Print is back?
What could be more obvious at a trade fair in an industry that has recently been struggling than to underline the future viability of that same industry? Let's make it short: nothing! Under the motto “we create the future”, drupa, the leading trade fair for the printing industry, brought together innovation drivers and print aficionados in Düsseldorf in May and June 2024. The focus was on technologies that also relate to the future topics of sustainability and digitalization. 170,000 visitors from 52 nations and 1,800 exhibitors made the trade fair an international platform for the industry.
Sustainability and digitalization are also the topics that concern us. We see digitalization as an enabler of precise, accurate and therefore sustainable communication. As a software partner of Konica Minolta, we have therefore created ManyPrint Solutions, our software for automating layouts, a programmatic print application for a running diary and thus made personalization in print tangible on site.
A personalized running diary? But yes!
Our hobby is communicating relevant information. So are we interested in an illustrated book about the 10 most beautiful running routes in the world? Rather not. Anyone who uses these routes will have nice pictures for Instagram afterwards, but it's definitely not close to life. Who can use different routes worldwide for regular training - not to mention the lack of sustainability with such theoretical behavior...
Our approach was therefore a different, more realistic one: in order to combat our weaker inner self, running training should offer as little opportunity for excuses as possible. That's why, in addition to static content such as running and motivational tips and the opportunity to document your own progress, our running diary also includes a personalized section with route recommendations that start on your own doorstep. For variety, the running diary provides three different routes; In order to increase the training level or to adapt the training to your daily form, the routes are of different lengths.
We generated the three routes by entering an address into a form: We automatically added a route description with street names, the respective number of kilometers, the elevation gain and the running time. In addition, for the show scenario, for the first time, we generated a personalized video from the existing information with name and language, which was made accessible via a QR code and provides information about the most important information about the route while you are tightening your running shoes.
Less spectacular but no less innovative aspects are the provision of the running diary in three different languages as well as the selection of a desired color, which influenced the design. We hardly need to mention that the book is also aimed specifically at the recipients.
The personalized compilation of information and the generation of the individual layout were carried out by our application in less than a minute and were then handed over to Konica Minolta and their AccurioPress C14000e in an automated workflow in which the software from Obility and Impressed was also integrated. Thanks to the fully automated production, those interested were able to take their personal running diary with them in less than 5 minutes.
This made it clear that with a combination of different software solutions, workflows can be thought of as completely digital, making programmatic print possible in the first place. In these scenarios, the digitized print channel is used just as automatically as any other digital communication channel and is therefore able to match the speed, timeliness and personalization of digital communication. This combines the possibilities of digital communication with the strengths of printed products, enabling completely new print concepts that go far beyond the possibilities of Variable Data Publishing (VDP).
Countless imaginable scenarios
We were also able to bring our application closer to visitors in other ways: in many personal conversations, which to our great joy often went longer and deeper than we expected due to the often full trade fair calendar, we were able to use the cloud application at our stand Let us guide you and experience which application examples can be created easily and intuitively - without requiring significant prior knowledge of IT or our system. This enabled us to illustrate how mailings can be reproduced even more easily and personally, without any standardized templates. For example, ideas for mailings with added value and for customer loyalty instead of pure sales, personalized travel documents and tips, further developments of the running diary and the further development of catalogs emerged at the trade fair. We spoke to decision-makers and users who wanted to simplify the administration and display of their data sets and make better use of the existing data. Those who spoke to us about sophisticated printed matter often noted that the potential of their own expensive machine and sophisticated technology could be exploited much more and that the creative possibilities of personalization play a decisive role without significant additional effort.
Since we have so far mainly implemented projects in German-speaking countries, we were particularly pleased that our application was able to strike a chord with our international visitors and that our uncomplicated interface, which brings personalized files directly to the printing press, can be easily used anywhere. After eleven days of continuous exchange with people from all over the world, the dynamism of the industry was noticeable at our stand: What are the visitors from Japan interested in? What questions do we get asked most often by people from India? What needs do potential customers and partners from Australia bring with them? And what do people from the USA not understand about the programmatic print sector? What gaps are we already closing with ManyPrint Solutions and where is there room for improvement?
What we take away from drupa
In addition to presenting your own products, a trade fair always serves to compare you with competitors. In this context we can say: ManyPrint Solutions is definitely up to date and opens up completely new possibilities in communication. We have not been able to find our high level of flexibility in data input, data output and – at the heart of it – the respective applications for customers in any competing product. With ManyPrint Solutions we offer possibilities that many visitors have not even thought about. The resulting lack of imagination, which we always encounter with many implemented examples, encourages us to work even more with our customers and other contacts on joint concept development and thus on their imagination. We're happy about that because it closes a circle: When we started with layout automation years ago, we were a company that offered media design and created scope for concepts and quality assurance with partial automation solutions. In recent years, the proportion of software development has gradually increased, but the proportion of conception and design has not grown to the same extent. Our desire for creative processes remains unbroken and we want to build on that more in the future.
Even if some convincing still needs to be done in one place or another, print is definitely back! – and more future-proof than ever before.
