Hasta La Ideas

In this movie made as part of our print-on-demand project, Blurb founder and CEO Eileen Gittins explains how new technology is transforming book and magazine publishing and we visit the Dutch factory where our Print Shift magazine is produced.

Unlike traditional books or magazines, which are printed in bulk, a single copy of Print Shift is only produced when somebody orders it. Gittins believes this approach makes high-quality publishing much more accessible. “Blurb is a creative publishing platform that enables anyone in the world to make a proper book,” she says.

As a keen photographer, Gittins says her “number one criteria” when she set up Blurb was image quality. “Could we, as a business, faithfully reproduce the intention of the artist, whether you’re a photographer, a designer, an architect? I mean, that work needs to look beautiful, right?”

In Europe, Blurb’s books and magazines are printed by RPI Paro in a factory in Eindhoven. Jan van Baar, vice president of sales and marketing for RPI Paro, explains that print-on-demand publishing is made possible by advances in digital printing technology. “We are in the middle of a digital revolution,” he says. “Print-on-demand is a part of this. It is taking over the market from the older ways of printing because people won’t need large numbers in one time. They want to have it tailor-made, one by one.”

Gittins agrees. “A book is no longer as precious a thing as we used to think of it,” she says. “If you’re an architect and you’ve done a new project and you’ve got a book on file, just add the new project to it, maybe edit something old out, and you’ve got your latest and greatest work. It’s always available, you can always get it printed on demand.”

She continues: “I think it has completely changed how we think about books. They used to be permanent. You might make it once and maybe you’d make a second edition. Now you can make an edition a week if you wanted to.”

Buy your copy of Print Shift for £8.95 plus postage and packing »

For more information about Print Shift and to see additional content, visit www.dezeen.com/printshift.

The post “Print on demand has completely changed
the way we think about books” appeared first on Dezeen.

In the second movie in our series we filmed at pop-up stores during Clerkenwell Design Week, UK director of self-publishing platform Blurb Teresa Pereira talks about how designers are bypassing traditional publishing houses and using the internet to create, publish and sell their own books.

She explains how publishing on demand from the internet provides designers with the tools to produce books quickly and cost effectively compared to traditional publishing.

Watch Theo founder Thorsten van Elten discuss how the internet is changing design retail here and see all our stories about Clerkenwell Design Week here.

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Clerkenwell Design Week appeared first on Dezeen.