Do you truly believe in the power of the printed word? If I were to judge by the number of printed newsletters I get from commercial printers or quick copy shops, I’d be forced to say “No.” (That number by the way, is zero printed newsletters from the more than 18,000 printing businesses with which we’ve had contact for over ten years.)
There are some surprising reasons a commercial printing business (or any small business) might lose a client. If you’ve been around the printing industry for any time, you know all about the common yet fatal customer service problems such as missed deadlines, printing errors, or finishing mistakes.
Several times a week I get emails with either the “print is not dead” theme or its opposite, “print is dead”. The latest one to hit my inbox asks “Is Direct Mail Dead?” Sometimes the articles are good and thoughtful. Frequently though, they are headline bait for pointless, shallow blurbs where the only thing that matters is a click.
If search results are any indicator it seems the print-is-not-dead camp is winning. There were 429,000 Google search results for “print is not dead” versus 129,000 results for “print is dead.”
I say the argument doesn’t matter. What matters is what’s happening in our own backyard and the results on our bottom line. Successful small businesses don’t rely on the predictions and forecasts of pundits or the public at large. Taken as a whole, forecasters and predictors of the future tend to be wrong, so why let them take up space in our brains?
Here are seven sites to help you discover things about print finishing you might not have thought you needed to know. They range from the unusual to the scholarly and a few places in between!
The type of folding machine we’re talking about is seen in thousands of small quick printing shops and digital printing departments around the world. It has two fold plates along with either a friction or air feeder. Some of the more popular ones include Baum 714, Morgana UFO, MB CAS, Challenge Medalist, Martin Yale and many more. They handle the most common types of folds such as letter fold, accordion folds, double parallel, and single folds.
One of the beneficial things about an abundance of print finishing technology is that we get more flexibility in how, when, and where to finish any given job. Yet that same flexibility makes production planning more complex.
There is something about bindery equipment that is endlessly fascinating to anyone with an “erector set” brain. The mix of mechanical and electronic cleverness always leaves me asking, “OK, what else can we do with this piece of print finishing equipment?”
Before you dismiss your “old” bindery equipment as inadequate, consider some of the ways in which it can outperform new automated equipment. Believe it or not, old equipment occasionally has surprising advantages over new with efficiency, capabilities, and cost.
Print finishing and bindery work requires some ability in math, analysis, memory, imagination, and out-of-the-box thinking. A little competitive spirit helps as well! Summertime is also a fun time so in that spirit, here are some fun puzzles that will certainly test the abilities that form the foundation of your print finishing abilities. If you're good at solving them, give it to a co-worker and see how they do. (That's the competitive part.)
How many things can cause paper jams on your folding machine? We can probably come up with dozens of variables. Usually it’s caused by something minor and there are many parts on the folder that need to be in just the right position to keep the folder operating smoothly. Those little things become hugely important.