A few weeks ago the Rochester Institute of Technology held its inaugural Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival. The festival was RIT's chance to showcase the unique blend art, design, science and engineering innovation taking place at the university.
RIT's School of Print Media has been a leader in printing education and research for decades and groups within the school used the festival as an opportunity to display innovative methods of producing print.
A group of students and faculty researchers from the Open Publishing Lab — a cross disciplinary center that focuses on researching new methods of content creation and developing innovative applications to publish across various media - set out to show off a news delivery platform they developed that enables rapid reporting and publishing of the news to the web and print.
The publishing platform dubbed the Innovation News allowed a team of 25 student photographers, 12 student writers, and seven editors to cover RIT’s inaugural Imagine:RIT festival as it unfolded. Reporters and photographers across the RIT campus submitted content using wireless enabled laptops and digital cameras, and mobile devices such as the Apple iPhone.
The Innovation News platform bridges everyday graphic arts technology with Web-based content management systems using a mix of open source and proprietary publishing software. Content was collected using Drupal, an open source Web-based content management system. Drupal and Adobe InDesign were integrated using an XML-based data exchange. Xinet and DALiM TWiST were used to automate digital imaging and prepress processes.
The print-ready files were distributed to five locations on campus to be printed and were produced simultaneously on five digital presses including the Kodak Nexpress, Xerox iGen3, HP Indigo, and Canon imagePRESS.
Each printed newspaper included a two-dimensional bar code called a "Quick Response" or QR Code. The QR code enabled readers with smartphones a direct link to a mobile version of the Innovation News where they could use GPS and geotagging technology to pinpoint were the stories happened on campus.
During the festival, the OPL team published over 40 stories and hundreds of photos online and in four print editions. An archive of the content produced at during the festival including the PDFs used for printing are available at http://inews.cias.rit.edu/
Innovation is happening in print and I'm glad to see that its happening at the hands of students who will bring a fresh technological savvy perspective to the industry.
