Variable-data Printing Serves - Niches Here, There & Everywhere

A milestone focus on high-end digital color presses capable of variable-data imaging - a technology that was introduced ten years ago and is just now at the beginning of wider, more successful implementation in commercial printing-tends to overshadow some real achievements on other variable-data fronts. Those activities involve ink-jet and electrophotographic imaging for high-volume transactional printing, print-on-demand books and catalogs, wide-format proofing and imaging, label production, and printing of text and coding of printed packaging.<br />The capabilities of digital production color presses intrigue commercial printers the most, especially new units referred to by manufacturers as "Series II" or "third-generation" systems. Besides having more press-like characteristics, from offset-caliber quality, image consistency, and high output rates to sturdy construction, reliability, and stock choice, the units seem to represent a way to produce printing that’s beyond the norm.<br />Some users are producing hybrid printed products (offset printing a quantity of "shells" that are later personalized by digital presses), while others are utilizing clients’ "dynamic" databases to personalize marketing materials that drive response rates up to 15%, even 35%. Finally, digital color systems prompt the creation of high-margin Internet-based print providers offering easy-to-design and easy-toorder print materials. Printers may do well to adopt the high-value communications capability that digital imaging offers