The experiences, insights and conclusions to draw from IPEX, like other international trade shows in graphic arts, greatly depend upon where you are standing and how far out in time your perspective reaches. The reported sales of offset presses by Heidelberg this year and in the past are certainly valid indicators, but they don't tell us much about the future.

Today, as in no other time in its history, the printing industry is being measured from a future orientation. Faced with declining use of print media for marketing and communications, growing numbers of non-reading young people and an entirely new breed of printing technology, a printing show today must be evaluated by its what it reveals about the future, not only about what it achieved this year. Many printing industry managers may be too absorbed in current challenges and day to day survival to deal with this future oriented reality. Yet, the industry's financiers (shareholders, banks and securities traders) and its ultimate consumers (print buyers) are keenly looking forward before embracing new financial decisions.

IPEX was not lacking in signals, indicators and trends that portend the future. In this first part of this series, we will look at the market from a historical perspective, and then finish up with a few comments on the future.