Wide Format Imaging

Back in the early eighties I worked at a commercial printing company in Dallas that for a short period of time may have possibly been the highest quality printing company in the world.

Bold words, I know, but it was a unique place and time. There were a lot of young and very creative people in Dallas looking to make their mark at the time, and there was a lot of money floating around that got spent on projects that let them do it. And back then, whatever the procedure was, we pushed at the very edges of the envelope. Just about every solid we printed was double-bump opaque, so loaded up with opacifiers that we even had our own name for it, "Ghostbuster Ink." For four-color process, we specified from the "engraver"—as they were known back then, and if my memory serves me exactly—as 280 density skeleton black.

Now don't write nasty letters or make snide comments if you disagree with the process. I understand it was a little unconventional. But our client list was a who's who of Dallas design, and what I'd do is always tell the clients that while their proofs would look a little washed out, they would be on shade, and we'd really be able to lay down ink on the press, and come much closer to the transparencies (remember them?), but with much more 'snap' than standard separations, 'cause, well, ink equals snap. The more ink we can put on the press sheet, as the saying went, the better you're gonna like it.

It was a fun and exciting time, and I loved what we did. I used to say—and so did many of our clients—that "printing is the last step of the creative process." "We'll work with you," I told our clients, "to bring your designs to life."

Well, I'm not picking on anyone, but it was a different age. Seems after the S&L and oil bust of the mid-eighties, all the double-bumping of this and gloss and dull varnishing of that went away for a time, and the cry became to "get it on and off a six-color in one pass."

And also about that time, the whole idea of standardizing color reproduction started to gain ground in the lithographic industry. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the entire idea of standardized concepts of reproducing color is bad, but it is certainly true that if the goal is for everyone to be absolutely the same, it's hard for anyone to have a goal to be the best; and it's easy for printing to become not so much the last step of the creative process as just another commodity to secure for the lowest possible bid.

Frequently I tell people that the wide-format digital printing business is a bleeding-edge industry. It has a bit of a wild west feel to it, and for now at least, there's still enormous effort being put in by many people in all facets of the industry—from printer manufacturers to RIP makers to ink and media vendors, and to the actual wide- and grand-format digital printing companies themselves—to differentiate themselves from their competitors; to stand apart; to be the best.