibration

Reviewing print tests in the development of the Cambridge Design Partnership identity.

Recommendation

Colour is vital to the new eir brand. These guidelines are used by over 100 separate agencies to guide their use of colour across the brand’s communications and touchpoints.

Supermundane

London artist Supermundane, aka Rob Lowe, is also a graphic designer, typographer, illustrator and writer with over 15 years experience in the creative industry. His signature mesmeric drawings have been published and exhibited worldwide. His approach is defined by a distinctive use of colour, line and simplicity which can be seen through all his different disciplines from typeface design to his personal works. He uses digital print to produce his limited editions, but in this book we are going to try something new…

To squeeze the history of visual art into a couple of sentences, here is why I find this piece exciting. For centuries visual art was basically a ‘one off’ deal “Here’s your painting”. Then wood blocks and engravings saw the beginning of reproduced art - editions of prints. There were always variations - as in the silk screens turned out by Warhol’s factory. But now through digital print we have the possibility of a genuine hybrid: The print as a unique one-off piece of art. So an artist’s monograph (for example) could be a series of variations rather than a standardised item.

The print opposite is a first I believe… the first time an artist has run with digital print technology to create an edition of unique ‘same but different’ art prints, where the algorithm effectively acts as a creative collaborator, and the unpredictable results coming off the press are part of the magic. That feels like quite a jump that follows in the steps of the Dadaist ‘cut up’ approach popularised by William S. Burroughs. That’s pretty ‘beat’ for a book about digital printing is it not?

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How ‘limitless unique editions’ are created through HP Mosaic.

[1]A master artwork is produced from which all the versions will be created.

[1][2][3] Examples of how this master pattern can be automatically re-scaled and re-orientated to produce unique editions via an algorithm.

[2]

[1]

[3]

[4]

Thank you

About the author

Silas Amos has spent 25+ years as a designer and strategic partner for global FMCG companies and brands including AB Inbev, Unilever and Diageo.

He was a founder employee at jkr, working as designer, then Creative Planner and ultimately Strategic Director for the London and New York studios.

He creates, interprets and expresses insight and strategy through design literate eyes. He thinks in pictures, and aims to talk in plain English.

Author

Silas Amossilas@silasamos.com

Design and Art Direction

James Lunnnnul.co.uk

Produced by and in collaboration with

F.E. Burman Ltd, Londonfeburman.co.uk

Bound by

Diamond PS Ltd, London

Paper supplied by

This book is printed on G.F Smith Colorplan. Rob Mannix of G.F Smith explains why: “We believe that Colorplan, amongst our many other beautiful ranges, is perfectly suited to HP Indigo technology. The finest surface, ingredients, embossings and colours used in tandem with HP ink are trulyphenomenal. The way HP ink sits proud on the surface whilst embracing the fibres and working with the paper, allowing metallics to shine through or exaggerating texture to complement the imagery. The white ink is clearly for colour on colour printing and this is an innovation which works perfectly with Colorplan masking or underpinning four colour sets or simply being used in its own right, allowing the designer to work in new ways with darker shades of material and play with the visual nature of our papers to powerful effect.”

Supported by Hewlett-Packard

HP are kindly supporting this book, and it uses many examples produced with their presses. But the book is my independent view, and reflects the authors personal opinions. Particular thanks to Nancy Janes, Paul Randall and Ohiana Martínez for all their support, conceptual, logistical and personal.

Thanks to HP for seeing the future of print and helping us all get there.

Thank you to the following for sharing their time and views in the pages of this book:

Patrick BurgoyneEditor, Creative Review

Dave BirssEditor at Large, The Drum

Linda CaseyEditor-in-chief of Package Design

Gary ChiappettaCEO Kaleidoscope

Darren FoleyMD at Pearlfisher

Tracy De GrooseCEO, Dentsu Aegis Network UK

Mat HeinlMD at Moving Brands

Jeremy LindleyGlobal Design Director, Diageo

Rob MannixDirector, G. F Smith

Paul ReganDirector, F.E. Burnham

Digital Print is just a tool. But the ways in which it is revolutionizing design, marketing and media will impact on us all.

This book looks at the creative and technological opportunities being seized by brands, and what this spells for the future of print.

4AA5—2109EEE

Printed on an HP Indigo Digital Press