Print Is Dead – Long Live Print

Print is technology too

People tend to associate the word “technology” with something that is new. But books and other pieces of print are “technology”, and they’re good technology.

You go and buy a magazine or get a catalogue, you can carry it around, it’s portable. It’s not that expensive, so if you lost it it’s not the end of the world. You can screw it up and put it in your bag. You can flick straight to a page without having to open a device. It’s a very transportable piece of work. And I just think there is still a great love of print. I actually went to a presentation where a guy had a pack of cards and on the cards he had 52 reasons why print is still great and relevant. Some were jokey, but still, there were a hell of a lot of reasons why print is relevant in today’s marketing mix

says Andy York,

There are signs, too, of a bit of a backlash against digital media for certain forms of marketing.

Direct mail is having a bit of a resurgence. For a long time people felt bombarded with direct mail, and it is an expensive way of doing things because there’s a postal cost, so e-blasts were adopted by most people in order to avoid those costs. But they’re just too easy to ignore or delete, so print is making a comeback. It’s actually quite refreshing to see something come in the post – a small catalogue or taster flyer to tempt you into going onto the website or ordering the main catalogue

Ironically, digital technology itself – delivering smarter marketing techniques – is a key contributing factor to the greater effectiveness of today’s print. According to Andy York, “fragmentation of the market” has boosted their business significantly.

Whereas once upon a time you would’ve gone to get a holiday brochure that had every country in the world in it, you’ve now got individual brochures that are dedicated to Cyprus or Majorca. Holiday companies no longer want to send you a 300 page catalogue if they know that, actually, you’re only interested in a few pages of it. Markets are fragmented and marketing people are becoming far more savvy about what they’re sending out, and to who. So, it’s more targeted and more relevant. And the value of print cannot be understated. It’s a tangible, proven way of communication and of achieving sales, and I think most people actually like it

“Liking” comes up a lot in these conversations. “Liking” books or other forms of print is often dismissed as misty-eyed Romanticism or sentimentality, as if it is somehow irrelevant – a kind of Luddite attachment to something that is ultimately doomed. But the point is, people really do like print, they like having something in their hands and, actually, liking something is important to us. Ask any Facebook user.

Print is not only about information, after all – it has aesthetic qualities, and they seem to matter. Ian Bennett comments:

An interesting development that has arisen on the back of the digital methods of working is the resurgence of a much older method of page production – letterpress. Dating back to the fifteenth century, it is still able to produce print of a very high quality and is therefore used by fine book printing presses to publish works that will stand apart as a thing of beauty. Many department stores and smaller art shops carry ranges of products that bear the statement ‘Letterpress produced’ on their packaging. The Arts and Crafts Movement is, again, beginning to stir!

How green is my brochure?

Of course, when it comes to disseminating information, digital media is far greener than tree- consuming paper, so obviously that’s the future, right? Well, not quite. “There is much uninformed comment regarding the ‘green’ aspect of digital technology and that ‘it does save the rainforests’,” says Ian Bennett. “That’s just plain wrong.”

Andy York concurs. “There seems to be a misunderstanding about the wood used for paper – it’s not the rainforests, it’s actually pine trees that are harvested as a commercial crop, just like carrots. It really is a sustainable resource. And the way the paper mills care for the environment now is incredible. We are FSC and PEFC accredited here too, which means we’re part of the chain of custody which shows that the paper has come from forests that are properly managed.”

“The system of adding bleach to whiten the paper stock has also long been abandoned,” adds Ian. “The environment is not threatened by the making of paper.”

Andy York explains further: “We here at Warners are ISO 14001 accredited, which is an environmental standard, and to achieve that we have to adhere to very strict guidelines in terms of waste, showing constant improvement of usage of utilities, controlling emissions and so on. Everything that can be recycled there is recycled, from plastic milk bottles to all the paper waste. We do want to be good neighbours for the people who live around us. For example, we have afterburners that burn the fumes off, and we had those way before they were a legal requirement.”

So, print is not the eco-monster it is sometimes painted – and digital technology brings its own issues. According to a United Nations research group report published in 2004, the average PC at that time required 10 times the weight of the product in fossil fuels and chemicals – many of them toxic. That’s at least five times worse than a car or a fridge. And the short lifetime of IT equipment also meant mountains of discarded products dumped in landfill sites. While some were recycled, this was often in poorly managed facilities in developing countries, leading to significant health risks.

While it would be nice to think that the situation had improved since – and improvements are certainly happening – the signs are not entirely good. In 2004 there were no iPads, no Kindles and no iPhones, and the number of devices has increased almost exponentially. In addition to the recent explosion in e-readers and tablets, there are now 1 billion smartphones in use around the world. This is great news for the companies’ books (pun intended), but not so good for the environment.

One bad sign came in July 2012, when Apple removed 39 of its devices from the Electronic Product Environment Assessment Tool (EPEAT) registry – a list backed by the US government which identifies and rewards companies that meet environmental standards. In response, numerous US government agencies banned the purchase of Apple products on environmental grounds. While the issue is a complex one, one thing is clear: you could use hundreds, perhaps thousands of printed products and notebooks (by which I mean actual, paper notebooks) and still only incur a fraction of the environmental impact of a smartphone or tablet. While it is wise to question whether you need to print an email, and consulting a map or railway timetable may side-step print altogether, most of the damage is already done by the time the device is manufactured – and is made worse by the sheer proliferation of devices, many of which are difficult or impossible to physically upgrade or recycle.

The positive note is the way in which many of these devices work. Since many rely on standalone apps, with virtual interfaces rather than physical buttons, hardware is less of an issue. We need to learn to cherish these devices, to appreciate the differences from books or printed matter – the fact that they are not, or should not be, throwaway items. Persuading manufacturers of this may be more difficult – but with big money to be made in apps, it may be that development will shift more into that sphere, with devices having longer lifespans. Whether any will still be around and working a century after they were made, as some of the books on my bookshelf are, is another question. But it’s a challenge manufacturers need to take seriously if the planet is to make it to 2113.