Hewlett-Packard

Las Vegas is the home of Creel Printing, a heatset web and sheetfed commercial printer that's betting heavily on the payoff of digital prepress. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Las Vegas. The most infamous desert oasis. A city that never sleeps. Towering casinos, massive neon billboards, throngs of vacationers, glittering wedding chapels. Decadent, opulent—and a few other descriptive dents. No wonder legends played here: Sinatra, Elvis, Creel. What's that, not familiar with Creel? Creel Printing just happens to be one of the largest commercial printers in Nevada, operating in the shadows of Las Vegas' most famous casinos—Bally's, Harrah's, MGM Grand, Mandalay Bay, Circus Circus,

No longer a small niche consideration, large-format printing is elevating POP and outdoor graphics display markets to new heights, allowing commercial printers to break through new profit ceilings. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO The bigger, the better. Wider is better. Big is beautiful. If for nothing else, wide-format printing is an attention grabber. And why not? How can any other form of print convey sheer opulence, tender sensitivity, true magnitude and obvious grandeur with the same, well, monumental proportions as do the wide-format wonders driving new trends in outdoor display graphics, point-of-purchase designs and an array of larger-than-life banners, posters and signage? Why should the

The printing industry never gets any publicity in the national media. Television, magazines and newspapers ignore us. It's as if commercial printing didn't exist. The graphic arts industry gets no attention or respect. If I'm not mistaken, we are something like the third largest employer and the seventh or eighth largest industry in terms of the dollar value of our production. I think I'm about right. You can look it up. The technology sector gets tremendous coverage on television and in newspapers. Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Sun MicroSystems and all those Internet companies get lots of press. Cocktail party conversations abound with tales of fortunes

CHEYENNE, WY—Vision Graphics, a 47-year-old commercial printer headquartered here, recently made headlines—twice. The first news was that the 65-employee company grew 41 percent in 1998, generating a total of almost $7 million in annual revenues. Vision Graphics also received publicity when it opened a new, 24,000-square-foot facility (expandable to 42,000 square feet), about 50 miles south of its headquarters, at Colorado's Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport. Officials reveal its increased growth meant the company needed another plant to keep up with its booming Rocky Mountain business. "A second plant will solidify the presence of Vision Graphics in Colorado and the surrounding states," says Mark

In the commercial printing market, one technology no longer fits all. Methods for putting ink on paper have multiplied like rabbits. Today's print buyers can choose the method that precisely matches their needs for volume, quality and turnaround. That leaves printers looking for new business strategies. RPL Graphics believes it has found one. This Northern California printer, with annual sales topping $4.6 million, has transformed itself in the last few years and now offers a mix of services aimed at filling every need a customer might have. Company ProfileName: RPL GraphicsLocation: Dublin, CAEmployees: 31Annual Sales: $4.6 millionFamily-owned RPL has 31 employees in three plants

Greg and Scott share the same last name (Scinta). They share the same birthday (they're twin brothers). They share the same business (Smash Graphix in Louisville, KY). And they share the same opinion about wide-format printing (it's great). "It certainly makes our life easier," says President Greg. "Money-wise," Vice President Scott chimes in. The Scinta brothers aren't alone in their thinking. When it comes to wide-format printing, many shops are discovering that the market is wide open. When most people think of wide format, they think of signs. Granted, signage is a common, and profitable, application—but it's hardly the only one. With a little

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Seybold San Francisco may not have the same prepress hardware punch as its East Coast counterpart, but digital file delivery, digital content manipulation, color management and Internet design tools are enough to get the industry pointed in a Golden Gate direction. What to expect? Count on the show emphasizing content manipulation and color management—from creation through output. Be ready to see a variety of software tools to handle everything from creation of files to data storage, archival and retrieval—not to mention unique enhancements to the movement of repurposing digital content for the World Wide Web. Get ready for a hearty serving of alphabet soup—as

SAN FRANCISCO—Seybold San Francisco was just what the industry expected: A hearty serving of alphabet soup with discussions on PDF, XML and ICC proliferating the conference halls as well as the trade show floor. Seybold also delivered new launches of color management and digital asset manipulation software, digital file delivery alternatives and Internet design tools, and—what else?—an entertaining keynote from Apple's very own Steve Jobs, jeans and all. Technological wizardry from Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, Bitstream, Creo, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Markzware, Microsoft, Quark (yes, Quark; just Quark, not Adobe's new parent), Pantone, Silicon Graphics, WAM!NET, Xerox, X-Rite and more cast the spotlight

Be honest. Did you expect WAM!NET and 4-Sight to merge their telecommunication powers under the same banner at Seybold? WAM!NET's bold and beautiful acquisition of the UK-domestic-turned-global ISDN provider was the big news at Seybold New York. Wasn't it the most logical, likely, and yet somehow unlikely, pairing of corporate intentions, philosophies and technologies? Wasn't it just what the commercial printer has been virtually demanding of these two facilitators of digital file delivery? On perhaps a more important note, wasn't it simply surreal to see all those WAM!NET employees in their funky T-shirts standing peacefully, shoulder to shoulder, with the small army of

For the third year, Printing Impressions has compiled a ranking of the top color on-demand print providers in the nation. The 1998 edition features a few changes. In the past, difficulty in obtaining accurate on-demand sales figures made it more practical to list the top companies alphabetically, without individual ranks. But increased on-demand printing revenues for digital color press users have made an actual Top 50 ranking possible for the first time. This year, rankings were determined by self-reported on-demand sales figures. While there are other companies who would qualify for this listing, we could only include those who responded to our survey. 1)