2018 has been a busy year for our team at Inkjet Insight. We have published over 200 articles on production inkjet topics, captured 40 videos of thought leaders, grew the list of products in our finder apps (Device Finder - 174 devices, Software Finder - 140 products). Mary and Elizabeth updated their Designer’s Guide 2.0 thanks to Canon’s support. We also extensively covered the paper crisis including an important market research study to gauge how it is impacting the production inkjet community. We wanted to see what topics of interest ranked highest for our readers.  It’s not a perfect measure as older articles do tend to accumulate more pageviews, but nonetheless the results are interesting.
  1. Commercial Printers Under Pressure - The top article was written by our friend Marco Boer from I.T. Strategies. Marco discusses key trends impacting commercial printers and how issues such as tightness in the labor market amongst other issues may drive demand for production inkjet adoption. This is a must read!
  2. Kyocera Previews New High-Speed Inkjet – TASKalfa Pro 15000c – The second most read article on our site was actually a press release highlighting news of Kyocera’s new TASKalfa Pro 15000c sheet-fed printer. We expect to learn a lot more about this product in the early part of 2019.
  3. You Can Do More with Sheet-Fed – Sheet-fed was a hot topic. In this article, we looked at the range of product options, tried to create some logical groupings and did a qualitative comparison to a hypothetical offset benchmark.
  4. Ricoh Pro VC 70000 Overview – This article is a summary of Ricoh’s announcements around updates to its inkjet portfolio including improvements in ink chemistry and drying capabilities opening up new applications on offset coated stocks without the need for an undercoat or protector coat.
  5. The fifth most popular topic was actually the broad range of technical articles including Understanding the Gray Areas of Inkjet, Objective Inkjet Measures and Optical Density, Understanding Linearization, Profiling with Primers and Coatings, and what to know about Highly Calendered Inkjet Papers. These articles combined would clearly have moved the group to the top.
We would like to sincerely thank our members for their financial support, encouragement, and feedback as we fulfill our mission to be the most valuable source of unbiased information for companies evaluating and using production inkjet. We would also like to thank all of our contributors who are providing outstanding content on a range of topics from economics, to print heads, inks and chemistry, and real-world use by leading print providers. We also must acknowledge all of the amazing thought leaders who agreed to be interviewed by our team and share their stories in our videos.  Last, but certainly not least, a big shout out to our sponsors. These companies understand the value that independent research and measurement plays in moving the whole industry forward. We know that there are many exciting announcements coming in 2019 and look forward to sharing in this journey with our community.