How To Optimize Your Variable Data Printing For Speed and Profitability

How To Optimize Your Variable Data Printing For Speed and Profitability

It's wide accepted that print contains a central role in multi-channel promoting which together with a variety of digital 'touches' it will considerably raise response rates. Digital printing technologies of varied sorts square measure currently in widespread use, facultative individualized or variable knowledge printing (VDP) in order that not solely is that the text and image content of every piece tailored to the individual recipient, even the amount of pages are often varied to suit.

Today's subtle multi-channel promoting automation tools square measure a way cry from the straightforward mail merge of the Nineties and earlier, or maybe the hybrid printing of a decade more or less past, once brochures or mailers pre-printed on offset presses may have individualized text overprinted via a digital print head.

Now, everything is written anew on every page. whereas that is no drawback for toner or inkjet presses, it will probably place a large burden on the digital side (DFE) and also the RIP that should drive the press. With the graphical complexness of made-to-order items more and more restricted solely by the designer's imagination, the process stage in printing VDP jobs will quickly become a significant productivity bottleneck.

Instead of imaging a page once for the digital press then printing it many hundred or thousand-fold, there should be associate degree imaging method for each page, that is then written once. Half-an-hour's delay before printing many hundred copies over one or two of hours can be acceptable, however even a minute's delay between each copy would be a productivity disaster.

Ideally, the press ought to be driven at its full rated speed throughout a VDP run, which usually provides the RIP simply fractions of a second to arrange every new page. dangerous design/file construction practices will seriously impede this. dangerous practices embody supernumerary layering of objects and haphazard use of transparency effects, mistreatment pictures that square measure at higher resolution than is needed for print, or manufacturing vector art with unnecessarily giant numbers of management points, as an example.

To additional complicate matters, there's nobody thanks to produce VDP jobs. there's a range of authoring tools, starting from easy plug-ins for in style graphic style code through to dedicated cross-media production suites that generate variable knowledge print, email and different on-line assets from identical core material. With most of them it's equally attainable to make VDP files that square measure smart or dangerous from a printability perspective; they could - eventually - manufacture precisely the same print however are often higher or much worse in terms of total time interval and thus job turnaround.

VDP 'emitters' like this additionally use a variety of VDP 'languages' at hand off the print job to the DFE. Some square measure proprietary to specific hardware vendors - IBM's alpha foetoprotein and Xerox VIPP, as an example - and a few square measure a lot of generalised or open, like PPML or PDF/VT. whereas all of them are developed to expressly support variable content, some originate from the text-based transactional print world, whereas others square measure firmly geared toward graphically-driven promoting and promotional applications.

There square measure some necessary variations within the capabilities of those print formats, notably with relation to graphics handling and particularly within the level of support for advanced options like transparency. the flexibility to preview the VDP print stream for checking functions varies too: the older formats do not support any previewing the least bit, because the computer file is assembled solely at print time, whereas PPML jobs are often checked however solely with an obsessive viewer. PDF and PDF/VT are often previewed mistreatment any PDF viewing application. no matter DFE or RIP a printer has, it should be ready to settle for and method VDP files within the format that the client or internal studio will offer.

Configurations during which VDP composition code, hand-off language, DFE/RIP and digital press square measure all developed and supported by identical vender square measure one answer, and will guarantee compatibility and productivity however they will lack flexibility. If the whole VDP document style, direction, document construction, processing, print and finishing cycle is applied beneath the printer's roof then tight integration between parts got to yield a productive answer. however what happens once a brand new shopper needs to manage their own information to come up with and send otherwise formatted VDP files for output? What if a brand new campaign plan concerns graphical options within the written material that square measure on the far side what's presently supported?

The alternative is to seem for a production system that may settle for input in any of the popular VDP formats and that has the mandatory power and suppleness to figure fruitfully with all of them. a perfect system would even have the flexibility to drive over one build or model of digital press. This will increase long-run flexibility and improves come on investment because the business grows and new speed, finishing or quality choices become accessible.

Some level of VDP capability are supported by on the subject of any existing digital press installation and should offer enough practicality to start giving VDP work to check the market. However, if VDP and multi-channel promoting square measure a part of a a lot of comprehensive business development set up, it is vital to speculate within the right production instrumentation for each the immediate would like and for the long run.