Introduction
Not long ago, Museum of Printing President and Rochester Institute of Technology Professor Emeritus Frank Romano recorded a WhatTheyThink video about print education entitled Print Basics Are Not. Frank’s point was that in his lifetime, print education (which had been taught in virtually every high school in the past) had for all practical purposes disappeared. At one time, someone who learned about letterpress printing or who was able to operate a Linotype machine could find work in any print shop across the country. With the move to offset printing and later on to digital printing, Romano notes that there were no longer an identifiable set of basic skills for a wannabe print employee.
An Evolution in Printing
I am a little younger than Frank, but in my lifetime I have seen a wholesale compression of the print workflow process. I started my career as a paste-up artist, and was paid reasonably well for my dexterity with an X-Acto knife, layout boards, and rubber cement or hot wax. Around that time, advancements in electronic prepress took typesetters out of the equation and replaced them with PostScript output bureaus, which subsequently were absorbed entirely into the prepress process. Seeing the writing on the wall, I returned to school and got my graduate degree in Printing Technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s renowned (at the time) printing school. Today, the last vestiges of this path reside inside RIT’s engineering program. It has also been rebranded multiple times, first in 2012 from the “School of Print Media” to the “School of Media Sciences,” and then in 2020 to the “Department of Graphic Media Science and Technology” in RIT’s College of Engineering Technology (instead of RIT’s College of Art and Design, where it had previously resided).
Educating the Next Generation
The question is, how do we educate the next generation of folks who will work (to some extent at least) in the world of print? In its North American Software Investment Outlook Study, Keypoint Intelligence asked respondents about their top business concerns. An aging workforce came in at the top of the list, and the ability to hire qualified staff was not far behind.
Keypoint Intelligence, in its 2024 North American Software Investment Outlook study asked respondents: “Which of the following would you consider to be the top business concerns for your printing operation?” They put an aging workforce at the top of the list. Hiring qualified staff was not far behind.
How will printers replace these aging workers once they retire? Where will new employees come from, and what will these employees need to know to do their jobs?
A follow-up question from that same research may provide some insight. When these same respondents were asked about their production workflow issues, they provided a laundry list of problems. Many of these challenges could be lessened or resolved with workflow automation and improved software tools, despite possible resistance from management (due to cost concerns or other factors) or existing staff (who may be resistant to change).
Setting aside the difficulty associated with retaining low-level manual workers (cited by 29% of respondents), most of the above issues generally require software-savvy employees. These types of candidates can be found and trained to address print or multi-media workflows.
Conclusion
As print service providers (PSPs) tell us that an aging workforce is their top business concern, the question remains: Where do we find the next generation of workers? For web and print design, education is crucial for both electronic and print output, whether that is for graphical user interfaces (GUIs) or for printed matter like books, brochures, or posters. An understanding of type, layout, graphic design, illustration, photography, and the use of color are all essential pieces, which today require a solid understanding and familiarity with computers, software, and programming basics.
The reality is that no recent graduate is likely to walk through your door today with an understanding of print workflow. That shifts the responsibility to you as a PSP to train and educate. As Frank Romano makes clear in his WhatTheyThink video, the print “basics” that once were taught everywhere are no longer part of the curriculum.
Author bio: Jim Hamilton of Green Harbor Publications (www.greenharbor.com) is an industry analyst, market researcher, writer, and public speaker. For many years he was Group Director in charge of Keypoint Intelligence’s (formerly InfoTrends’) Production Digital Printing & Publishing consulting services. He has a BA in German from Amherst College and a Master’s in Printing Technology from the Rochester Institute of Technology.