Frank Romano:  Hi this is Frank Romano for WhatTheyThink.com.  I’m here in Westford Massachusetts with the Boot Camp for Print Designers with Margie Dana.  There’s Margie Dana by the way over there.  And we’re gonna as a very erudite group of print buyers, what’s happening in their organizations?  What’s happening with print?  Is it increasing, decreasing, is it going electronic?  Can you tell us sir, what’s going on? 

Male:  Well I tell you what we’ve been doing at our company is Print on Demand is the big buzz word. We are not printing most items are putting them on the shelves. As a matter of fact, we bought a couple of I Gens at our company and so if you need two of something, you need 5,000 of something they’re pretty much run that way. 

Frank Romano:  So you are moving to on demand, but you still print on the outside. 

Male:  We still buy large quantities –

Frank Romano:  Is that increasing, decreasing? 

Male:  That’s decreasing quite a bit because it’s based on usage.  If there’s a need for offset printing for a certain piece, then we know how to -- we monitor that quantity, we can sent that out.  But if it’s the onesie-twosie type thing, then it’s definitely printed inside. 

Frank Romano:  What’s happening to print in your organization? 

Male2:  Well what we’re doing in my organization; printing seems to be increasing.  Not just the static printing that we’re doing, but as far as print on demand is something that we’re just starting to get into.  We’re going to expand that with some of our products, so we’re going to continue to produce what we’ve been producing in the past as well as off those as print on demand also.

Frank Romano:  What, you’re buying more print on the outside? 

Male2:  Buying more print on the outside. 

Frank Romano:  Okay.  And what’s happening in your organization? 

Female1:  For product materials, we’re doing more print on demand, like product brochures, flyers, things like that.  But for direct marketing, direct mailing materials, we’re buying more and more printing. 

Frank Romano:  Okay.  Are you with the same organization?  Same thing, so ditto? 

Female 2:  Ditto. 

Female 3:  I would say our print is probably stabilized.  We’re doing some print on demand, but we’re also doing a lot of electronic newsletters. 

Frank Romano:  Oh, that’s very interesting.  So that’s stuff that used to be in print at one time. 

Female 3:  um-hmm.  Yes. 

Frank Romano:  Wow!  What’s happening with your organization? 

Female4:  That’s the same thing that I have.  We’re going digital on a lot of newsletters and we had tried digital magazines about nine years ago and it wasn’t accepted, but now we’re going back.  And it’s mostly our youth market that is doing more of the electronic products. 

Frank Romano:  So the amount of print that you buy on the outside has declined? 

Female4:  Well it’s actually stayed the same only because we’re increasing product lines and marketing.  Honing our mailing lists – the lists are going down, but we’re doing more products. 

Frank Romano:  Okay.  And what’s happening with print in your organization? 

Female5:  I would say more large format for booth conferences and Kit packaging. 

Frank Romano:  Ah, so your organization is moving into more packaging and such.  Is wide format something new that you haven’t done before? 

Female5:  We’ve been doing large format posters, but now we’re doing more booth conference, large format stuff. 

Frank Romano:  Great.  And what’s happening with print in your organization? 

Female6:  The same, I work with her.  And we are also looking a different substraights with some of our large format printing as well for packaging purposes. 

Frank Romano:  Gotcha.  Print in your organization…

Male3:  We’re putting more projects online and leaving it to the end user to print on their side.

Frank Romano:  So they print it with their own printers in the 

Male3:  Right, generally a PDF or something.  Also using lighter weight paper wherever possible, less Pantone colors, and print on demand.

Frank Romano:  Alright, your organization?  Same thing?

Male 4:  Yeah.

Frank Romano:  Okay.  What’s happening in your organization?

Female7:  Outsourcing pretty much the same, maybe a little bit of a slight increase, but we also print quite a few materials; in-house flyers, smaller quantities and then the things that we do print is we look at it as also doing an electronic version of it.  So -

Frank Romano:  So you’re printing more internally than you did before? 

Female7:  Yes. 

Frank Romano:  Ah.  Okay.  And your organization? 

Female8:  Ditto. 

Frank Romano:  Ditto.  Okay.  And generally how do you feel about what’s happening with print right now? 

Female9:  Well, I think in my estimation, it’s a bit of a mixed bag at my desk.  For conference materials, I would say overall, for a spectrum for this type of media, it has increased, but for data collection, going more electronic. 

Frank Romano:  So in general, all of you.  You came to a seminar, a Boot Camp, on design.  None of you have the title, Designer.  You all have titles that involve production in some way, so you work with graphic design and have to deal with their files.  So you see the things that are happening in print.  By a show of hands, in general in your organization, is there less print now than there was two years ago?  Raise your hand.  Okay, so for about just under half of the group here, there has been a decline in printing.  How many of you have seen an increase in the amount of printing?  So, probably the other half. 

Well, this is very interesting.  Thank you all very much for your time, for your attention, and it’s great to get this kind of feedback.  Take care. 

Next Time…

This is about to disappear.  The residential white pages –