Printing Industry News Digest April 23, 2010

Welcome back to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND), a weekly summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging and communication sectors. Published every Friday, PIND incorporates links to the week’s key news stories: every piece of bold, maroon text can be clicked on to take you to more details on that particular topic, which will open in a new window.

Our award for the most thought provoking article that we have read this week goes to InPublishing for its piece on pricing content for the internet. Its take on the business-to-business magazine sector was of particular interest to those of us in the print sector. As if to highlight the issues mentioned it was but the twinkling of the eye before news arrived regarding the end of US title Graphic Arts Monthly.

Graphic designers looking for exciting print products to offer their customers should take a look at what is being produced by Curveball Print Media. The company specialises in a range of folding media cards, such as the Zeddie, as well as a wide range of branded products such as desk tidies.

Our friends at Centurfax and Ripware have announced details of the first installations of the new EasyDot dotmeter product. “Starting at the top” might be an accurate description when one of your first installs is at the current PrintWeek Brochure Printer of the Year, Chapter Press. You might be forgiven for asking why they need a quality control tool; they say it’s all about knowing that your plate production is 100% accurate all of the time. Can’t argue with that!

Printing in 3D is now part of HP’s armoury. Details of the printing devices were shown earlier in the week on Engadget, and some rough idea of pricing. It doesn’t indicate whether you get the special glasses included in the purchase price though.

Packaging news from our friends at Benson Group includes some new cartons produced for some exciting new chewing gum entitled Peppersmith. The innovative boxes produced by Benson Group are “five-sided” in order to accommodate the throw-away papers included with the gum.

Find a fix for that broken gadget or tell everybody else how you came up with a fix for your problem! These are the topics at iFixIt. Once an exclusive Apple domain, the site has now extended its reach to encompass all gadgets.

Finally, a little bit of a “plaything” for the typography lover: take a look at Wordle, a fascinating and artistic word arrangement and display software. Let me know what you think!

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