I first met Simon Tabelin, managing director of strategic marketing and creative agency It Has To Be Brilliant (IHTBB), a long time ago when he was running Brilliant Media, an award winning print media services company in London. He is a top bloke, very clued-up and a lot of fun to be around. I’ve lost track of the number of times we have bumped into each other at various industry events, chatting over a drink, with me always offering to pop-in and take a look at the business. This is usually countered by something along the lines of how I’d probably be disappointed because there really wasn’t all that much to look at, so nothing ever happened. That is until this week when I was invited to meet Simon Tabelin and the IHTBB team at its North London HQ where, in the nicest possible way, they managed to completely do my head-in. Here’s why.

It's no secret that many firms in the industry have been struggling, and demographic data shows a great deal of turmoil that continues relatively unabated. Yet, there remain very successful businesses in the industry. Cultural changes in the way people access media are having profound effects on the demand for print, particularly among advertisers, marketers, and publishers - all of whom are, not coincidentally, printers' biggest customers. How has the explosion of new media affected the print markets? What can the industry do to effective cope with these trends? And what will 2017 bring?

Industry awards can sometimes be a bit of a cynical experience. The majority of these events are run by trade press publishers looking to extract a few extra pennies from the market, with winners tending to be representative of the individual category award sponsors own customer base. From experience the majority of awards events that I have attended seemed to be nothing more than a good excuse for a pissed-up food fight and an all-round back-slapping session in the bar afterwards, and there is nothing wrong with that if this is your thing, but it’s not for me.

Motorsports vehicle wrapping expert Jason Price is the lead creative designer at Jellyfish Design. With over 15 years experience in motorsports Price has printed and wrapped everything from a Honda Civic to a Le Mans prototype.

One of the key things to strike me about the TV coverage of the 2016 Olympics from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil is how much the Olympics have become a showcase for the graphic display industry.

If you are reading this as a large format print provider or sign making business, then the constant need to keep production costs low and increase turnaround times without compromising on quality will be all too familiar challenges. The curtain may still only be closing on another Drupa and it’s a safe bet that new large format hardware introductions will be grabbing the headlines. At the same time, it is worth remembering that ensuring an efficient end-to-end production workflow – supported by advanced software – will also go a long way to achieving the objectives outlined above.

The printing industry will continue to evolve into new and exciting `electronic imaging driven by digital technology`. Digital technology, economic restructuring, global competition, market changes, emerging new media and other market forces are combining to `dramatically` change the operating environment of the printing industry.

To meet the demands of the modern customer, it is very important to have the traditional arguments of competitive price and high level quality as a given to even get a seat at the table but balancing these two elements is the major challenge in digital printing today.