Hi.  This is Frank Romano for WhatTheyThink.com.  Oh, a few things I'd like to talk about today.  I found an article, actually by way of the Guardian in the UK about the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay and it says, "University's font choice cuts ink."  Wow.

Evidently they switched from Arial to Century Gothic and they saved 30 percent of the ink that they were using and the ink, according to them, I guess for the whole University, comes to $10,000 per gallon.  That sounds awfully high.  I don't know if they got that right; maybe they're translating it from pounds or something.

Ink accounts for about 60 percent of the cost of a printed page.  So maybe it's $10,000 for the year or month, who knows.

They tried the eco-font.  That's the font that all these little holes in it, like swiss cheese which was a dumb idea.  They could use Arial if they so desired but the entire university was trying to get them to cut printing e-mails out and saving money on printing.  But it's true, Inkjet ink, if that's what you're using, and of course to some extent toner, is more expensive than printing ink but you don't use printing ink to print one offs.  So University of Wisconsin, saving ink by changing the type face.

Got another direct mail piece.  Frank, say it isn't so.  I love it.  The Frank, School of Direct Mail.  Frank, whatever it may be.

This is the -- I found this the other day.  This is the 1964 promotion piece for an RIT summer program.  Summer session, 1964.  By the way, they were downtown then; they were not here in Henrietta.  And here's what you studied in 1964: hand composition, **** type and intertype composition, monotype composition and casting, offset camera work, offset plate making, offset press work, platen press work, visual color relations -- not sure what that is -- copy preparation.

This is a debate that will go on forever and I remember when it first started and that was when we switched over from letterpress to offset lithography.  Now that had been pretty much underway by 1964 but it's true.  It didn't really -- it was not until the early 70s that offset really started to dominate in printing.  So letterpress was still around and hot metal was still around, so you had that transitional period when you had to teach both things.  The old way, letterpress, hot metal typesetting, and the new way, offset lithography, and all the prep things that went with that.

Of course, today it's even more difficult because you've got offset lithography, flexography, and gravure on one hand and then you've got digital printing both with Inkjet and toner on the other hand.  And all the skill sets have changed.  So constantly colleges are under pressure as to what they should be teaching.  Should we be teaching -- turning out that know how to run offset presses?  Is that a skill level that will take them into the future?  Should they be spending over $100,000 for a college degree to do that?  Should they be only learning the new stuff where some of that hasn't really permeated all printing companies at this stage?

So there are still universities out there that still teach hands on how to run a printing press, how to make plates, all that kind of stuff -- how to do stripping.  There is some universities that don't have any stripping at all, have no camera work, they've emphasized more digital but they have a little bit of offset, a little of flexo, a little bit of gravure, whatever it may be.  And then you've got some institutions that have moved into new media as well, trying to balance not only the world of the print component but also the electronic component.

So it's a challenge for every university and every community college to turn out students in this area.

I gave a speech recently for an art college on the east coast.  I will not name names.  It was a four-year program and this was the next to the last month of their four years and in those four years they had never been taught how to use Photo Shop, how to do color correction, how to use profiles, and yet that was a significant part of what they did.  They creates art and then they scanned it and brought it into Photo Shop and did things to it and creates illustrations that would go in publications or in other things.

So here's an art program that doesn't teach any mechanics at all.  I met someone from a community college in the same area and they said, "Yes.  We get a lot of their students because they come to our program and pay money to learn the fundamentals and the mechanics of how they use the basic programs."

So we're always going to have this challenge of keeping up with new technology.  Colleges don't turn out operators, colleges turn out managers.  They turn out people who analyze, evaluate, select, who apply new thinking and apply new ideas to printing companies; that's what they do.  If you want operators, that's something different and that's something that is either done through manufacturers or through community schools or through industry schools in some way shape or form.  But we really have to figure out what we're going to do about education in the United States **** graphic arts because I have to tell you right now it is a gigantic mess because everyone's going in every direction and there's absolutely no organization to it all, even though you have all these different groups that are somehow involved in graphic arts education.

Here's a good example.  Mosaically.  www.mosaically.com.  You can go to their website if you so desire and it will -- let me find the site here -- and you can download the software and what it will do is it will allow you to take a number of your photographs -- oh, it even plays music by the way when you go to it.  It takes a whole batch of your photographs and turns it into a mosaic.  And you can buy it at all different sizes, starting at three inches by two inches, that's a buck, up to the biggest one, 42 inches by 63 inches.  That's three-and-a-half feet by five and a quarter feet.  That's $220.50.  I think the 50 cents part, that's interesting.  There's a discount if you buy multiples or whatever.  It was started by a group of students at RIT and they started it in 2006, they incorporated in 2009 and they're actually making money.

Now what is this all about?  It's using photographic skills, it's using printing skills, it's taking print to new levels, new ideas.  I think that's where the money's going to be.  It's not going to be in the traditional stuff.  It's going to be in all the new stuff that's going to happen out there.

So, again, this prompted my thought train about how we have to sort of balance old technology and new technology during periods of transitions, but as I think about it we have always been **** of transitions.  It doesn't appear there's any period that we go through, we are like stable technology and everything sort of stays the same for a long time.  It was like that for a long time with hot metal.  I doubt if it will ever be like that again.

That's my opinion.  Thank you very much.

Next time...

In St. Johns, Newfoundland.  In fact, people have looked at the back of the wall here; by the way, see my little Screechers thing there.  I had to kiss a cod.