Blurb is the creative publishing platform that enables anyone to design, publish, share, and sell bookstore-quality books. All four-color Blurb books will be made using the HP Indigo digital printing press. The Blurb Global Print Partner Network now supports over 60 countries with access to over 80 HP Indigo presses all with priority service support from the HP Indigo technical team.

Since Blurb was founded, Hewlett Packard has been a strategic partner and goes well with their superior quality requirements as they continue to work closely with creative professionals. Blurb has always used the HP Indigo family to print the majority of their books. Their exclusive move to the Indigo platform assures a more strategic partnership between Blurb and HP.

Many Blurb customers are creative professionals and professional photographers who use Blurb’s creative publishing platform to creative professional portfolios, client presentations, or to design and deliver professional-quality books to sell directly to their clients. For these professionals, high print quality and consistency directly impact their business. Earlier this year, Blurb introduced its membership – only B3 program (Blurb Business to Business). A key feature is a premium Custom Workflow option that delivers superior quality with books printed exclusively on the HP Indigo.

Print service providers are drawn to digital printing because of its faster turnaround time, lower costs, and efficient printing of customized marketing materials. It also enables very small print and customers can modify the end-product design for every print.

Digital print is being used to print counterfeit proof labels, signage, promotional messages, books, and customized newspapers more and more. To marketers, it is an excellent way to build greater equity for their brand. The biggest advantage of digital printing is that it needs no change of plates and one can alter the data for each label at a minimal cost. Massive growth in digital printing technology is motivated by the emergence of new applications such as transpromotional materials, photo books, labels, and custom publishing. Info Trends research shows that 10.6% of total transaction document volume was printed in full digital color in 2002.

Its software rose to 23% in 2005 and is projected to reach 33% by the end of the decade. Digital color presses are a key enabling force driving the transpromotional market. Transpromo is the blending of promotional messages into transactional documents and is fast catching up among print service providers. Marketers striving to break through the clutter of marketing messages are increasingly leveraging statements and other transactional documents as a marketing platform.

xpedx recently announced that it will open the Technology Center at its metropolitan Cincinnati headquarters to provide United States print professionals a single location where they can learn about, test and produce new equipment and technologies covering all aspects of offset and digital printing. The center is set to open in January 2009.

The xpedx Technology Center is the only one in the U.S. that gives printers the ability to evaluate products from multiple OEMs across all pre-press, press and post-press functions in a live print production environment. xpedx is a major supplier of equipment, software and consumables to North American commercial and in-plant printers. The Technology Center combines the company’s two print technology centers currently located in Cleveland, Ohio and metro Kansas City.

These centers are set to relocate to the Cincinnati center by year-end 2008. The Technology Center will be housed at xpedx North American headquarters and within International Paper’s global technology center. xpedx will leverage the printing and paper scientific and R&D expertise of International Paper. The new Technology Center will house pre-press and workflow technologies, offset and digital presses, as well as post-press/bindery equipment and technology. It will be staffed by expert service technicians who specialize in all aspects of printing.

EskoArtwork is demonstrating the power of a single, unified workflow for mixed digital and conventional tag and label production, its ability to deliver consistent color across multiple printing processes at this year’s Labelexpo Americas. From design to finishing, a unified end-to-end workflow becomes increasingly important as label and tag printers adopt digital presses.

These workflows start manufacturing in hybrid production environments, combining litho, flexo, screen and digital printing as the job type and run length may require. Label converters have long relied on EskoArtwork solutions to optimize press time, increase pre-production throughput and deliver consistent and predictable quality regardless of the print technology used.

EskoArtwork will demonstrate label and tag production advances on its own and with Hewlett Packard, Indigo, Epson, and Xeikon. EskoArtwork is doing these collaborations in order to provide the efficiency and versatility the tag and label producers require. With these partners, they will bring to the digital label workflow the same level of color excellence and production efficiency that their customers rely on with conventional production processes.

Transcontinental Inc. recently acquired Rastar, Inc., a U.S.-based direct marketing company that specializes in interactive database marketing and variable data digital printing, which enables fully personalized marketing communications. Rastar combines industry experience with its digital printing expertise to allow Transcontinental to further expand its integrated marketing services offering and enable its clients to achieve the best possible returns on their marketing campaigns.

Rastar is a private-owned company with approximately $50 million in revenue and counts many Fortune 500 companies among its clients in verticals like the auto, consumer goods and retail industries. Rastar helps its clients plan, design and implement traditional and variable data acquisition and retention programs using proprietary database tools. Its production facilities include state-of-the-art digital printing technology and other printing, mailing and fulfillment capabilities that allow it to deliver a complete offering to its clients.

Rastar’s approximately 350 employees will become part of Marketing Products and Services Sector at Transcontinental. Rastar is also a leader in web-enabled self-published consumer solutions like custom books and the growing online imaging products business. They have built a solid position in directing marketing because they embrace new marketing strategies.