Heidelberg

BY ERIK CAGLE The evolution of book publishing has some parallels with that of the computer. Smaller and quicker are the operative words in this comparison. Before the PC became a household fixture, computers were hulking boxes with reel-to-reel tapes and other round objects that made those cute little concentric circles. And they weren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, boasting the processing speed of a can opener. Book publishing was also big and scarry—1,000-page megatomes were loaded onto presses to churn out millions of copies. "War and Peace" was followed by hundreds of thousands of 500-page copies of biology books. Obviously, they

BY MARK SMITH Bindery automation has long since ceased to be an oxymoron, but the back end of the process hasn't seen quite the same digital revolution as in the prepress and press arenas. Touch pads and automated setup features have become commonplace, but operators are not sitting around looking at computer screens all day, as one trade binder owner put it. The fundamental nature of the work hasn't changed all that dramatically. Faster makereadies and more efficient material handling have been the primary focus of efforts to automate binding and finishing operations. Cutting and folding probably are the two areas that have

Digital Ins and Outs Tech Alert is the yearly conference at which the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (GATF) presents the results of its latest original research studies. At the recently held 2001 conference, studies presented in the digital arena included "Digital Imaging Press Print Attributes," "Digital Photography" and "Remote Proofing—State-of-the-Art Report." According to Dr. Richard M. Adams, study presenter and a GATF research scientist, the digital imaging press study wasn't intended to be a "shoot out," whereby output from competing devices is compared to determine the "winner." Still, manufacturers of the presses in question were asked to print press sheets from a digital

JACKSONVILLE, FL—Jeff Sweetman fully understands if you think heatset and coldset web offset printing have no business being under the same roof. The CEO of Los Alamitos, CA-based Trend Offset Printing won't argue with anyone who feels that way. Yes, it is true that the privately held company crossed into the Top 50 of printers nationwide as ranked by Printing Impressions in terms of revenues with a lusty $150-plus million in sales. It's also true that Trend Offset expanded into a Dallas suburb fairly recently and, yes, it's expanding again with a new facility in Jacksonville, FL. Sure, Trend Offset was able to

When pondering what sets one commercial printer apart from the competition, the answer has to be unique capabilities. The C.J. Krehbiel Co. routinely delivers products and services that other printers cannot provide. For 128 years, the Cincinnati-based company has been partnering with clients to realize their printing goals. From estimate to delivered products, prepress to bindery, C.J. Kreh-biel provides total in-house capabilities, saving customers time and money while producing high-quality products. Complete in-house capabilities allow the 250-employee company to offer flexibility in printing clients' products. Their ability to print in a variety of web formats and signatures, and to produce a mix of

NORTH CHELMSFORD, MA—The economy may be slowing, but Courier Corp. shows no signs of such action. As one of the nation's leading book manufacturers with 2000 sales of $188 million, Courier is seeking to enhance that standing with a number of investments in new equipment that have been made over the past year. Courier—which annually produces 150 million books at its five manufacturing facilities—earmarked approximately $16 million toward the acquisition of equipment during 2000, and the company expects to virtually match that standard with its 2001 acquisitions. According to Joe Brennan, vice president of engineering, Courier is being aggressive at a time when many

BY SCOTT POLK The seeds of the relationship that drives one of the country's fastest growing printing companies were sown nearly 60 years ago on a rooftop in Newark, NJ. That's where Arnold Greebel's parents would take him on nice days—allowing the toddler to bask in the sunlight and soak in the panoramic views such a vantage point provides. Sometimes, as his parents would relate to him years later, Greebel would cast his eyes to a nearby building, where a young Janet Biddelman was also enjoying the weather from a rooftop carriage. Fast forward some 20 years later. Arnold had earned an engineering

BY MARK SMITH PDF is supposed to stand for Portable Document Format, but "pretty darn frustrating" has been a more fitting moniker in many ways. When Adobe introduced the Acrobat software family, with PDF as its core technology, it was billed as the answer to the shortcomings inherent in the PostScript language, among other things. The coveted benefits of PDF include the ability to generate relatively small, self-contained (including fonts) files that can be processed more efficiently and reliably. Yet, more than five years later, PDF only now seems in a position to become the standard or even generally preferred file format

BY CHRIS BAUER The reasons the management team at New Haven, CT-based Phoenix Press decided to move to digital printing were twofold. First, they found many customers were ordering smaller volumes that were better suited for print-on-demand methods. Second, they believe digital printing will play a key role in the future of the graphic arts industry by introducing new capabilities and new services—such as variable-data printing. The result of their findings and beliefs was the purchase of a Heidelberg Digimaster 9110, a Canon CLC 1000, Canon imageRUNNER 600 and 400, and DankaWare software—all supplied by Danka Business Systems. The new equipment is

BY SCOTT POLK There is an old saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. That adage can also be applied to commercial printing. A company may have state-of-the-art equipment, a CTP-enabled prepress workflow and veteran press operators, but if its sales staff is unable to sell the finished product, the whole chain will collapse. Of course, this is not to imply that salespeople are the weak link of a printing operation. On the contrary, since the success of a company is generally judged by sales figures, the importance of a winning sales team is obvious. One of the