A couple of weeks ago, we looked back at wide-format in 2018. This week, let’s look ahead to 2019 and some of the wide-format trends we can expect.

First of all, we can expect the industry convergence of commercial, sign and display, industrial, packaging, specialty, textile, et al., to continue and accelerate. “Commercial printing” will increasingly be ink on virtually anything and everything, and shops will need to pick and choose the applications—the products—they want to produce.

There will thus continue to be the danger of what we might call “choice fatigue”: there are so many potential printed products a shop can offer that deciding what to focus on can be like facing a really good buffet table. It all looks so good, but eating everything is obviously impractical (or at least inadvisable), so where do you start? A good place to start whittling down the list of options is current customers. What kind of products do they need? Another good way to focus your offerings is to pursue what you particularly like or would find “cool” to produce. What gets you excited as print provider? Or, conversely, identify what you specifically don’twant to offer.