Online Printing Has Resuscitated the Print Shop Business

The online print shop has destroyed the predictability of the course of printing history. Most aspects of the retail world progress in an “as would be expected” way, and are fairly understandable when viewed as part of the timeline of the technology’s development, but things have certainly changed in the printing world.

Remember the presentation in Spaceship Earth at Epcot? For those who haven’t been to Epcot Center at Disney World, Florida, it’s what’s inside the enormous silver ball that you see on all the promo shots of Epcot. It’s a ride through a series of scenes depicting the history of communication starting with cavemen writing on walls. After formal writing developed, we are shown scenes from ancient Greece and Rome and even a monk who has fallen asleep while copying a manuscript by hand. Then it’s on to developing technologies including a printing press, newspapers bringing written material to the masses and then we are off into the world of computers and movies, leaving all that paper business behind.

Similarly to what we’re shown at Disney, in recent history, digitization brought us electronic readers such as the Kindle, and it was looking like printing services were going to go the way of the dinosaurs. Newspaper publishers fail regularly, and small local newspapers are bought up by major corporations, like The New York Times, so they are managed by people who could not be more remote from the local culture unless they were located in a foreign country.

The advent of computers brought us digital printing, which made printing everything from Web pages to high quality photographs possible on a relatively inexpensive home printer, so even going out to a printer was seeming like something we would no longer be doing; however, online print shops changed all that.

Prices came down, turnaround times dropped to a matter of a day or two in most instances, and proprietary software was developed to make ordering exactly what you need not only possible but fast and even fun. No knowledge of printing standards, requirements, graphic specs, etc. is required. A graphic artist isn’t needed to lay out your flyers or business brochures; you can do that yourself thanks to the online templates that are available.

These days we want things to be quick and easy. Online printers make it possible to have that and still get top quality and a high level of customization for all your printing needs.