RE: Calling for Interests on Print Technology & New Business Opportunities

[Winsonapm]

It had been a year since my research and intro on “Coffeetable books for Professionals” on CS. The responses were great and we had been printing for registered trade partners upon getting the website up and running. Driven by demanding Pros, the simple no frill offering had evolved to much more comprehensive packages like personalized covers, fancy papers, gift boxes, etc. It was a great pleasure to meet, get to know and work with some of the best in the market. The greatest achievement was to have friendship evolving from the biz relationships.

The competitions are heating up for the Designers, Photographers and Print Service Providers (PSP). It can be seen as healthy, be it quality, price or service. Helps to improvise and improve. There are other biz opportunities such as menus, brochures, family-tree books, and limited-editions publishing for fine-artists, some of which are already being done using this short-run offset-quality digital press capabilities. Personalisation on images is going to be the next trend. Are you interested to see how it can be done?

In the spirit of sharing and in the process to develop new biz for my organisation, I would like to “call for interests” on an “Open House” (For Trade Professionals Only). If the interests are good, I’ll seek HP’s support to use their new showroom at Pasir Panjang. It could be organized for a 2 hours session (from 3 to 5PM) for late Sept or early Oct.

Proposed topics:
1) New Photography Business and Trends
2) Where’s the money in printed matters
3) Any suggestion or request?

 

[snowspeeder]

Sounds interesting. Keep me in the loop!

 

[Winsonapm]

As in any new technology and applications, educating, training are part of the marketing effort. We've invested in another HP Indigo5000, the latest sheet fed model comes with a very powerful RIP and supports ICC profiles. We’ve also bought a very unique German software that specialise in programming images into fonts, you can have an idea online http://www.directype.org, the site allows you to input your name with instant transformation, have fun! You can download DirecType® Designer LE directly to your desktop for a more interactive experience, it’s free but can only be printed with a Pro module.

Creatives and Marketers have to conceptualise what sells, Photographers have to shoot/create images that are able to be personalised, images that are memorable. Your prospects will probably not trash a postcard like a junk mail with his/her name on it and may just pin it on the wall for keepsake. Imagine receiving a postcard with your name personalized cleverly blended into the image on a 747 Bigtop; never fails to create an impression when your prospects received it. It’s a very powerful direct marketing that evoke emotions. It has to be an image that’s relevant, meaningful or fun. And can be customized for a few hundreds or thousands targeted prospects. Database and images are RIP on the fly, needs very high-spec CPU power. This is the latest trend for direct marketing communications in USA and Europe.

 

[p.k]

Hey winson, good to hear from you again. Thanks for handling much of my printing needs thus far - great quality work.

Regarding this directype technology... you mean to say that if I have a database of 100 client names, and just an image of 1 name, you can churn out images of the other 99 names?

 

[Winsonapm]

Hey winson, good to hear from you again. Thanks for handling much of my printing needs thus far - great quality work.

Regarding this directype technology... you mean to say that if I have a database of 100 client names, and just an image of 1 name, you can churn out images of the other 99 names?

p.k., Thank you for the compliments and confidence about our print work. Always glad a happy client would take time to post and sing such high praises, I still believed there are rooms for improvements.

YES. Directype program can extract the text (like PS) into ABC “image fonts”, and generate variable image of 100 names from the database.

Take the 747 Bigtop example, just 1 image of the plane with its original text (say Singapore Airlines) on the image. The program would generate the new image to Tom Airlines, Dick Airlines, Harry Airlines, etc. It would be RIP on the fly and print.

You may take an hour or two with PS just to create one, imagine thousands of variables. It’s difficult for me to describe the effect with words here. You have to see it. I’m planning to print a 12 pages table calendar for the open house for registered attendees; every month/page has your name in the image. Looks like the images were created just for you. This is one calendar that you would not throw away.