SPECIAL REPORT VARIABLE DATA PRINTING -- Digital Print Goes Postal

All told, nearly 3,500 postcards were mailed. Each postcard was hand sorted and analyzed by PIA/GATF scientists as it was received. "Some postcards arrived without a mark on them, while others were delivered in pieces inside an envelope," Lind reports.

According to the scientists' analysis, UV coating offers the greatest protection and is aesthetically pleasing, but was deemed less "postal system friendly" because it didn't accept ink-jet printing. Applying an aqueous coating was found to be a good solution for protection of digital and digital offset/direct imaging printing. As a rule, digital offset prints arrived mark-free.