2011 – Partnerships & tablet editions
2011 is an interesting year in the graphic arts industry. There isn’t much news in prepress but the printing industry goes through some major changes. In publishing the gradual shift to tablet publishing continues.
• Equipment manufacturers realize that their world is changing rapidly. Many of them cooperate with other vendors to try and build a presence in the digital printing market. This leads to a series of interesting partnerships: Heidelberg & Ricoh, Manroland & Océ, KBA & RR Donnelley & Son and last but not least Kodak & Konica Minolta.
• Declining sales and a resulting debt of $94 million force the Japanese press manufacturer Shinohara to file for bankruptcy protection. Its sales had dropped from $60 million in March 2009 to $26 million in March 2010. In November German press manufacturer manroland AG also files for insolvency. They state their dramatic drop in incoming orders is caused by customers having difficulty to obtain financing for purchasing printing presses.
• Adobe releases the Technical Communication Suite 3. This software suite for creating technical information and training material includes Framemaker 10 and RoboHelp 9.
• In its London headquarters Stroma starts printing color editions of international newspapers on an Océ JetStream 1000. This digital inkjet press can print in excess of 1000 36-page tabloid newspapers per hour.
• Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, dies at age 56.
• In the US overall sales of ebooks pass sales of paperbacks. Seven months earlier, in July 2010, web shop Amazon’s US digital book sales had already eclipsed the sales of hardcover books.
• Both InDesign CS 5.5 and QuarkXPress 9 focus on improved support for creating tablet editions of publications. The growing market convinces many publishers to make their magazines available on Apple’s iPad. The tool of choice for many publishers is the WoodWing editorial system.
• In the USA employment in advertising and graphic design for the first time ever exceeds that in commercial printing.
Honeysuckle (Pantone 18-2120) is the color of the year.
• Online advertising takes over the number two spot from newspapers in the US advertising market. TV ad spending remains king. Radio takes up the fourth place while magazine advertising is fifth.
• A powerful 8.9-magnitude earthquake strikes the north-east coast of Japan. It triggers a massive tsunami which destroys many coastal villages as well as the Fukushima nuclear plant.
• During the Arab spring demonstrations and protests all over the Arab world lead to the overturning of the governments of Egypt and Libya.
• Occupy Wall Street is a protest against economic and social inequality that starts off in New York but quickly becomes in international phenomenon.
• The United States end their war in Iraq.
• The Space Shuttle Program comes to an end.