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DRUPA preparations
May 30, 2008

I’m making a list, and checking it twice as I get ready for my DRUPA departure in a couple of days. I have memorized the public transportation system in Dusseldorf, have made a calendar with the dates and times of my appointments in the trade show halls, and I am trying to decide whether to carry my whole camera bag, or just the camera while I am at the show. The whole camera bag is heavy, but it brings more options – telephoto lens, stroble flash, radio trigger... it’s like a photographic studio I carry over my shoulder.

I am taking a tripod, of course (who wouldn’t?) and my panoramic camera mount so I can make a panorama or two. The whole package is sure to break my back – but think of the images!

I’ll post a few of those images here in the coming days to share the experience with you. It should be exciting. At the top of my list are the HP digital ink-jet web press, the new iGen4 from Xerox and a lot of others. I want to see how the world is managing color now, how PDFs are being generated in all applications, and how the various prepress vendors see the future. I want to know how ink will be sold to the printers of the future, and I want to see (Océ can you see?) the latest offerings from Kodak, Agfa, and others who are working to put picoliter-sized droplets of ink by the billion onto a moving sheet or roll of paper.

This, I continuously tell my students, is the most exciting time to be in our industry. I thought it was the ’60s – wow, Linotype Elektrons! Then I thought it would be the ’70s – wow, Linotype V-I-P typesetters!! But then there were the ’80s with PostScript, and imagesetters, and the beginning of the desktop revolution. Everything has changed, and become more stable. That is unless you consider the technology of making a mark on a piece of paper. In that field alone are at least a dozen offerings from innovative companies which are demonstrating new technologies at DRUPA this year that will reshape the industry we used to call printing.

Ira Rubel “invented” offset lithography by accident. It had an amazing impact on the printing industry. This year HP has invented (no quotes) ink-jet commercial printing; it is no accident that they have parlayed their multi-billion investment in ink-jet head technologies into an ink-jet web press. This will surely shape the future.

And, on another front, I am excited by the possibility of walking up a flight of stairs to see the top of the new Heidelberg, MAN Roland and KBA machines. These machines are so large, so impressive (ouch!) that they take two “floors” to print on paper. This is definitely the year. It’s the ’00s that we will remember. All I have to do is to figure out how to say that... Double-aughts? Double-zeros? Oh-ohs?

Posted by Brian Lawler on May 30, 2008 | Comments (0)