PUBLICATION CENTER

To see the wide-format graphics business from a different angle, check out Graph Expo, Sept. 9-12 at McCormick Place South in Chicago. Here you’ll see how traditional commercial offset printing companies are being actively encouraged to “Go Wide” by adding wide-format graphics printing to their portfolio of other graphic-communications services.

In the Kodak, Canon, and HP booths, you’ll see wide-format inkjets marketed as companion production devices to digital presses. And in Graph Expo’s Wide-Format Pavilion, you’ll see some of the same aqueous, solvent, and UV-curing printers and cutting equipment you’ll find at the SGIA or Sign Expo shows.

The Innovation Gallery in the Wide Format Pavilion will feature the best examples of images printed on a variety of substrates as well as inkjet reproductions of works by contemporary artist Jackson Collins.

New at Graph Expo this year will be a Print Buyers Conference on Tuesday, Sept. 11 from 8 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. A panel of print specifiers will advise fellow print buyers about what qualifications to look for in a printing company today. They’ll talk about the role of print and other technology in cross-media promotions and multi-channel marketing.

Conference Moderator Margie Gallo Dana is a former print buyer and the founder of Print Buyers International LLC. In OnDemand Journal.com, Dana has written columns entitled What Buyers Most Admire in a Printer and Professor Printer, I Presume?, emphasizing the importance of customer education.

RIT professor Frank Romano will discuss the state of print buying today. He estimates approximately 23,000 full-time print buyers in the U.S. purchase just over half of all print and packaging. Another 92,000 professionals are involved in print buying to varying degrees. But, he says, virtually everyone else in the nation buys print at some time.