Did you know that inkjet technology can print skin? How about electronic circuitry? Did you know that billboards are printed as a single piece on 16′ wide inkjets? Since its invention in the 70’s, the inkjet has been pushed to do things never thought possible. And now there are companies about to make the next big push in speed, up to 130x faster than their predecessors.

What Changed?

In 2005 Brother Industries and Kyocera demonstrated a prototype printer capable of 170 full-color photo-quality 8.5″ x 11″ prints per minute. Memjet, another company spearheading this new inkjet technology, demonstrated a large-format printer capable of 1 linear foot per second! At 52″ wide that’s 15,600 square feet per hour! For comparison, some previous-generation large format printers output 2 linear feet per minute (at high quality), or 120 square feet per hour. That’s a 130 times increase in throughput.

The new family of inkjet printers being researched have no moving print heads. Instead they have one long print head (pictured) that spans the entire media. For example, a letter-sized printer has an 8.9″ wide print head that covers the paper from side-to-side. This enables previously impossible speeds — 170 full color pages per minute at 1600dpi.

Memjet’s version of this technology is scalable: add another controller chip and you can either double the print speed or double the width of the printable area.

What it means…

When this technology makes it out of the laboratory and into industry you can bet large-format prints will become more commonplace. Simply using large prints wont be enough to attract consumers’ attention from the din. Everything, including banners and posters, will have to be part of the larger experience that the consumer is taken through.

Some specific changes that this technology will bring about:

• Large prints will become more of a commodity, less of a specialty item. Cost per print will fall.
• Variable-data opportunities will increase. Content can be changed based on location and/or target audience.
• Large-format printing will become more of an on-demand service. Individual posters and banners will have a shorter life since the imagery and message they cary can be updated so rapidly.

Summary

Faster, less expensive, and more on-demand prints are on their way. They are fueling a move towards experiential marketing. Imagine everything from full-color coupons, business cards, posters, and tradeshow graphics printed moments before they are needed, incorporating the latest news, trends, and memes.

Businesses in tune with these subtle changes in the market will capture new opportunities. Those adept enough will take advantage of subtle shifts, short-lived trends, and powerful micro-niches.

More Information

• Demonstration of new inkjet technology
• Memjet - developer of new inkheads
• Experiential Marketing

Overview

Over the course of the next few months I will be publishing a series on up-and-coming technologies that will impact printing, and in a broader sense, imaging. Here I use “imaging” to refer to everything from posters to trade-show displays to power-points — anything created to communicate a message.

Current research and development is transforming the tools and media used to print and display imagery. This includes

• new print hardware such as super-fast inkjets
• new print methods such as ink-less printing
• and digital print replacements such as electronic paper

These new developments will have a direct impact on how we design, produce, and interact with the imagery that surrounds us.

I offer this series to educate you, our customer, on the future, in hopes that we are all poised to take advantage of the changes ushered in by these new technologies.

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New Inks increase color gamut and image strength.

BIG Images recently completed the conversion to a new ink system for its outdoor solutions. These new inks bring a few direct benefits to our customers. These include: 

• Increased color gamut—we can now produce better color encompassing about 15% more of the Pantone color range.
• Better weather resistance—waterproof and lightfast outdoors for up to 5 years.
• Increased strength—the new inks stick to the material better, meaning more scratch resistance and longer life

All of BIG Images outdoor solutions are using this new ink starting immediately.

BIG Images + Automator + AppleScript = :-)

BIG Images is harnessing the power of AppleScript & Automator on Mac OS X Tiger to improve the production workflow in a cross-platform computing environment.

One of the largest technology-related problems BIG Images faces every day is getting its PCs to talk to its Macs. Networking a PC can be…problematic. Since the software that powers our printers, Onyx, is only available on Windows we decided to conquer the beast by developing some of our own technology.  Thanks to the power of Mac OS X Tiger, Automator, and AppleScript we communicate our print files to the print PC without ever touching it. Using a simple drag & drop interface we communicate all our print jobs to the printers—they are automatically sorted into their correct media, orientated to maximize media placement, and processed for printing, without ever touching the PC that is doing the work. 

Click here to download the technology paper.

In an effort to fulfill our mission—Revolutionizing the large format print industry through Technology and Relentless Customer Service—BIG Images has pioneered a Customer Management System that integrates with sales & production for a seamless experience. 

• Rapid quoting. 10 minutes or less. That’s all it takes before you receive an email with the quote.
• Complete job tracking throughout our shop resulting in fewer errors & faster production times
• File Archiving. We archive every job we print for rapid reprinting
• Thumbnails. Every invoice prints with thumbnails of the images it represents.

* Do not rely on this as a backup service for your files - we only archive the files necessary to re-print a job. We do not archive editable artwork or your original artwork. We offer no guarantee that your files will be backed up. Due to shifting technology it may be necessary to re–supply BIG Images with new and/or updated files for reprints.

Click here to download the technology paper.