Getting hands-on training is important when trying to get your printing facility up to speed. With the upcoming workshop, Extreme Offset: Troubleshoot, Control, Optimize, attendees will get the proper training to keep their facility in top condition, while learning how to print higher quality pieces more efficiently. Extreme Offset will be the first workshop of 2013 for Printing Industries of America. Held March 19–21, 2013, this popular workshop will provide the essential training to save your business money and gain an aggressive edge against the competition. Attendees will participate in sessions in the areas of troubleshooting, controlling, and optimizing printing capabilities and activities in the pressroom environment. With this comes hands-on learning from Printing Industries of America’s experts—Lloyd DeJidas, Director, Graphic Services and Facility Manager, and Greg Workman, Pressroom and Bindery Supervisor. Printing Industries’ Test forms are just one resource that will be presented in the press laboratory. Learning their proper use will be part of day one at Extreme Offset. Test forms are comprehensive diagnostic and measurement tools designed to help printers achieve quality color printing with less waste and reduced makeready time. The instructors will demonstrate how you can use test forms to see if your printing presses are reproducing consistent color. Additionally, see how to use these forms as a benchmark, with the ability to put your own color management targets into the form to compare color and consistency from the original colors. To learn more about this informative event, visit www.printing.org/training and click on “Extreme Offset: Troubleshoot, Control, Optimize” under the “Public Workshops” heading. Don’t wait to register for Extreme Offset as this program is known to sell out quickly. If you want to attend Extreme Offset but March is not convenient for you, there are other options. This event is so popular, we are running two sessions in addition to the March event—July 23–25, 2013, and November 5–7, 2013. Choose the date most convenient to you and put it in your calendar...

Below, Michael Walters, Executive Director, Distributor Services, ASI, discusses how the newest National Buying Program will help your business. So what does the new National Buying Program with ASI mean to you and your business? More revenue! Distributors (like you) who sell promotional products find it very lucrative. Here’s a little background on this $18.5 billion industry and why it makes sense to offer a new service to your clients. What is a promotional product? Also known as ad specialties, promotional products are any item that can be imprinted with a company’s logo. Top Promotional Products in 2012 Shirts Bags Writing instruments Other apparel Caps/headwear Why would my customers want to use promotional products? Two main reasons: Exposure. Companies increase brand recognition with these products, because they are designed to be used or worn on a repetitive basis, constantly putting a company’s name and logo in front of potential buyers. Affordability. Promotional products are very affordable, with the cost per impression being less than other forms of popular media, including TV and radio. What kind of revenue can I expect? There’s a high profit margin on promotional products—up to 40%, and average yearly sales for a distributor are around $775,100. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Want to learn more? Offer customers a new service and gain new clients! Visit www.printing.org/asi to learn more about Printing Industries of America’s National Buying Program with...

Below, Michael Walters, Executive Director, Distributor Services, ASI, discusses how the newest National Buying Program will help your business. So what does the new National Buying Program with ASI mean to you and your business? More revenue! Distributors (like you) who sell promotional products find it very lucrative. Here’s a little background on this $18.5 billion industry and why it makes sense to offer a new service to your clients. What is a promotional product? Also known as ad specialties, promotional products are any item that can be imprinted with a company’s logo. Top Promotional Products in 2012 Shirts Bags Writing instruments Other apparel Caps/headwear Why would my customers want to use promotional products? Two main reasons: Exposure. Companies increase brand recognition with these products, because they are designed to be used or worn on a repetitive basis, constantly putting a company’s name and logo in front of potential buyers. Affordability. Promotional products are very affordable, with the cost per impression being less than other forms of popular media, including TV and radio. What kind of revenue can I expect? There’s a high profit margin on promotional products—up to 40%, and average yearly sales for a distributor are around $775,100. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Want to learn more? Offer customers a new service and gain new clients! Visit www.printing.org/asi to learn more about Printing Industries of America’s National Buying Program with...

When it comes to image and color management, it’s best to look at the big picture—your whole workflow. When you capture a digital photograph, you are making essential decisions that impact your entire workflow. Some people are right-brain, and some are left-brain. But everyone can learn how to capture and process high-quality images by learning the fundamentals from image capture to output. Few professionals know this better than Dr. Taz Tally, Taz Tally Photography and Director of the Digital Print Production Program, Sessions.edu—The Online School of Design. He is leading “The Fine Art of Digital Photography and Workflow,” one of the most talked-about sessions of this conference. Now less than one month before he presents at the 2012 Color Management Conference, we have an exclusive interview with Dr. Tally on his much-anticipated session. See what you will experience during a day with this self-described adventure seeker! What makes you excited about your pre-conference session, and what makes this conference unique? This is an all-day, hands-on session that lets you capture and create color-managed images from start to finish. I take you through the whole color management workflow, from image capture to color correction to preparing your images for viewing and printing. You will see your finished product at the conclusion of the day. The Arizona landscape is spectacular with endless opportunities. If I am not a photographer, will this session be useful? Absolutely. We will be covering both the fundamentals of image composition as well as adjusting and  managing files in a Photoshop-based workflow for creating high-quality images for viewing and printing. We will first focus on capturing well-composed images, which is the first step in a high-quality image and color management process. We will then apply Photoshop image correction and management fundamentals to our well-composed images. This information will result in having better composed and higher-quality images and better color—it also makes you a more valuable and/or marketable employee! For this session, I recommend having a basic knowledge of Photoshop. Have you created this session from a technical or creative perspective? Both, actually. Some people lean more toward the creative side, some the more technical, while others see the whole process. The information is developed and presented to include photographers and pre-media personnel, and anyone involved in the image and color management process, whether you are design, photography, or production oriented. I teach trainable skills—you learn the fundamentals to get you started and fill in any gaps in your workflow. Can you describe what attendees will experience? We will be shooting at a prime location in Scottsdale, not far from the conference venue, the Hotel Valley Ho. We will go through the entire process of capturing the image,...

Professor Fritz Bircher, Printing Competence Center, University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland, Fribourg, will present Beyond Standard Inkjet Printing at the TAGA 65th Annual Technical Conference, February 3–6, 2013, in Portland, Oregon. Below, Professor Bircher recalls his experience of learning about inkjet technology, a hot topic at this year’s conference. The range of standard inkjetInkjet technology nowadays is state-of-the-art for small office/home office printers, coding, large-format printing or as add-on units to provide flexible data within traditional printing processes. Drupa 2012 showed, that more and more application fields are being covered now, even if inkjet is not the only digital technology on the market. Commercially available inkjet printing systems and printheads provide a certain range of operating specifications and conditions. It is important to understand that for good printing results, printhead, ink, substrate, and drying principle or unit have to be well-adapted to each other. Motivation to break these limitsSome five years ago, with the increasing pressure in the industry to have to go digital with their processes, many companies realized that interesting fields of application appeared outside these known ranges. They promised attractive new markets besides the difficult traditional business. In their search of innovation, some companies increasingly began to go beyond the limits of the known and commercially available technologies. But they mostly failed or it took them much too long to succeed in a first step on their own. They underestimated the complexity of all involved parameters. Much more profound knowledge of all involved subsystems and their way of interaction was needed. This was why I was often asked about feasibility studies to support the breaking of these limits. Different applicationsMany different printing applications have been tackled to address different printing requirements, including large outside advertising on grass and concrete. Their JumboJET was designed and developed for commercial use in advertising and art applications, printing with a resolution of about 1 dpi (pixel diameter can be selected 20 or 40 mm) and a print width of 5 m. Every pixel is linked to his exact final position so that the software can control the print process by GPS. The driver then is independent of any given path, he only has to provide, that he covered every spot of the image at least once at the end. Learn about other applications including printing on snow and the challenges introduced by the low temperatures, the influence of particle size and viscosity on performance. For more information about the keynote presentations at the TAGA 65th Annual Technical Conference, or to register, visit...