Digital print has had a difficult, short, and misunderstood life.  It began a mere 20 years ago with excitement and promise for a bright future, but it couldn’t survive the challenges it faced.  And now, it is all but gone.  A life snuffed out at such a young age.

Of course, digital print isn’t really gone, but its role is certainly in the process of changing dramatically.  It began as an alternative to traditional offset printing methods, where large quantities of items were printed (to absorb significant setup time and cost) at relatively low per item costs.  Digital print flipped the model by essentially eliminating setup time and cost, allowing for very short run quantities, but at a higher per item cost due to the costs associated with the new technology required to produce digital print.  In the right circumstance, digital print made (and still does) a lot of sense, particularly when there was rapid changes to printed materials (e.g. anything technical: software manuals, tech training materials, etc.).  In these cases digital print could prove far more cost effective than traditional print.

As digital print matured, it was touted as having the ability to not only print relatively low quantities, but actually in quantities of just one, meaning that each item could be unique.  This launched an entire industry bent on marketing and selling “1-to-1″ (1:1) print communications.

Unfortunately, 1:1 never realized mass adoption.  It was a good idea, but actually implementing it was far more difficult than most anticipated.  Creative teams still designed and thought in terms of layout for static pieces, and variable content was usually a passé afterthought that took the form of swapping out a name or some other uninteresting text. Getting at the data to drive the variable elements is difficult.  And oftentimes the RIP (the process of converting electronic files such as PDF to a format the digital press understands) was too slow to process print jobs where every single page changed.  A few companies and their digital print partners “got it”, but since it requires adoption from everyone in the supply chain, it was rare that this occurred, and thus most attempts at 1:1 ended in failure.  Those that succeeded utilized advanced process and workflow automation tools to manage all of the nuances of data-driven 1:1 digital print.

Having never met its full potential, digital print is now squarely in the sites of a new threat: document and content delivery via a tablet computer, specifically Apple’s tremendously successful iPad.  Aside from consumer acceptance of the device, companies are moving en masse to outfit their sales and other teams with the device in lieu of traditional paperwork.  Everything from sales brochures customized for each individual opportunity to crop insurance adjusters surveying crop damage is in play.  This is the next big thing that is going finally do digital print in.

Again, that’s not entirely true, but for those unprepared, the change will most certainly result in their demise.  As with 1:1, it will require digital document delivery (D³) companies and their clients to understand how to truly use the technology.  It will also require advanced automation and digital publishing solutions to acquire data and content to publish custom digital documents, as well as the ability to deliver it seamlessly to the tablet device.

While rumors of digital print’s death and a paperless society may be exaggerated, those that are not prepared for the changes the iPad will bring are certainly in peril.