Print in the digital era
When I first started working as a print designer some 9 years ago, print work was the focus of design agencies, and web departments within these firms consisted of one or two people at most. As my career has gone on, I worked through a faze where seemingly out of nowhere, the web departments started to spiral and outweigh the print teams, to where we are now, which is an industry that boasts specific agencies for online and digital work.
I actually struggle to think of the last agency I saw that only produce print work, even the printers themselves offer websites from in-house design teams these days. I guess there are a lot of factors as to why this happened; advances in technology played the largest part, but also you have to consider what the success of the internet is to businesses, and that is cutting costs & time massively, as well as being an environmentally more sound option in a lot of areas that print used to dominate.
Environmentally sound design
Just as an example of how print has been outpaced for green credentials by digital, about 15-20 years ago, a large or global company wanting to communicate with all its employees would have to do so by either sending a letter to each individual on official headed letterheads or notepaper, or alternatively, send a letter to the head of each department, who would then communicate the message to their teams.
Either way, it was an expensive business, in terms of man-hours to write, print, envelope stuff and distribute the letters, and resources paper, ink and printing or photocopying resources. Email, intranets and other web resourses have made day-to-day life for organisations large and small a lot simpler & more cost effective to communicate, function and much more besides - including keeping paper clutter in the office to a minimum.
So, does this spell the end of the print industry as we know it? Well... not quite.
Print will last despite technology
The print industry as we know it has tailed off considerably since the Internet became a common feature of the workplace and indeed the home, but that's not to say it's on its way out altogether. The thing to remember is that the industry has weathered many a storm, after all, it is an ancient industry, manual woodblock printing dates back as far as 200AD, movable type presses were conceived in Asia at around the year 1000 and the mechanical printing press itself was invented in Germany in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg.
Since then, various technological innovations have made their mark on the world, the telephone, radio, television and the computer all posed a threat to various parts of the industry - in the case of the computer, it pretty much wiped out 2/3 of the workforce of the industry, with electronic machines taking the place and performing the function of literally floors of draughtsmen, typesetters etc, in a fraction of the time, bearing remarkable similarities to the innovations of the industrial revolution.
Much in the same way that the Internet has done in recent times, the speed that information can be conveyed over those mediums is in essence the crux of the matter where decline of print industry is concerned, however this factor alone creates a loophole for this industry and it's a very simple fact; A printed brochure does not require a battery or power source, a letterhead does not need downtime or maintenance, a flyer doesn't rely on a wireless network... I could probably do this all day, but I'm sure you get the idea.
The physical, uncomplicated presence of print
Another distinct advantage print has over website design is a clear physical presence, and by that I mean engaging the viewer effectively in one place, with one offering at a time. I feel now that the Internet has been abused by some as a marketing tool, as much as flyers have been abused by direct marketing - it's not always relevant or welcome.
If I need to search for a company on the web, I have to fire up my browser and the distractions start already, the search results show competitors to the company I am looking for in both the natural results, and there are also sponsored adverts, all vying for my attention. After I have ignored these irrelevant ads, and just when I think I've found the company listing, I realise I've navigated my way to an American website of a company with the same name, complete with banner adverts flashing away at me and Google adverts of its own, adding to the distractions on my quest! This is probably all because the company I am looking for is not strengthening their search presence with a great website & digital marketing.
With print, I will have the printed information with me, and without distraction, and I can choose the interaction I wish to make; picking up the phone to chat, emailing the printed address, or directly typing the URL into the address bar, because it is all there in front of me.
The web can be a confusing and sometimes frustrating place at times, something I'm sure will be addressed fully in years to come. Much like the problems of yesteryear have been with the implementation of web standards and strict rule codes for those wishing to appear on search engines, both have improved the experience greatly, yet have found many more challenges to conquer before today's problems can be fully addressed. This isn't something that is a problem for print, nor is it ever likely to be, after all, if you see an advert in a Magazine or newspaper, you can just ignore it, turn the page, safe in the knowledge that it's not going to fire up 20 small pages of adverts if you happen to touch it and it's safe to say that looking at it won't spread a virus that will permanently delete your memory!
In many ways, I feel the print industry will ride this storm, but the effects of the internet will take its toll. This may seem like a glaring negative now, but I think as an upshot to that, the print industry now has it in its own hands to put an emphasis on quality rather than quantity, to rid itself of the stigmas of yesterday, like junk mail, blanket flyering and all that really annoying ephemera that falls out of your Sunday paper each week.
We now, as an industry, have the opportunity to sort the wheat from the chaff, to eradicate the mistakes of the past and once again establish printed material at the front line of businesses.
This blog post was written by Tim
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