by Gail Bullen, Business Development Manager, Avanti
For many, Thanksgiving is a national holiday, and a chance to give thanks for a good harvest and other fortunes in the past year. It is meant to be a time for reflection and gratitude, and even though another season of being thankful is now behind us, I think there is always something to be thankful for.
I am thankful to be involved in the print industry, and I’m especially grateful for print. Print is BIG.
I am also thankful for good old-fashioned values. Call me old school, but…
I prefer to read printed books over e-books. Sure, an iPad or Kindle screen has some unique advantages, but I love to sit down and read a book, magazine, or newspaper without my laptop or cell phone in hand. I like the tactile feel of the pages. I like turning the pages, and knowing where I am in the book. I like that I can fold a page corner to mark my place, and underlining interesting sentences. No internet, batteries or chargers required. And I love to peruse books in stores. It seems others do too, as I recently read how Amazon just opened a brick-and-mortar store in Seattle to sell…books!
I like to hang stylish wall calendars. One is on my wall at the office, the other on my fridge at home. Sure, I download calendar apps, but I like to write upcoming events on my calendar with a pen, and to scratch off activities in real-time with gusto. I’m looking forward to 2016 so I can hang a glossy, poster-size calendar with a beautifully embossed flower graphic that I picked up at Graph Expo in Chicago earlier this year.
I enjoy receiving mail, especially a greeting card with a nice hand-written note inside, a magazine, a catalogue, or well-designed, targeted direct mail piece that arrives with no effort on my part. Sure, a lot of junk mail gets tossed, but the informative pieces made with special printing effects to create interesting shapes, textures and visual appeals are often saved for future reference. Studies on haptics (the sense of touch) show there is more to understanding material than just the visual aspect, and that there is still an enormous development potential in the field of haptic advertising.
I also take pleasure in map-reading. Sure, I use Google maps, but I don’t use a GPS. Paper maps have worked for thousands of years. I don’t worry about outrageous data charges, or losing a signal when I go through the mountains. I have travelled extensively and made it home safely without being a slave to technology. Besides, sometimes getting lost is part of the adventure.
Finally, I make sure I print my favorite photos. Computer technology is racing forward, and innovation is leaving old systems behind. Sure, we all have reams of data on a hard drive or in the cloud, but what will become of it in years to come? Old formats of documents or presentations may not be readable by the latest version of the software because backwards compatibility is not always guaranteed. I wonder, do kids these days know what a “floppy” is? Not likely. Will we escape the Digital Dark Age that Father of the Internet and Google VP Vint Cerf predicts? Time will tell. Paper lasts through the ages, but data becomes obsolete. Printing books is a reasonably cost effective way of preserving images, so I make a point of annually printing my most interesting photos into book form.
I also like vinyl records and paint brushes….but that’s another story.
To all of our clients – I am thankful for your business, and what you do!
What are you thankful for?
