Interior VS Exterior Signs: What Are The Options?

Article From Sign Art Etc

The places you can put your sign are limitless: cars, windows, floors, yards, doors. Location is only limited by your imagination. Choose where you want to put your sign and we'll help you determine the right materials, design elements, and other resources to make your sign a cost-effective attention-getter.

Ask yourself these questions:

Where is the sign going to be placed?
What elements are going to affect the sign?
How is the sign going to be installed or hung?

Available Vinyls - All perfect for interior or outdoor vinyl banners:
Cast Vinyl Interior/Exterior
Calendered Vinyl Interior/Short Term Exterior
Translucent Interior/Exterior
Reflective Interior/Exterior
Metallic Interior/Short Term Exterior

Other Possible Substrates
Aluminum Interior/Exterior
Banners Interior/Exterior
Sho-card Interior
Coroplast Interior/Exterior
Magnetics Interior/Exterior
M.D.O. (Medium Density Overlay Plywood) Interior/Exterior
Acrylic Interior/Exterior
Polystyrene Interior
PVC (Sintra/Trovicel) Interior/Exterior

Such a wide selection of substrates and printing materials makes it possible to fulfill your every custom order for vinyl banners.

Sales Brochures: A Brief How-to for the Uninitiated

An effective brochure is one that gets read. A brochure that gets read is one that is planned for and has a clear focus. Brochures can be used to

• Keep your product or service at the top of customers’ minds.
• Differentiate you from your competition.
• Reinforce your marketing message and your brand image.
• Present new info or update info about your company to your customers and prospects.

Brochures have a lot of capabilities, if you design them right. If you haven’t created a brochure, or want to improve your current brochures, read on for some tips to add creativity to the brochure printing process.

1. Decide on your brochure’s purpose. Do you want to let people know about your new product line? Do you want to inform customers of your new location and all the amenities there? Create one brochure for one purpose. If you mishmash a lot of information just to fill up the brochure of if you think you’ll save money by combining all your brochure purposes into one brochure, you’re brochure will not get read. Too much clutter turns people off and they won’t even look past the cover of your brochure.

2. Choose your target audience. The potential buyers for your product or service should have some characteristics that identify them as prospective customers. Don’t just send your brochures out to everyone in the phone book. That’s a waste of money. Carefully target your audience so that you can craft your message for that audience. Brochure copy that is targeted toward a Baby Boomer audience should differ from copy that is target to teens. You need to appeal to each group individually since they won’t both respond to the same motivations.

3. Next, create a plan. Bad or decent brochures can be written and designed in a few hours. Awesome brochures that have higher readership take weeks or even a couple of months to create. Some development timeline rules of thumb: Give the writer 3 to 7 business days. The designer gets 7 to 14 business days. Add the printer’s timeline of 2 to 14 business days and you’ve got about a month before your brochures can get to your customers.

If you’re planning a brochure for your store’s grand opening or a new product launch, give yourself at least a month to prepare the brochures and then another week or so for mailing, if necessary.

4. Implement your plan. Hire a writer and designer if necessary. Compare different brochure printing companies and don’t forget about online printing companies. They can often beat out your local printer with sales and specials.

Of course, this is a simplified step. There’s many more details to implementing your plan, but I just wanted to give newbies the gist of what takes place when creating sales brochures.

Xerox Says Net Falls 19% But Confirms Outlook

Xerox Corp.'s second-quarter profit slid 19% on a restructuring charge and lower margins, but the copy-machine and printer company maintained its 2008 profit outlook despite concerns about the weak U.S. economy.

Xerox, based in Norwalk, Conn., reported net income of $215 million, or 24 cents a share, down from $266 million, or 28 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter. The latest quarter's net was diminished by five cents a share in restructuring charges. Revenue climbed 8% to $4.53 billion, helped by a 19% gain in developing markets. Gains from currency conversion contributed four percentage points of the revenue growth.

The latest quarter was boosted by the acquisition of Global Imaging Systems, an office-equipment chain that sells to small businesses, during the second quarter of 2007. If Global Imaging had been part of Xerox for the full quarter in 2007, revenue would have risen 5% from the year-earlier period.

"It was a pretty solid quarter," said Shannon Cross of Cross Research. She said many commercial printers held back on buying digital presses because they wanted to compare offerings at the Drupa trade show in Germany in June. Xerox's sales of production equipment were down 7% world-wide.

Xerox unveiled six new printing systems at the show, and said it received 33% more orders than it anticipated. "Drupa was a huge success for us," the company's chief executive, Anne Mulcahy, said in a conference call with analysts. However, she said that many orders were for products that won't be available until the end of the third quarter.

Xerox's gross margin decreased 1.1 percentage points to 39.2%, and it said it expects margins to be between 39% and 40% for the full year. It blamed revenue weakness in the U.S., especially in sales of black ink. The U.S. sales weakness was offset by strong revenue growth from services and developing markets.

Xerox also reiterated its full-year earnings forecast of $1.26 to $1.30 a share. Ms. Mulcahy said Xerox doesn't anticipate a strong rebound in machine sales in the U.S., but was looking for solid revenue from service contracts, sales of ink and lease payments. She called these follow-on sales an "annuity-based business" that "is our driver of profitable growth."

In 4 p.m. composite trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Xerox shares fell 76 cents, or 5.4%, to $13.27.

By: William Bulkely
Wall Street Journal; July 25, 2008

Why Label Printers Are Good For Retail Businesses

Label printers are very useful for people who own their own shop or retail unit. When designing your own labels through an external agency, this can cost more than what you had originally intended to bargain for. This is why it is easier to design the labels yourself and invest in a label printer. These can help to transport the data onto a special machine, which prints the data onto self-adhesive paper that you can then use to label products and packages.

Label printers work very differently from normal printers, as these require a specific type of paper, which is self-adhesive, and they have a special feed mechanism to withstand large rolls of paper. They use two different types of technology, one of them is a direct thermal printing that is used in fax machines. These use heat sensitive paper, however, like some fax machines these can last from 6 months to a year. Once the labels have been printed, if exposed to direct sunlight they can fade away and have a shorter life. These are only useful for shipping operations and short term application.

Thermal transfer is another type of label printing which works by using ink from a ribbon to print onto the label for a permanent print. This can also be used on direct thermal printing. These are better for long-term usage. The different types of label printers available are desktop printers, commercial printers and industrial printers. The desktop printers use four-inch wide rolls, are relatively cheap and is used for light usage.

Commercial printers are used for medium volume usage and can hold up to eight-inches of roll. These are good to keep on sight for use on larger brands and products. Industrial printers are the most expensive of all label printers, as it holds much bigger rolls and are used for heavy-duty label making. These can be programmed to accommodate for printing on data that use different languages, roll size, permanent printing and in wide format.

Having your own label printer means, you can have it ready to use as and when you need it. When changing logos and designs often it can take up a lot of time to find a good place to have them printed. This will add to the cost of producing the labels, whereas, the only added cost of owning a label printer is maintenance or replacement. This does depend on the kind of printer you buy, which should always have a manufacturers guarantee.

In short these little boxes are good for staying on top of all of your marketing needs, no matter how big or small your company may be. These will also save businesses money so there would be no need to go to external agencies for their services.

Inkjet Printers Get Set to Turn the Page

New Technology Battle Xerox In Commercial Jobs

Inkjet-printing technology that dominates inexpensive desktop printers is about to enter the world of commercial print shops. If the new technology succeeds, it could spell trouble for Xerox Corp. and lead to expanded business for Eastman Kodak Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., Ricoh Co. and other inkjet makers.

The world's printing industry gather Thursday at the Drupa trade show in Dusseldorf, Germany, where a host of companies are showing new inkjet presses touted as the wave of the future. Giant offset presses, which cost several million dollars apiece, dominate the $400 billion-a-year printing business. But inkjet and laser technologies are nibbling at market. The new presses challenge Xerox, which laser-technology iGen3 and Docutech presses account for more than half of all digitally produced pages world-wide.

These inkjet presses, costing as much as $2.5 million apiece, are more expensive than the $500,000 Xerox machines but cost less per page to operate. Inkjet machines produce a page for a penny, versus about four cents for the laser technology used by Xerox. As with desktop printers, the digital-printer makers expect to earn the bulk of their profits by selling ink.

Inkjet makers said their technology makes digital printing competitive in price and quality with offset printing, which produces 95% of all printed pages world-wide. Digital presses account for only 2% of offset pages, or $8 billion annually. That share is expected to triple in the next three to four years as quality and speed improve. With digital printing, every page can be different. That can mean customized textbooks for each professor's class, beautiful brochure printing national magazines with local restaurant ads or glossy calendar printing with color pictures and elaborate catalog printing with detailed photographs of your business' products.

Matthew Troy, a Citigroup Inc. analyst, cautions digital printing won't supplant offset as fast as digital photography replaced film. But he said the move to digital printing provides a significant growth opportunity, especially for Kodak, of Rochester, N.Y.

Kodak has been building a printing-equipment business for the past four years by buying smaller companies. At Drupa, it will demonstrate its Stream inkjet technology, which will be available as a fully functioning press in 2010. Kodak said Stream can print at a speed of 500 feet a minute, about half the speed of traditional offset. Analysts who have been given advance looks at Stream's output said its quality fits glossy clothing catalogs, opening a potential new market for custom catalogs. Kevin Joyce, chief marketing officer for Kodak's graphiccommunications group, said Stream will produce "offsetclass output" in terms of price, reliability and appearance.

H-P, of Palo Alto, Calif., will show its Injet Color Web Press, which prints at 400 feet a minute and will be available for sale next year. Analysts sais the $2.5 million price tag is lower than they expected for its speed. H-P's laser-driven Indigo press already is used by printers for specialty jobs, and a new version will nearly match the speed of Xerox's iGen3.

Japan's Ricoh moved into the production arena last year when it reached a deal to buy the InfoPrint unit of International Business machine Corp. InfoPrint's $2 million inkjet printer went on the market in February.

Xerox President Ursula Burn s dismisses inkjet technology as suited "for relatively low-quality, high-throughout documents." Ms. Burns said she is confident commercial printers will keep buying Xerox's iGen laser presses for prducts like personal photo books and directmail adverstisements. She said Xerox, of Stamford, Conn., is unveiling a new iGen4 printer that will increase quality and productivity for commercial printers.

By: William M. Bulkeley
Wall Street Journal

Fujifilm: The Inkjet Company

Fujifilm Japan has announced a breakthrough technology digital sheet fed inkjet printing press aimed at the commercial printing market. This press that is currently called the JetPress 720 images at 1,200 dpi with 4 gray levels on a sheet up to 720 x 520 mm (28.35 x 20.47 ins) in size. This is twice the size of any other sheetfed digital color press allowing up to four A4 pages in one pass in four colours. Fujifilm claim that the 1,200 dpi with 4 gray levels will give offset quality of printing. This is a higher resolution than all the new inkjet continuous feed presses being launched at drupa. The speed of the press is stated to be 2,700 B2 format sheets per hour. This works out at 180 A4 sheets/minute. The new inkjet printhead technology was developed by FUJIFILM Dimatix (FDMX) a leading company for industrial inkjet printheads, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujifilm. The wide printhead with a print width of 720mm was newly developed incorporating high density, long-life piezoelectric element arrays with high precision and can print high resolution images using single-pass inkjet technology at the high speed of approx. 180 sheets (A4 size equivalent) per minute.’

I see this as a very important announcement as it shows that Fujifilm is really moving its business into inkjet based digital printing. As a company it has invested heavily in the acquisition of inkjet technologies and companies including Sericol and Dimatix, but up to now has not manufactured any inkjet printing equipment. As a company it is already a major player in digital printing with its 75% ownership of Fuji Xerox. It is interesting to note that Fuji Xerox was involved in the development of this press. The press fits into a unique space in the market where there are no equivalent presses. This is as a sheet fed digital press of B2 format. Up to now the largest format sheet fed digital press has been the Xerox iGen3 with a maximum sheet size of 14.33 x 20.5 inches. It has always surprised me that no supplier has introduced a wider format digital press. I have predicted that perhaps Kodak Nexpress, Océ or Xeikon with their experience in building LED imaging arrays would produce a 20 inch wide sheet fed press, but nothing every happened. Assuming the quality of output and the pricing are acceptable I think that there will be a major opportunity for the new Fujifilm press.

The fact that Fuji Xerox has developed this press poses some interesting questions about how this product will go to market. Will it be sold through the Fuji Xerox channels alongside the Xerox iGen3 and Docucolor products or will it be sold through Fujifilm’s graphic arts channels, many of which already sell Xerox products. There is also the question of how this affects Xerox and whether they will handle the product. Xerox has stated that it will be outlining some of its developments in inkjet printing at drupa, but I know that this is not one of them.

The move by Fujifilm into manufacturing its own inkjet equipment as well as supplying consumables such as ink and print heads to other developers confirms the company’s move to be a major force in the future of inkjet printing. The other major film companies have already moved into this area. Agfa has been working with inkjet technology for many years and is now supplying ink as well as printers. Kodak has been a key player for a long time with its Versamark high-speed transactional printers and to a lesser extent with its Encad wide format products. It is now moving ahead with the development of its next generation STREAM continuous inkjet technology and this will be demonstrated in the STREAM Concept press at drupa.

Fujifilm already sells a number of wide format and UV flatbed printers through its Sericol operation. This operation has the exclusive distribution of the Dainippon Screen owned Inca flatbed printers. Fujifilm has very close working arrangements with Dainippon Screen in distribution of its thermal CtP engines. Dainippon Screen however is also establishing itself as a major player in the inkjet business with both high-speed and wide format printers. On must wonder if there is the possibility of further consolidation between these two companies in the inkjet area.

I will certainly be looking at the new Fujifilm sheet fed inkjet press at drupa. I first heard rumors of an inkjet press development within Fujifilm more than two years ago before the company had acquired Sericol or Dimatix. The company appears to have identified a unique market slot with a B2 format press and I predict this will be one of the hottest new products at drupa. I also predict that Fujifilm will be seen in future as one of the key players in the inkjet printing business alongside HP and Kodak.

By: Andy Tribute
whattheythink.com; May 27th, 2008

HP rolls out largest printing products offerings

Shanghai, Apr 22 Hewlett-Packard, the largest technology and solutions provider across the globe, has rolled out 25 new-generation printing products and solutions; the company’s largest single offering to date. Comprising of printers, software, and web-based resources, these offerings are aimed at small and medium businesses (SMB’s). The new offerings were announced recently in Shanghai, China, at an event titled, “Business Go Print 2.0,” organized by the company for media persons from the Asia-Pacific region and Japan. The new offerings include two HP LaserJet multifunction printers (MFP’s), an enterprise class scanner for document capture and 3 specialized industry solutions.

Herbert Koeck, H-P vice-president (commercial printing), Asia-Pacific told FE, “These products will enable our SMB customers to have a level playing field against larger-sized competitors by improving their marketing effectiveness, increase productivity, and reduce costs involved in their printing needs.” The roll-out includes first time offerings like Colorsphere, the company’s patented ‘chemically grown’ toner technology that was hitherto found only in H-P’s higher-end printers, across all their color laser printers, including the entry-level ones.

For an SMB customer, this provides access to professional quality prints at a much lower cost. HP has also come out with its first LED (light emitting diodes)-based scanner, moving away from the traditional halogen bulb. LED technology uses much less power and are ever-ready for use, eliminating the waiting time that the halogen bulb-based scanners need. The SMB printing space (including hardware, supplies, and services) has tremendous opportunity for HP’s imaging and printing group valued at $103 billion globally by 2010

Bruce Dahlgren, senior vice president, global enterprise business, imaging and printing group, HP said, “ With all the economic challenges in the world today, customers are looking at printing no longer as an afterthought, but as a strategic opportunity to cut costs. Meanwhile, they recognize that this economic challenge won’t last forever, so the focus is also on how they can optimize and leverage their infrastructure.”

Shaheen Mansuri
Financial Express.com; Posted online: Wednesday, April 23, 2008