I remember back in the day….. a lot of print shops had a sign in the front lobby that said:

In a way, we all thought that was kind of funny, but in another way (quiet and stoic), it was the rule printers lived by. Seriously in 1991, could you imagine somebody demanding all 3 of those things? OK, fast forward 20 years to 2011, can you imagine a good customer not expecting (or demanding) all three?

For some reason at lunch the other day, I was talking to Bob about that old sign, we found it really funny. Then we started reminiscing about how we used to do stuff (and we were pretty cutting edge at the time for small print shops). First off, in 1991, 4 color presses were very big and expensive, and only the large printing companies owned that kind of equipment (color control sucked back in that day also). They just did not make (nor could we afford) small, compact, super efficient 5 color presses like we have today. So just to be competitive, a lot of us were running 2 color presses (think AB Dick’s and Ryobi’s) and putting this piece of paper through the press multiple times….Uggg, the thought of that just gives me the shakes.

Secondly, it all needed to be done in film, with some sort of color key proofs….yes, we were all masters of the stripping table, with multiple lay-sheets, pin register systems…. OK, you get the point, if you were in a print shop in the 80′s and 90′s, and we look back at how we did stuff, it just seems archaic.

Now, I look at what we are achieving in finished jobs, and it just blows me away. I keep writing blogs about cool projects we do, because it still amazes me what we can do. Of course, the digitization of content is behind so many of the changes, but maybe for fun we look a little closer at some of these changes.

The prep part of printing, or as we call it, the pre-press. Maybe this is the best part. When things were analog, all the different elements of a job needed to be on a separate layer, kind of like in photoshop, but in this case, each layer was a separate piece of film (with cool pin systems so that we could make sure that all layers registered, but had to be applied manually). The ability to put everything into 1 digital image that contains all tints, solids, and all the color separations is incredible when compared to 1991 technology….think Adobe PDF Print Engine 2.

And the actual printing part. And maybe this is the best part. Like with the prep portion, technology has really elevated the equipment. No more ink keys (ink profiles are picked up in pre-press and transferred to the press), infra dryers hold down powder and so on….Think Heidelberg PrintMaster.

Where am I going with all of this? The point is, if we don’t consistently deliver a good price, a high quality product, and turn it around real quickly, we can’t even come to the party. And then once we get there, we have to have friendly people that understand not only printing, they have to be creative enough to solve problems, have enough empathy to understand the customers point of view and so on. And this extends well beyond offset printing…. it goes for finishing, digital printing, mailing, wide format printing, promotional items and a lot more. In a way, it’s become simple enough….just take a digital image, and apply it where needed, as many times as needed and tightly control the process. And then do it for the Right Price, Make it Look Good, AND do it Quick!

Finished piece, ready to mail (this one does not have the variable mailing data on it yet)

Actually, this is another one of those “the designer had a very cool vision in the first place” stories, or something like that. Anyway, I worked with Scott Hull (Scott Hull Associates) on this one, and it was a campaign aimed at the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 (actually a very noble campaign to help continue relief to victims). When I saw the first concept, I knew it was a way cool design,   didn’t see the final project in my mind (at least the way the designer described it)….but we hung with it.

Scott was working with one of his illustrative designers, Andy Hayes  on this particular project, and Andy had this idea of a 16 page ”newspaper” looking piece (ever try to print newsprint in spot Pms colors on a sheet fed press….Not!),  plus a response card & envelope, then it was all to be sealed up in a plastic bag. Next, variable print the name/address of the recipient on a 4″ x 17″ label and then wrap it around the poly bag sealed product (by hand). There was a lot of metallic ink being used on uncoated stock. I gotta give Scott Credit, he has trust in the people he works with….and he just knows it’s going to work out well. This was a big project (we’re mailing 10,000 of these things).

When I saw the first round of proofs, I started to realize what a cool project this was going to be. Better yet, I’ll give Andy a lot of credit for the design and sticking to it. By printing the Pms 877 Silver (basic silver metallic ink) on the 50# Husky uncoated offset (which we all questioned…Metallic ink is generally printed on coated stock for optimal results…usually nobody prints metallic on uncoated), it looked just like a newspaper highlighted by the strong Pms 185 Red…Oh yea, the design was very very good, and the piece looked great.

There were some challenges throughout the process. First on the size of the “newspaper”, at first it was going to be 28 x 18, but not only did that run the cost up to high, it was rather big and cumbersome to read. Andy settled for 22 x 15, folded to 11 x 15 (that was the 16 page size), and then folded again to 7.5 x 11 for mailing. The project had to go back and forth with the post office on the size of the plastic bag we were sealing it in, but in the end, everybody just wanted something that would make it to the final recipient in as good as possible shape. Oh, I forgot that we all thought that 50# offset would have an awful lot of “show-through”, being that thin, but it didn’t. It all worked out, and once again, the piece looked great.

So the Bizarre ending to this one? This piece had good message and truly aimed to help victims of 9/11 (even 10 years later). Our target date to drop in the mail was April 15, but just all kinds of minor delays pushed it out to last Monday 5/2. That was the morning after they announced the end of Osama bin Laden. I don’t know why, but I just found that to be fairly ironic that it dropped in the mail the day after bin Laden died. These are all good people trying to help other people, I sure hope some good comes out of it, and maybe, just maybe, this will help them raise more money for their work.

Center Spread 22" x 15" opened

Response Card & Return Envelope

Normal reading size, 11" x 15" (front page)

Folded to 7" x 11" for mailing

As I’ve written about before, we have been engaged with Aileronfor over two years. Aileron has helped us put a professional management system in place, define our mission and vision, as well as helping me to assemble a very strong board of advisers (which I would recommend to any business). Anyway, my contact at Aileron, Bill Barkalow threw out an idea of having an MBA team from University of Dayton conduct a study on Oregon. So, a little explanation on this; UD has a program called the capstone program (part of the MBA program) where they put a team of MBA student together, and as their final project prior to graduation, they do a full fledged study of a selected business.

At first glance I thought “a study”, what does that mean? But the more we thought about it, the more we thought “let us define” what study we want done. In a changing bnusiness like the printing and graphics business, there is a lot of wild speculation about what the industry is changing into. I read a lot as well as see a number of printers going the MSP (Marketing Service Provider) route. I also see print companies that are going the total automation route…figure out a way to convert everything to CMYK and automate the rest (that means not much customer service, and if it does not fit into a square hole, it’s kicked out). Then of course you have the printers out there that just refuse to believe the world is changing at all, and they are just going to keep doing what they have been doing for the last 20 years. Conclusion: yes, we’ve thought a lot about our future, and although we have a pretty good idea of where we are headed, why not have the MBA Team give us their 2 cents.

So, my challenge to them was this: If you just found yourself owning this company, where would you take it to assure success in 2015? The great thing is that if we did not like the results, we were not in any way committed to following them. So we proceeded with the Capstone project over the last 4 months, and believe it on not….I was more than pleasantly surprised.

Our team consisted of 5 students, Joe, Joe, Nathan, Mark and Celine. I won’t dig to much into the finding’s right now (I’ll save that for the next 5 months worth of blogs), but I’m thinking each team member had 125+ hours into this report. They started with a whole industry overview, and like a funnel, they narrowed it down to our local region, then to how Oregon fits into this region, and then on to new trends. They studied all of our product lines (and an industry overview on each product). After that, they made some recommendations, and even had some implementation plans for some of their recommendations. Actually, I was absolutely blown away by their thoroughness, and all the research that went into this.

So, since blogs that are to long probably never get read, I will hit upon some of the specifics of their study as well as our future plans in coming blogs. After weathering the recession of 2008-2010, I’m thinking that 2015 is looking pretty good in this business.

As a side note, everyone that was present for their presentation at Aileron a couple of weeks ago (and who had seen one of these before),  said this was the best Capstone project they had ever seen done