A couple of months ago, I was asked if I was planning to attend the SEMA Show in Las Vegas. I was not—nor was I even familiar with it. And for good reason: SEMA is the Specialty Equipment Marketing Association or, specifically, “the premier automotive specialty products trade event in the world.” That’s a little beyond what we cover here (maybe WhatTheyDrive is in the offing for next year), but I later discovered that there is actually a very good reason why a PR rep would ask if I were going to an automotive specialty products show: it’s a prime venue for vehicle graphics installers to strut their stuff, as well as for substrate manufacturers to launch or showcase new wrapping films. What a long, strange trip it’s been to reach a point where print products launch at an automotive event. Print is everywhere!

As I remarked in Monday’s news feature about the recent announcement from ISA and Xplor, colocations—sometimes rather counterintuitive ones—are taking place on a much more frequent basis, and as the traditional print “silos” (I think we need a new term...) converge, print providers would do well to gain at least some familiarity with many different kinds of print applications. So it would not surprise me to someday see a colocation of the SEMA Show and the Sign Expo or SGIA Expo, or perhaps InPrint and the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association, because direct printing on eggs is a thing. OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but we’re all becoming strange bedfellows.

Convergence is but one of the major trends that impacted the wide-format printing market in 2018. Let’s have a look at convergence, and run down a few others.