The “P” Word Needs Rebranding

In my opinion, the printing/graphic arts industry needs two things:

1. a new name, and
2. a futurist.

In the course of an industry’s or organization’s lifecycle, a new “brand” sometimes needs to be developed. For example, what once was the Department of War is now called the Department of Defense. Within the industry sector, name changes have a history as well. A recent switch within the food industry is the name change of its front-of-package (FOP) labeling scheme from "Nutrition Keys" to "Facts Up Front."

The list can go on and on. Perhaps the print industry needs a new brand, a new name, a new face—a name that reflects the commerce-based nature of print, and the need to align the segment with the other revitalized and emerging industries. I suggest (and I am certainly not the first one to do so) that print from this blog post on be known as Prnt-Commerce. pCommerce has a history and it just sounds too yellow to me.

The term print is aged and being challenged from many quarters.

Have you heard of the Gütenberg Parenthesis? No, well you should. Thomas Pettitt explained the way in which he uses the term the Gütenberg Parenthesis: the idea that oral culture was in a way interrupted by Gütenberg's invention of the printing press and the roughly 500 years of print dominance; dominance now being challenged in many ways by digital culture and the orality it embraces.

A recent article in the New York Times also posits the need for a New English language, so why can’t print (prnt) lead the way? To me prnt alone does not define the process; no, prnt needs to be directly linked to commerce, for that is a key part of the print model. The goal is not only to print money, but also to allow money to be made, using prnt as the vehicle of choice in this money-making process.