It is with great enthusiasm that I am able to say Konica Minolta will be sponsoring the INKJET SUMMIT, April 8 through 10 at the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club in Florida! Our graphic communications and industrial print team is excited to be part of this distinct industry event.
As a marketing manager at Konica Minolta for nearly a year now, I have made a great deal of progress learning, not only about our graphic communications and industrial print products and solutions, but the printing industry itself. It was a big surprise for me to learn in a recent report published by Printing Industries of America, that print’s economic footprint totaled a whopping $166.3 billion in annual shipments in 2016, even in the wake of the 2009 Great Recession and industry disruption from digital marketing. In fact, Smithers Pira stated in a recent report that the global market for inkjet printing will grow to nearly $110 billion by 2023. That is great news for our customers, business partners, and our company.
I should mention that I am not totally new to the commercial printing industry. My formative years—one could say for the first part of my career—I served as a creative director and art director. Printing final projects was a big part of my job responsibilities and I have developed literally hundreds of print-based advertising and marketing materials from start to finish. Consultative meetings with printers were a necessity, as my team and I continually sought out new ways to differentiate brands through special printing techniques, constantly pushing the envelope of what could be achieved with ink on paper.
In fact, these consultative meetings were extremely helpful and often led to new ideas or improvements to projects. This is an area in this day and age where I feel graphic designers, who are new to the business, often neglect to seek input. What looks great on the LCD monitor may not always transfer to paper with the same intended effect, and a good commercial printer can help.
So that leads us to where I am today—preparing for my first visit to the INKJET SUMMIT. And this time, I’m part of the team giving back by providing new insights and information to the commercial printers who have all helped me so generously in my past career.
The INKJET SUMMIT is not a tradeshow where vendors showcase products on the exhibit floor and discuss “speeds and feeds.” It is a forum for sharing information, with sessions exploring five key application segments: commercial printing, transactional, direct mail, publishing and in-plant printing. Our team is working closely with our clients and business partners to develop some very informative case studies that illustrate and showcase real-world success stories using Konica Minolta inkjet presses. And the applications for this technology are breathtaking.
As someone who was formerly a diehard offset printing devotee, I can truly say that without a loupe, it is now difficult to distinguish the difference in quality when comparing traditional soy-based ink on paper to output from a high-quality inkjet press. The color matching, consistency, and the convenience of variable data, with in some cases zero make-ready, made me a true believer in the power and versatility of the new generation of digital inkjet presses. Our tests have shown that the four-color process gamut of digital inkjet presses can exceed that of offset printing due to the fact that there are no solvents or other additives combined with the inks.
At the INKJET SUMMIT our case studies will focus on customer successes with three such products:
More than anything, the INKJET SUMMIT will be an opportunity for all attendees to develop (or reinforce) one-on-one relationships that I am certain will be beneficial to all parties, and more than likely, last a lifetime.
And so, if you are in the market for a new inkjet press and would like to attend this peer-to-peer networking event, check out INKJET Summit website. I look forward to seeing you there!
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