The importance of the printing industry in the digital age

By Patrick Vernon, technology writer.

Friday, 22nd September 2017 Posted 7 years ago in by Phil Alsop

As magazines move online and books can be read on mobile tech, one often wonders whether there is much room left for the printing industry. But the truth is, who doesn’t love the comforting feel of a paperbound novel? A world without newspapers is a terrible thought and what of the permanence created through print that mobile technology can only dream of with its limited battery life? We need the printing industry more than ever because when it comes down to it, the digital age just isn’t safe.

Ransomware, the latest hacking technology to take businesses by the throat, works by obtaining details and documentation from a company’s database and holding it ransom. This means, that while the hackers are waiting for you to pay up, if you don’t have your systems backed up on various hard drives or as solid printed documents, you will be unable to carry out business for the foreseeable future. Which also means putting yourselves at risk and putting your clients at risk of having sensitive information regarding them shared.

This can be easily resolved by keeping up to date back ups on hard drives or by printing sensitive information and doing things the good old fashioned way and creating files. There is a lot of focus on printing being bad for the environment but ink suppliers such as Toner Giant stock mainly recycled ink and you can buy recycled paper too, keeping your footprint to a minimum.

When you start looking into the impact that storage facilities for websites and Cloud storage take up, they’re on a similar scale to the printing industry if not worse. Greenpeace often carry out reports on storage centres to see whether they’re using as much renewable energy as they can. “Greenpeace produces a regular report, the ‘Click – Clean’ report, which details how different tech companies fare in terms of their moves towards sustainability,” Computer World reports. On this report, you can see giants such as Facebook, iTunes, Google Play and YouTube scoring an impressive A whereas Twitter, WeChat and SoundCloud are on a disappointing F. The scoring covers:

· Energy Transparency

· Renewable Energy Commitment & Siting Policy

· Renewable Procurement

· Advocacy

· Energy Efficient & GHG Mitigation

So not only is it our sentimental desire to have something to hold, printing is a safe and secure way of storing information too. Lets finally look at the sheer demand in printing for packaging and promotional materials that digital will never be able to compete with. Starting with food, we need our packaging to tell us what it is we are buying, where it’s from and also sell us the product through the printed design and while M&S may be dabbling in laser printed information on avocados, Nancy Roberts, a designer at Cartmell Design, notes in her LinkedIn article: “Well-designed packets help in conveying important messages to potential customers at the point of sales. Package design acts as an ambassador for the brands while communicating with the consumers.”

Similarly, a lot of consumers will choose a wine on its label, where it’s from and take into account the blurb on the back, and all of this will always have to be printed.

Business cards, leaflets and glossy promotional materials are the same. You are more likely to remember someone if you find their business card a couple of months later than if they mention their website to you while conversing - it’s just the way we work.