When you need programs for an event that starts on Friday night, it’s imperative that the programs be there Friday night (not Saturday morning) and look good. That’s exactly what needed to happen with the recent Dayton Philharmonic Volunteer Association’s “10 days of design” event. It kicked off on June 18th at a dinner party for 300 people (at the John Schantz house, owned by Kevin and Kathleen Weaver). Tim Hull & his company TDH marketing did the design work on the 8 page program, which printed in full color on an 80# Gloss cover stock. It had a lot of photos of work that had been done to the house by different vendors and contractors, so color and presentation were important.

As with many custom projects like this (starting with TDH’s role), gathering all of the information, creating the content, processing it and proofing it are a big job. And like so many times, a lot of the information was not available untill the last minute. I’ve got to give TDH credit on this one. They called me a month before and talked about the project.  We talked about size, price and quantity as well as timing expectations, so we all knew it would be a very fast turn around when we got the order. And remember that 5,000 8-page full-color programs is a fairly large order. So when crunch time came around and we had two days to get them done and delivered, we all knew what to expect.

Tim called me a couple of days before it was ready to print, just to tell me it’s coming, and when the two days were up, it was delivered on time. Tim was at the DPVA event (which I hear turned out to be a beautiful evening event), and told me that everybody was just amazed at how good the programs looked considering the timeline. Even though this was just another couple of days in the life of our printing operations (and TDH’s creation services), it’s a little glimpse behind the scenes of how good collaboration between everyone makes projects like this look so good and seem so smooth.

Specs:

• Job Title: DPVA (Dayton Philharmonic Volunteer Association)
• Quantity: 5,000
• Number of Pages: 8 page, full color
• Size: 8.5 x 11
• Paper Stock: 80# Gloss Cover

Timeline:

• Wednesday June 16th
  • TDH emails job specs.
  • Mike gives departments managers a heads up and writes up order.
  • Mike & Bob go over the schedule (make some scheduling changes since it is such a rush)* to ensure on time delivery.
  • Bob gets paper ordered.

• Thursday June 17th
  • PDF Art (Yea TDH!) arrives in the morning via Oregon FTP site.
  • Prepress sends PDF art through workflow, which checks it against PDFx verifications.**
  • Prepress sends Verified PDFx proof back to TDH for approval.
  • TDH has slight color adjustment, prepress makes adjustment and generates color managed Epson proof.
  • Proof Approval
  • Plates made at Noon.
  • On press by 12:30pm.

• Friday June 18th
  • 8:00am job in the Bindery department for cutting and Saddle Binding.
  • Shipping delivers job on time.

*Using an integrated scheduling system allows us to look at all of our resources,  make sure we have the room to run the job and not put anything else out of delivery range
**Checking against PDFx is basically a preflighting operation, so that we know we will not have any problems when it’s time to Rip plates

This has to stop. The “Print is not Dead” campaign (sponsored by groups from the printing industry), makes printers sound like a bunch of old folks who are on their death beds, but want to convince themselves that they still have a pulse. It sounds like we are talking to ourselves, not the people who purchase printing & communications. Remember Monte Python “I’m not Dead“?

First off, an observation about printing and smaller print shops today. When I started in this business, printing was considered a craft. You know, picture the old printer looking over the printed sheet to make sure it was just right, and if it was not, we knew secrets to fix it. Then at the beginning of the digital revolution, digital technologies started to replace a lot of our old processes with software that basically took the “mystery” out of what we did. Eventually, print buyers were somewhat justified in seeing a “sameness” in a lot of shops. I feel like print is turning into a craft again,  not in the way we produce it, but the way we apply it. You can get the simple no-brainer stuff at an internet printer, but it’s our job to be creative in our ideas how to apply it, creative ways to use print and ways to make the simple stand out.

There is a very dynamic communications marketplace unfolding in new ways (we never dreamed of) every day. Printing companies must find compelling ways to offer new sets of benefits to their customers. Because response rates for all media have been declining, communicators must deal with sending the same message through more channels. The message sometimes has to be interactive as well as being printed, and it may need to be forwarded to others by the recipient. It’s an amazing challenge, and printers who choose to be can be right in the middle of this mix, as some of the more forward thinking ones are now.

Oregon Printing is fortunately is in a great place. We’ve got the equipment and systems in place to handle our traditional “Print work” as well as the new demands of Variable Data Printing and beyond. And, we are financially strong and ready to go some new places. What makes the most sense to me is to talk to our customers and find out where they want us to go. How do you want to communicate and what services could we offer that will make your life easier. I’ll be calling and talking to a lot of our customer base and I welcome any suggestions and comments.

It’s the task of Print companies like us, and the sales and marketing structures we employee, to create enticing applications for print that are appropriate and forward-looking, solve problems for our clients as well as create opportunities for them. It’s up to us to steer our businesses into offering a new, higher level craft that is very much alive. So the “Print is not dead” crowd can go to the back of the room now, as the rest of us are busy and excited about the future.

Note. Thanks to Dr. Joe Web from the What-They-Think Economics and Research Center for addressing this subject in greater detail in their June 2010 Executive Briefing.

Ball's there before the runner

Flash back to Detroit a couple of weeks ago, and a drama played out in the public eye in which everyone involved acted with a grace that we could all learn something from.

I’ve aways been a baseball lover,  and baseball lovers know the only thing more unlikely than a perfect game is the unassisted triple play and hitting 4 home runs in 1 game. Well by now I’m sure that you are all familiar with the near perfect “perfect” game pitched by Armando Galarrga of the Detroit Tigers  a couple of weeks ago. Galarrga had laid down 26 straight batters, and on the 27th (the fewest number of batters that can be faced in a 9 inning game) umpire Jim Joyce blew the call. Right on national TV, in front of the whole country he made what was an obvious mistake, the ball got to the first baseman’s glove ahead of the batter . Now lets put this in perceptive, what Galarrga would have accomplished has been done only 20 times since the turn of the last century (thats 1900, not 2000!). It’s an honor bestowed on very few people and would have put him in the record books and possibly a trip to Cooperstown, the Baseball hall of fame. But a simple human error wiped it out, and unfortunately it can’t be turned back.

My first reaction was frustration and anger. I listened to Marty Brenneman (the Reds play by play announcer) describe what a blatantly bad call it was and what it cost this poor kid, and I could not help but to co-miserate with him. It does not help that I’m not a big fan of Jim Joyce either, especially after I watched him call 2 balls that should have been strikes (in my opinion) and cost David Weathers & the Reds a game against the Brewers a few years back. I remember him defiantly looking down at Weathers as if to say “question me and your outa here!”.

Galarraga put's a hand on Joyce's shoulder

So I was shocked when I heard that Joyce was in tears after the game saying “I just cost that kid a perfect game”. Joyce said he realized it after going to the umpires room and watching the replay. “I’m not sure what to say right now other than that probably was the most important call of my career, and I missed it”, going on to say “Nothing like this has ever happened to me, and I don’t know what to say”. Wow, it’s brings a new respect for somebody when they are human enough to fess up and say they made a mistake. Equally as powerful was Galarraga’s graceful reply regarding Joyce, that he’s human and everybody makes mistakes. According to Galarraga, I then gave Joyce a hug and said “I think he feels worse that I do”. The next day, Joyce and Galarraga met at Home plate as Tiger fans cheered. Joyce was visibly moved by the pitchers grace as well as the crowds.

So, what’s so powerful about this whole drama? You have something big, a perfect game could commercially make Galarraga a wealthy man with future contract negotiations, not to say the record books. And it will put Jim Joyce up there with Bill Buckner on the biggest “should have been the last out of the game” list. But it was incredible to see Galarraga shake it off, give Joyce a hug and move on. Could you imagine if our politicians, our leaders, our coworkers (even BP), along with you and I had that type of grace . Just be honest, admit mistakes and move on….There’s not enough of that in the world today.

Fast forward back to reality. We live in a world full of litigation, finger-pointing and and more complex issues than ever imagined back in the “good ole days”, but for just a moment, to watch this drama play out in front of all of us was remarkable thing.