Last month, TrendWatch GA released its first detailed report on the inner-workings of the variable data printing marketplace, “Variable Data Printing: Finally, the Numbers Are In!” We asked who was producing variable data, at what levels of sophistication, in what volumes, and on what devices. We asked this, not only of printers and trade shops, but also of creatives, including ad agencies, graphic designers, corporate designers, and commercial photographers. We also released a separate special report on the use of variable data printing by book, magazine, and catalog publishers. Getting those numbers back was an eye-opening experience.

In this industry, we are used to the mantra that VDP has not yet been widely adopted, that it is too difficult for the average digital printer to do, that printers don’t know how to sell these types of jobs, and so on. But the fact is, while we’ve been comfortably repeating this conventional wisdom, VDP in all of its facets has been sneaking up on us. In fact, the percentage of printers, trade shops, and creatives who are current producing variable data printing jobs may take many people by surprise.

Part of the fault may lie in the conventional (and myopic) view of VDP as being produced primarily on four-color, toner-based digital presses. In reality, VDP, by definition, is any job that relies on the use of variable images and text. It can be produced on a digital press, a high-speed black-and-white printer, a color copier, a desktop printer, or any combination of the above. There are many bread-and-butter applications, such as preprinted offset shells and basic salutation/image swaps, that are well-established, volume-producing applications that are making a lot of people, both printers and their customers, a lot of money. And nearly one-half ‚ 48% — of digital printers involved in VDP say they are doing jobs with 1-12 variable fields and 15% say they are doing 13 fields or more. That’s nothing to sneeze at.