- Digital Percolation
In the 1980's all the big printing exhibitions began to see the arrival of computers for use in the printing process, specifically in the pre-press area. The technical
capabilities provided by digital pre-press encouraged the use of computers in the various steps prior to pre-press, i.e. storage, transfer, editing, and right back to
creation of the original. Thus the ability of pre-press to handle digital data actively encouraged authors to produce and provide their content digitally by computers.
In the 1990's digitisation has reached digital printing, with the launch of several monochrome and full colour digital presses, such as the Xeikon and the Indigo
E-Print. In many ways this is seen by many printers as more 'real' than digital pre-press, as here particularly the impacts of digitisation are moving into the very
heart of their business, right into their skilled, craft-based traditions. The implications of direct digital printing have been explored by droves of writers in the trade press over the past 5 years.
Using the model it is possible to see that in the remainder of the 1990's, and the start of the next century will see the arrival of digital finishing, digital distribution, and digital usage.
Digital finishing does not exist yet, but will probably work along the following lines. The finishing of all printed documents will be automatic and carried out by reference
to a digital 'tag' of information that will be attached to the (electronic) file for each document. This may have originated at pre-press, but could have been placed as far
back as on the author's computer. On-demand printing will require on-demand finishing and all the provisos that attach themselves to digital printing will be true also for finishing.
Digital distribution will use similar digital tags to determine the fate of a printed item after finishing. This could be as simple as indicating which bin the item is to go into,
or could feed in direct to an external distribution company's electronic data system, ensuring for example that a particular book goes direct to a particular shop.
Issues that will Arise for Printers
Digital Origination allows a change in the type of documents which can be created. Many documents will be prepared with both an electronic and paper display method
in mind. There is also an intriguing issue arising from fully digitally created documents, in that there is no such thing as an original in the sense that there is with
a paper document; digital data is comparatively easy to change, so that a paper 'proof' of a document may be the first time it exists in any hard copy, and may
become the definitive original. The issue is even more complicated with colour as digital colour has no meaning in terms of 'paper based' colour. Proofing, especially
of colour, from fully digitally originated documents, is set to become very complicated and difficult.
Digital Editing together with digital origination will permit almost everyone to publish
a document, resulting in a blurring of the functions and boundaries between author, printer and publisher. The lack of design skills in most authors will encourage the
development of software to compensate and will eventually encroach, probably completely, into the area of digital pre-press. There will also be some important
implications in the area of copyright arising here; again, these issues are regularly discussed in the publishing trade literature.
Digital Transfer and Digital Storage
will become so easy as to become invisible to the process - in the same way as the use of the telephone is now in all businesses. However, those businesses that own, and control access to the digital channels will
be very powerful, at least in the first instance. As a wide range of alternative channels develops, this power will diminish, but there will be threats from players outside the
traditional printing industry, for whom the difference between the transfer of a document and the provision of its content, is negligible. It is possible that for some
uses, the (traditionally) printed version of a document will become a luxury item, most users having to make do with the electronic one. Digital transfers will also render
location irrelevant, and allow the complete geographical separation of all the stages from creation to user. Digital networks will allow the easy bridging of the global-local
ends of the spectrum; the future of the 'middle ground' is as yet unclear.
Digital Pre-Press may ultimately result in the arrival of the 'black-box' digital
pre-press, i.e. there will be no separate operation of pre-press. Software will allow parts of the current pre-press operation to be carried out at other stages. For
example authors will be able to specify how they want the document printed and finished; editors will be able to determine elements such as paper type, distribution
routes etc. Expert system software will act as a bridge between the 'content creation experts' and the 'printing experts' and translate between the requirements of the two.
Digital Printing
is too big a subject to look at here - see other papers on the web site.
Digital Finishing will become just part of the digital printing process, and the whole
manufacturing process will become integrated and electronically controlled. Craft will give way to statistical process control.
Digital Distribution
will require the integration of processes and electronic data with the distribution operators. In theory at least, the author of a document can control the
process remotely, rendering the printer perhaps little more than an automatic output operation feeding a distribution operation.
Some General Implications for Printers
Overall the implications of the percolation of digital data are that all elements of the process will tend to become more integrated and automatic. Control over the
whole process will move slowly toward the content creator, aided by ever more intelligent software.
For printers, this means for example that staying in just one part of the process
may not be feasible, that they need to become integrated manufacturing entities rather than craft based organisations, and that the ability to integrate electronic
data between operations and between customers, suppliers and contractors, will be key. Eventually it will be this capacity - the provision of an integrated service in fact
- rather than print skills, which will provide a competitive advantage to printers, who will no longer be printers as such, but information management service providers!
