Author: gretchenapeck

Gretchen A. Peck's writing has been featured in more than 50 domestic and international publications, including translations to Spanish, Portuguese, German, and French. She has written about communications, media, and advertising; politics and public policy; rhetoric, writing, and journalism; sustainability and food-chain matters; travel and culture; dance and fine arts; legal, and other consumer-interest topics. Her decades-long reporting on journalism and news, publishing, printing, and graphic arts has appeared in dozens of industry trade periodicals and journals, including Editor & Publisher magazine; BookTech/Book Business magazine; Publishing Executive magazine; Business Tech Edge; Dealer Communicator; Digital Output and Digital Publishing Solutions magazines; In-Plant Graphics magazine; WhatTheyThink.com, Newspapers & Technology; CREATE Magazine; Internet Publishing; Catalog Success; Artes Graficas; HOW Magazine; The Seybold Report; IPA Bulletin; Graph Expo Show Guide; American Printer; Layers Magazine; Xerox's realbusiness magazine, Broad Street Magazine, Business Ledger, and more. She "tweets" about news and publishing @GretchenAPeck.

By Gretchen A. Peck

Circulation, as a newspaper organization discipline, is so much more complex now than it was even 20 years ago, when the Internet and digital media were in their infancy. The roles and responsibilities have changed, and the skills that the new breed of circulation professional must possess are diverse, dynamic, and often data-driven.

Publishing by Editor & Publisher magazine, March 2014

Printing and Imaging

Special Effects: Sticky Images

June 10, 2018June 10, 2018 gretchenapeck

By Gretchen A. Peck

Sticky graphics—that’s what print buyers want. Whether artists or marketers, they share a common goal to create images that grab attention and leave an impression, images that compel you, and perhaps even haunt you. Sometimes the vision calls for those images to become part of the environment, to be stuck on a wall, wrapped around architecture, placed over windows, and all kinds of surfaces.

It’s not unusual in large format graphics to print to interesting substrates that are both visually intriguing and install challenged. Specialty substrates—such as metallic and chalkboard—with adhesive applications abound, but print service suppliers must be both left- and right-brained when choosing among them. Print buyers look to the print provider for technical and performance guidance, as well as creative insight into how ideas may be achieved.

Published by Digital Output magazine, February 2014

Printing and Imaging

The Great Debate: Inkjet Printheads

June 10, 2018June 10, 2018 gretchenapeck

By Gretchen A. Peck

There are a lot of variables throughout the print process. For example, the quality of the graphics, media choice, and the lighting and environmental conditions at the installation point. All of these factors contribute to the overall success of a print job. The same is true for how consumables and the print technology itself, including printheads, work together.

“Printheads are a crucial area of printer design, and what differentiates one printer manufacturer from another,” explains Mark Radogna, product manager, professional imaging, Epson.

Hardware manufacturers decide what type of printhead—piezo or thermal—to place in a device based on many factors. These include temperature and ink chemistry.

Published by Digital Output magazine, April 2014

Printing and Imaging

Variable data makes the leap

June 10, 2018June 10, 2018 gretchenapeck

By Gretchen A. Peck

Commercial printers and their print-buying clientele long ago recognized the benefits of personalized print and built workflows that took in vast volumes of disparate data and blended it with static print images. The ability to customize each and every page that comes off a press changed the marketing and advertising game forever—for the better.

For example, consider email marketing. Experian Marketing Services’ 2014 publication, 2013 Email Market Study, found that personalized emails inspire six times the response, transaction, and revenue rates than non-personalized messages. And the effectiveness of personalized print is equally compelling. The study reports that customized promotional mailings may garner as much as 29 percent better open rates.

Now, digital large format print service providers (PSPs) are taking a page from the commercial print playbook and rolling out variable data print (VDP) for their own breed of print projects.

Publishing by Digital Output magazine, April 2014

Printing and Imaging

Answering the riddle of environmentally friendly media

June 10, 2018June 10, 2018 gretchenapeck

By Gretchen A. Peck

Though printing celebrates significant progress in its efforts to be more environmentally considerate, large format still has a long way to go—starting with how the industry at large deals with media. Part of the reason why large format graphics may be lagging behind is confusion.

Casually tossed-about terms like sustainable, “green,” and environmentally responsible are relative to one another. Is media green if it isn’t comprised of some percentage of recycled material? Is it green only if it can be inserted into standard recycling streams? Can substrates be green if they have to be finished with the introduction of a chemical-based solution? Is it green if it can be used and reused with ease, without loss of integrity, such as textile-based print?

Print service providers (PSPs) are tasked with juggling these questions and supplying answers to their customers. In return, they look to media vendors to provide sustainable products. Here, we profile PSPs who are helping solve the sustainable media riddle.

Publishing by Digital Output magazine, May 2014

Printing and Imaging

Prototyping and Short-Run Packaging

June 10, 2018June 10, 2018 gretchenapeck

By Gretchen A. Peck

Without question, digital inkjet has transformed virtually every segment of the print industry—commercial print, sign and graphics, books, and publications. Many predicted that digital inkjet would also transform packaging—not in the sense that long-run inkjet production would entirely replace more traditional print methods like flexography, screenprinting, and offset. Rather, it was seen as an enabler to the creative process, allowing for better comping, prototyping, and in some cases, short-run production.

However, since the advent of quality roll-fed and flatbed print engines, digital inkjet printing has yet to live up to its packaging potential.

Published by DPS Magazine, July 2014

Printing and Imaging

Packaging Promises

June 10, 2018June 10, 2018 gretchenapeck

By Gretchen A. Peck

There’s been a lot of punditry and speculation about how digital print will impact packaging printing, whether it would go the way of commercial print, with shorter print runs and variable data-driven versioning. However, after more than a decade of predictions that digital print—narrow and wide format—would forever alter the packaging landscape, they’ve yet to manifest.

When having a conversation about “packaging,” it’s important to be specific about its sub-segments, suggests Simon Lewis, director, strategic marketing for Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) Indigo Division, who categorizes package printing as labels and label-like products such as shrink sleeves, folding carton, flexible packaging, and “others,” which include specialty packages produced using more exotic media such as metal and glass.

Publishes by DPS Magazine, May 2014

News & Publishing

How to reach the next generation of readers

June 10, 2018June 10, 2018 gretchenapeck

By Gretchen A. Peck

Like seemingly every other magazine category, teen and young-adult titles have taken a beating in the past decade, with consolidation and the print advertising downward spiral forcing the closure of renowned brands — 16, YM, Teen, Teen Beat, Teen People, just to name a few. As retailers cowered or went dark across the nation, print magazines lost some of their best distribution allies-especially teen titles, many of which rely on those single-copy sales.

Publishing Executive asked publishers and editors about the challenges of publishing for this audience-to print, the web, and mobile devices-and how they’ve been able to compel young readers to love to read magazines. While the content in this category runs the gamut from celebrity insights to science and technology, there are some important commonalities among this target demographic: This generation of young readers is smart, articulate — opinionated even — and tethered to their smartphones.

Published by Publishing Executive magazine

News & Publishing

Des Moines is fertile ground for publishing

June 10, 2018June 10, 2018 gretchenapeck

By Gretchen A. Peck

David Byrne of Talking Heads fame recently passed through Des Moines, Iowa for the 80/35 Music Festival. He wrote about his time there-the bucolic setting, the public spaces, restaurants, the library, and a visit to the local bike shop. “Life here seems to be more or less middle class (the middle class doesn’t seem to have been gutted here as it has been in many other towns), and there are amenities like the riverfront, bike trail networks, ball fields, and water sports that show that the city cares about its citizens,” Byrne opines in his blog.

Published July 2013, Publishing Executive magazine