NEW YORK - February 9, 2005 -- TrendWatch Graphic Arts today released its 2005 Graphic Arts Market Demographic Profiles report, an update to the Demographic Profiles report published in January 2004. The report provides snapshots of each of the graphic arts markets TWGA regularly surveys-commercial printers and prepress shops, graphic design and production firms, and publishing companies. These snapshots include top-line demographic data (establishments, graphic production desktops, shipments/revenues, and capital expenditures), industry trends (business conditions and the forces that are causing those conditions), market outlook for 2005 and beyond, and guidance for industry firms, vendors, investors, researchers, and analysts. The report, "2005 Graphic Arts Market Demographic Profiles," draws upon a variety of sources, including the TWGA Demographic Atlases, Census Bureau data, the Graphic Arts Blue Book, and TWGA's own voluminous 10-year historical database of trends and changes in the industry, to provide not only the basic demographics of the industry, but also how those demographics have been changing and, perhaps most importantly, why those demographics have been changing-and how they're likely to continue to change in the next 12 months and beyond. Researcher's Comments... "As business continues to improve across the board for graphics communications firms, opportunities abound for the companies that serve the industry," notes the TWGA Analyst Report. "But taking advantage of those opportunities involves understanding many of the fine nuances of the widely different markets that comprise the industry. It's not enough to know how many commercial sheetfed printers there are or how many desktops exist in design firms. Important though those number may be, it's just as important to understand the forces driving those numbers. What is really happening in these firms? How do the individual markets differ from each other? Where are the opportunities? What are the problems to which they need solutions?" According to the Report... -- Nearly half of the establishments in the printing industry are small commercial and quick printers, and yet small commercial and quick printers only account for 10% of all shipments in the industry; -- There are greater than 50,000 design and production establishments in the U.S., more than one-third of them graphic design shops; -- Magazine publishers account for nearly one-third of the $232 million that publishers spend annually on new computer purchases; -- Book publishers are the only publishing market that saw its business conditions decline from Summer 2003 to Summer 2004; -- Despite reporting the best business conditions they've experienced in four years, printers are less optimistic about the future than they have been;