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When I was a young Applications Analyst for Linotype on Long Island, I was flabbergasted by the number of three-letter acronyms (TLAs) that had developed around PostScript and prepress. (Pre-press was still hyphenated at the time, which gives you an idea of how long ago this was.) For fun, I created a three-letter acronym generator with the help of some of my work colleagues. If memory serves, we used FileMaker Pro to make it. We selected three sets of words to choose from. All you had to do was press a button and a new acronym would automatically appear, picked randomly from those sets of words. Even though they were randomly chosen and often nonsensical, sometimes they seemed eerily similar to the ones we used every day in our work. Artificial Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation This TLA memory came back to me not long ago when I was working on a white paper about the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the growth of robotic process automation (RPA). It seemed like …

The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to change the print industry is huge. We’ve been promised a revolution in the way we work, from increased efficiency and automation to more insightful data analysis and more actionable business insights. But the promise of AI has not yet been fully realized; while adoption is quickly growing, a September 2024 PRINTING United Alliance and NAPCO Research survey found that just 62.4% of respondents were either using AI or planning to within the next year. 1 Print service providers are highly motivated to capitalize on the possibilities offered by AI. Many PSPs report big challenges going into 2025 including increased operating costs, decreased sales, and continuing labor shortages. Of course, implementing AI solutions can be a hurdle in and of itself; with a technology as broad and wide-ranging as AI (and with practically every software and platform out there claiming to have AI tools and features), where should PSPs focus today to get the …

thINK has a letter from the new thINK Board President, resources for 2025, a new thINK Academy class, and more! All in our January E-Newsletter. …

In 1821, a Scottish painter named Patrick Syme published a book of color samples called “Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours: Adapted to Zoology, Botany, Chemistry, Minerology, Anatomy, and the Arts.” Syme’s book was based on a classification system devised by the German mineralogist Abraham Gottlob Werner in the late 18th Century, and a book Werner published in 1814. Charles Darwin used Werner’s system for his scientific observations while developing his theory of natural selection. Werner’s system of classification predated systems such as Pantone (which did not arrive until the 1950s), and it still has relevant lessons for us over two hundred years later.  Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral? Syme’s version of Werner’s guide was reprinted by  the Smithsonian not long ago and made available at an affordable price. (Original copies, if you can find one, sell for thousands of dollars.) The book is only about 80 pages long and has 110 color swatches in the following palettes: Whites (1-8), …