Color Printers/Proofers Popular With Creatives

One of the perennial categories of planned investments for those in design and production environments includes color printers and proofers. As was pointed out on this page in last month's issue of GAM, desktop devices—especially ink-jet printers—increasingly are being used for proofing purposes. Creatives and publishers are using them to generate proofs, and printers are increasingly accepting ink-jet prints as proofs.

Among creatives—graphic designers, ad agencies, corporate design departments, and commercial photographers—color printers have historically been near the top of TrendWatch survey lists of planned investments. Indeed, in the Winter 2000/2001 TrendWatch Design & Production Survey, 54% of all creatives said that they planned to buy a color printer or proofer. That percentage jumps to 65% among commercial photographers, especially those shooting with digital cameras (they still want traditional prints much of the time).

Regarding the kinds of printers that creatives are buying, we can chart the "sweet spot" for printer purchases: the top two price ranges are $501 to $1,000 and $2,501 to $5,000. These prices approximate the ranges for high-end ink-jet printers and ink-jet proofing systems. Interestingly, the category between those two—$1,001 to $2,500—is toward the bottom of the list in terms of popularity. Pricing for computers and related peripherals is harder to pin down, but at the time the latest survey was conducted, this category tends to include expensive yet sub-proofer-level ink-jet printers, and low-cost color laser printers—sort of a fish-nor-fowl, overlapping transitional price range.

Creatives also don't see much value in extremely inexpensive printers: greater-than-$5,000 printers and hard-core proofing systems take precedence over under-$500 devices, say survey data among this group of professionals. As was stated last month, creatives, a portion of whom are purchasing $10,000 color output systems, are looking to handle their own in-house proofing.

For publishers, as was noted in the Winter 2000/2001 TrendWatch Publishing Survey, the top two categories are reversed: they prefer the $2,501-to-$5,000 range first and the $501-to-$1,000 range second, while the intermediate price range is toward the bottom of the list.