Hi, this is Frank Romano for WhatTheyThink.com.  Well, there's digital printing.  There's offset lithographic printing.  Digital can be toner or inkjet.  The toner can be in liquid or powder.  You have all these options.  But what you are finding in the industry today is that many printing companies have a variety of printing processes.  They have wide format for signage and other materials, they have digital for short-run documents and they have offset lithographic for traditional work.  So it was kind of interesting to see on company that sort of put it all together.  

And that was Heidelberg.  They created a hypothetical golf club and then they produced all the materials for that golf club, the letters from the director of the club, the folders that held all the material, packaging for various items at the club, introductory brochures, promotional materials of other kinds, materials that they gave out at other events, stuff on their golf course.  And what was interesting is how well, as they move, because, as you know, they have moved from - not moved from but are in offset lithographic printing and now with their relationship with Ricoh into digital printing with toner.  Then, with the relationship with EFI, they're into a relationship on the VUTEk wide-format inkjet devices. 

So a variety of those devices were used for all of these materials.  And what's interesting is how well they held the color.  You probably can't see that too well.  But again, that's the hard job.  And this chartreuse, I guess that's what it is, is not an easy color to handle.  So you had to now be able to manage this color across all of these devices and through all the workflows that were involved as well. 

So this is hybrid printing and this is what I think we’re going to see a lot of as we move into the future, is that we will be printing pieces of things in offset and then pieces of things in digital.  Of course, we will still have all offset and all digital, et cetera, et cetera, but we will see, then, a blend of processes for certain products.  For instance, on this product here you can see at least three different processes were used. 

Especially with the gold stamping that's on there.  In other cases, you have to print on heavy stock, so you have to have a press that can do that.  Now, some digital machines can't do that, but offset presses can do that.  So this particular piece, which is on almost a folding carton kind of weight, would definitely have gone through the offset press.  This probably went through the digital machine.  It sort of cries that it did that.  This was probably done primarily on the offset device.  This may have been done with a blend because it has some personalization on it, especially on the back here.  The folder, they put a die-cut in it, so that - oh, hello - so that you could put the letter or some other material and then it would show through.  I also like the fact that on the inside of the folder there's a postcard that's tipped and you can take this off and then send it to your friends and say I was at this particular golf club. 

I mean, it’s a very interesting idea to create this hypothetical situation and then develop all the materials for it.  And one can take this to the next level and really apply to almost any marketing campaign.  And since they’re mostly campaigns, a marketing campaign is a variety of media approaches that use direct mail, social media, handouts, brochures, all the stuff that you need in order to get your brand or your idea or your product or your service in front of a particular audience. 

So right now, and I guess I can say this without anybody arguing with me, right now, it would appear that Heidelberg probably can do this better than anyone because they have the relationships from wide format to digital printing to offset lithography and can put it all together, and I guess that is, for all intents and purposes, unique in the industry right now.  I would imagine that other companies will move down that road as time goes on. 

But in any case, very impressed with the approach to hybrid printing, managing color across a wide variety of printing processes, a very interesting approach.  And that's my opinion.