I went to the PRINT 09 exposition this afternoon at McCormick Place in Chicago. I’ve been using various home and office printers for over twenty years, and have attended a number of graphics related expositions. I think the last one was seven or eight years ago, and none of them compare in size and scope as this one. I remember one that was an information tech related, and was amazed at development of relational databases. I had completed a course at Northwestern on relational databases, and to seeing them in action was fascinating, but this event transcended that. It was information overload after about 45 minutes for me (we were there for about three hours).
As we walk through the first exhibition hall, I noticed a number of booth presenting “Web-to-Print” support. I wondered what that meant, converting a website into a print document didn’t seem that complex. As we were walking by the PrinterPresence by Firespring booth, I guess I was staring a bit to hard at the “Web-to-Print” signage, and we were invited to watch the CEO’s presentation. We accepted, and now I know what the term “Web-to-Print” means. The company specializes in assisting printing firms in developing websites that their clients can log into to create, print, and maintain their print needs (forms, business cards, catalogs, flyers, et al). Once the website is up and running, the users/printers can adjust the form and content of the website based on their needs, or tailor it based on the analysis of the various queries by potential customers. The CEO’s, Tawnya Starr, enthusiasm for her organization and its product was extremely evident in her presentation. It was nice having the database experience under my belt, because it made understanding of the underpinning of the service easier.
That done, we started moving around the booths looking for sample and examples that my wife could take back to here classroom to show students what was happening in the field graphic production. And this is of course where the sensory overload began. This was the various companies of the industry showing off the best and newest of their product lines. What was the best way to show off their equipment, print with them, have it printed on, have printed things bound, die cut them, and on and on. I, and my wife, went this way and that. We had a plan of attack, but that dissolved over and over as we watched an Epson prototype cutter. It was almost hypnotic watching the cutting head move through its paces in quick measured strokes, until the pre-scored full color 2-D sheet was ready to be released and folded into a box. At this point, I decided to try out the video camera in the iPhone, and see if I could document some of the sights at the exposition.
I guess this will have to be a two parter, because it was after this that we moved out of the North Exhibit Hall and went into the larger South Exhibit Hall. I thought that we had picked up a lot of samples, but I was in for a big surprise.
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