Muller Martini

BY CAROLINE MILLER If there appears to be one technology that is going to steal the show at the eight-day PRINT 01 trade show held at Chicago's McCormick Place, September 6-13, it is going to be the digital imaging (DI) press. "No matter what you think about the DI press, pros or cons, you no longer can ignore the impact of DI technology. We've identified at least a dozen manufacturers that will exhibit a DI press, reports Bill Lamparter of PrintCom Consulting Group. The buzz surrounding color digital presses began last year at DRUPA and not much has changed since the German show.

BY ERIK CAGLE You won't see Jim Hopkins' face on the cover of Fortune magazine. His commercial printing company, Hopkins Printing, isn't likely to challenge Quebecor World, R.R. Donnelley or any other top 10-performer as an industry sales heavyweight. Hopkins Printing manages to fly under the radar screen, and chances are you've never heard of the 27-year-old, Columbus, OH-based establishment. Then again, Hopkins Printing has never laid off massive numbers of employees. You won't see any major restructuring because of missed quarterly revenue reports or disappointing stock valuation performances. His upper management team isn't a revolving door. There are no angry shareholders, no elimination

Roger Perry: Web Offset PioneerWATERLOO, WI—Roger L. Perry, 78, who transformed his father's newspaper publishing business into a bustling commercial printer of magazines, catalogs and advertising, died April 14. Mr. Perry purchased an interest in his father's firm, Perry Printing, in 1956. He updated his father's antiquated letterpress with a web offset press, a bold move at the time, but Mr. Perry saw a trend toward higher quality, larger volume and increased color reproduction capability. He sold full ownership of the company to Journal Communications in 1974, but remained there until 1990, when he retired as chairman and CEO of Perry Printing and as

Two Industry Veterans HonoredCHICAGO—At the 2001 R&E Council bindery, finishing and distribution seminar here, Ronald L. Mihills, R&E Council managing director (left), honored retiring RIT professor Werner T. Rebsamen (center) and Ralph F. Box Jr., conference co-chair and senior vice president of Muller Martini, for their many years of service to the industry. Both men were presented an engraved glass globe in commemoration of their careers. Sun Chemical CEO Shines in NYCNEW YORK CITY—At the 16th annual New York University Prism Award luncheon, which honors exceptional leaders in the graphic arts and communications industry and benefits the NYU Center for Graphic Communications Management and Technology,

BY CHRIS BAUER Although it may not be as flashy as a star-filled TV commercial during the last episode of "Survivor" or halftime of the Super Bowl, many companies are finding refuge from high advertising costs in a weakened economy by going a more traditional and cost-effective route—newspaper inserts. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Livonia, MI-based Valassis Communications, a leading printer of coupons and newspaper inserts, reported it is reaping financial benefits from the slowing economy. As advertisers look for ways to lure customers into their stores with sales and other ways to save, Valassis is providing much of the printing of

BY ERIK CAGLE The economic strain being felt by most, if not all, industries across our country is making for some interesting bed-fellows. New media applications such as the Internet, with some of its brethren at one time poised to make ink-on-paper as cutting edge as a Smith Corona typewriter, has come crawling back with its tail between its declining stock. Well, we also need the dotcom and advanced media technology companies as much as they need us. Advertising revenue, particularly for magazines, is down. There is, however, an upside to the doom and gloom being projected/predicted for at least the first half of 2001. This

BY ERIK CAGLE Freedom of choice, from a consumer standpoint, is a double-edged sword when your pool of choices is a veritable ocean. Anyone in the graphic arts industry knows what it means to have an unlimited array of manufacturers. It's the old deer-in-the-headlights syndrome—there are far too many choices and simply not enough time in the day to do sufficient homework that would yield an educated choice. At the end of the day during Graph Expo, printers riding the shuttle from the exhibition hall back to the hotel frequently wonder aloud, "You know, I looked at so many systems today—and I still

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