The Dichotomies of the Global Printing Industry

2. All printing is monochrome, except when it is in color

The letterpress printing age began with Gutenberg and lasted into the 1970s. Offset litho took 70 years to commercialize and within a decade, it replaced letterpress. Within a decade after that the number of pages in color exploded. In 1970, most pages were black and white. Now almost all newspapers have shifted to color reproduction, primarily for advertising. Color is also splashed on every page of magazines and catalogues. It is hard to find a page that is not in color. Full color is growing from 58 percent today to 85 percent of all print pages by 2020. We will need better ways of managing color, as print competes with electronic media. We will need more effective color workflows. Color printing also includes spot colors, such as Pantone. Most offset printing machines have printing units for such spot colors; most digital printers do not.