An overview of Indesign CS6 innovations

Adobe today announced on monday the launch of Creative Suite 6. Among the components of the CS, it is one that caught my attention : Indesign, bien sûr.

Having played with it for a few weeks, I acknowledge that if the CS4 and CS5 left me a little about my hunger, this latest installment literally amazed me by the variety of the innovations it offers.

Here is an overview:

• multichannel Orientation: started at the CS4 web + print orientation is now at the heart of Indesign, which thus becomes a real design tool for print / web / mobile / tablets. When creating a new document, the window "New Project" now offers print, web and digital publishing as a choice. In this case, we can define which page of the flatplan will be a cover shot, which is really useful for tablets

Overview of market studies about #webtoprint

Many people ask me about available market studies about web-to-print and VDP fields of application. Here's a list of a few I've discovered recently. Feel free to mention other sources you'ld know :

• A Study of the Functionalities and Workflow for Web-to-Print Platform (Asia) -  28 $ http://www.scientific.net/AMR.174.151

Gavin Drake,VP of marketing at #Quark : "Our strategy ? Expand our cloud-based offerings to large enterprises"

 

I've been using Quark Xpress since middle of the 90's. I've been really impressed by the deep revolution Quark company conducted during the past 5 years. First of all, manage to improve the desktop product and cut its price. Then, start a new range of entreprise solutions, with QPS and Web-To-Print System after Gluon's acquisition. And now, Quark's strategy moves to the cloud, with the brand new Quark Brand Manager, and also Quark Promote version 2. As incredible as it seems, I've invited by twitter Gavin Drake, vice-president of Marketing at Quark, for a virtual interview. And he gently accepted my invitation ! So I'm very pleased and honored to discuss with him about the new strategy of his company.

Web2print-Expert : Quark Promote has been launched for quite 2 years : what is your feedback about it ? Does Promote match initial objectives ? On a general matter, are you confident in such multi-purpose web-to-print B2C services ? or do you think that w2p services have to be more specialized in the future ? 

Gavin : QuarkPromote.com has evolved substantially since its launched and has a large number of very satisfied small business customers that continue to come back again and again to create their marketing materials. We most recently added support for Mac OS X customers to use it too.

DuduPrintz : first #webtoprint service in Africa

Web-to-print is a vehicle for development not only in Europe and North America ... Nigeria will be the first country in West Africa to benefit from a solution Web-to-consumer print, nicely called Duduprintz. Powered by HP technologies, both the web service as printing.

I am delighted with this news, because it will provide a global showcase for designers from Africa and open them to new markets, why not export. The web-to-print has conquered Nigeria, Morocco, Eastern Europe, India ... Tomorrow probably Asia, South American.
Good luck Duduprintz !

Printstagram, Printerest, Facebook + Moo... When #webtoprint becomes "Social Print"

Customized print material from Facebook is not something knew. Moo has initiated steps in this direction a few months ago. But lately, the image is in the center of new social networks. Instagram, Pinterest ... Two examples of new uses that have a dazzling success the web-to-print could not miss.
Two initiatives we must follow in this way :

• PrintStagram : as its name suggests, you can use this service to print your Instagram pictures on multiple print supports, or to create cool objects for a gift. But also to keep a tangible record of your creations. It's nice to see the human being, even hipster, seems to have more confidence in paper than bits to keep the track of his creations ;-) The service is nice, very elegant, in the spirit of luxury that initiated Moo . I love it ! 

 

• Printerest : for instance, we can know nothing of the product, but its name reveals the intention. Whenever I have received an invite, I will tell you what it is. But anyway, you can expect the concept of custom printed there may be behind.

What is the conclusion ? The print is reinventing itself, and it seems perfectly fine to marry social networks, especially high-end as the two I just mentioned. 

Mobile web2print : 2 APIs to help developers

Building an app for Android or iOS is quite easy. Enabling customers to buy customized print products from this app is quite more difficult.
That's why printing companies have designed "print delegation APIs", to free developers from this difficulty. Build your app, enable customers to create customized postcards or print materiel... they manage printing and delivery.

I've found two of these solutions that should give a boost to mobile web2print for sure :

• Tap2print
• Pwinty

Agfa integrates Chili Publisher #webtoprint editor in their :Apogee Storefront

It's a very good new for the belgian startup Chili Publish that started 2 years ago to build a plug&play web-to-print editor. Agfa have chosen their technology to empower their print storefront factory, called :Apogee Storefront. It's a web-to-print solution for the easy creation of online stores or ‘storefronts’ for both printed and non-printed products – either business-to-business or business-to-consumer. It is aimed at companies that want to expand their operations or broaden their audience with additional services.

“We were looking for a solution that enabled us to integrate the editing environment seamlessly into our web-to-print stores. It had to be customizable for different types of print buyers, from novice users to repeat customers”, explains Laurens Leurs, Product Manager for :Apogee StoreFront at Agfa Graphics. “CHILI Publisher provides that flexibility along with a set of APIs and functions that we can use in :Apogee StoreFront. As one of the early adopters of PDF we also value CHILI's support for open standards. This facilitates the automation that we offer between the :ApogeeStoreFront web-to-print system and our :Apogee Prepress workflow.”


In a highly competitive environment, Chili has given the demonstration that a blue ocean strategy is often the right one : they have chosen not to reach the end-user, but to build an impressive editor that can be plugged to virtually any system, to provide it with wysiwyg customization capabilities.

I'm sure other great news will be announced in the next weeks ;-)
Stay tuned !

Must read about Vistaprint

About Vistaprint strategy in #webtoprint... And others
Vistaprint Revisited: New Acquisitions - WhatTheyThink

W2P testdrive : web-to-print software comparison chart

Nice initiative from the w2ptestdrive : a wiki enabling to compare various web-to-print editors. It would be interesting to add more criterias, and to update list (chart was last updated in 2009). But still interesting : http://wiki.w2ptestdrive.com/W2P%20Software%20Comparison.ashx?NoRedirect=1