printing information

Adobe’s Design Achievement awards where presented to students during an awards gala and gallery on August 2, 2007 in the de Young Museum of San Francisco, CA. The categories inculded: Animation, Motion Graphics, Digital Illustration, Digital Photography, Environmental Graphics and Packaging, Interactive and Web Design, Live Action, Print Design Multi-page and Print Design Single page.

Although most of the stuff on there is a little too strange for my taste I think it’s amazing what people can do with Adobe’s software and enough time. Check it out and let me know what you think.

For more informative articles on printing information or to find out what’s going on in the design for print industry checkout http://printinginformation.org

If you are in the printing industry and haven’t been living under a rock then you probably already know all about the fiasco that Adobe caused when they added a button to Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader 8.1 that offers a one click solution to send the printing job to Kinko’s. On the surface it looks like a feature that will add value to the Reader software and help customers get their files off to someone for printing without having to leave their computer. The challenge is that this feature alienates the hundreds of thousands of printers throughout the nation that provide excellent printing services, pricing and turnaround for their customers every day. These smaller copy shops are Adobe’s bread and butter and it appears that they had just bitten the hand that feeds them. Most of the print shops today use the Adobe Creative Suite to design their customers jobs and also utilize the PDF work flow using Postscript Drivers exclusively for their color RIP devices.

The president of IPA Steve Bonoff and several other high ranking officals in the printing industry met with the CEO of Adobe software Bruce Chizen for a face-to-face meeting. Bonoff reiterated that the only solution to the problem is to remove the button from the software.

Chizen made some interesting statements in the meeting. One of those was that Adobe had a contractual relationship with FedEx Kinko’s. Chizen basically pointed out that customers more and more are expecting an easy and seamless workflow in order to keep down their bottom line and improve their time to market. While Bruce Chizen apologized for creating a firestorm with the addition he didn’t say that they would remove the button either. Instead he suggested the best solution would be to create a system that would allow all printers that use Adobe software to benefit.

The IPA definately made the printing worlds voiceas heard to Adobe and Adobe should be providing a solution by August 1st. I will keep you updated on what the outcome of all of this will be as I am very currious to see how this plays out. Obviopusly Adobe is likely making a % off everyone that submits a job via the button and it’s in Adobe’s investors interests that they keep the button intact. In all reality, even if they tell the IPA to jump off a bridge printers will still continue using the Adobe software because they is really no substitution for the quality of software that Adobe supplies. I will continue to use Adobe software until it’s no longer the best for the job at hand.

Let me know what you think about all of this as I’m sure some of you will have a say on the subject.

For more informative articles on printing information or to find out what’s going on in the design for print industry checkout http://printinginformation.org