Print apocalypse? Or a print fairy tale with a happy end?

I spoke to industry leaders at the PrintWeek India Awards Night. And most (like Amit Shah of Spectrum Scan and Mehul Desai of MOS) said, they would like to take print forward. That is, beyond printing.

Haresh Mehta of Jayna Packaging talks of "the cradle to coffin" concept. His office is fashioned out of cardboard. And so are, beds, benches, bookshelves, even rocking chairs, and dry latrines. They are durable, superbly designed and eco-friendly.

Shilp Gravures, who set up a chemical etching facility in 1993, and the first electro-mechanically engraving house in Ahmedabad, continues to blaze forth. According to K M Bhaskaran of Shilp Gravures, "This means catering to industries like artificial leather, glass, speciality coating rollers, rigid PVC and much much more."

There are other trends. 

The Flipkart Big Billion Day effect. This is an online retail firm with 5,54,716 followers on Google+. The latest is in. The traditional is out.

We are seeing mini ripples in print; wherein IT specialists are venturing into the print industry; and traditional print firms are opting to build web-to-print solutions in order to generate retail print orders online.

This includes Manoj Kotak's online printing venture, www.flexiprint.in. This firm does not own a printing press. They outsource the print orders generated from the site. As Kotak says, "One of our partners is a commercial artist and knows about print technology."

This year, the PrintWeek India Company of the Year title was bagged by the Bengaluru-based textile printing specialists, Quenby Transfers India.

After the PWI Awards Night on 6 October, I got calls and pings. Quenby who? And how could they overrun top performers like Manipal Technologies and Pragati Offset, and IIP and Replika?

There are two ways to view the Quenby win.

One, to remain confined inside a technology camp, and point to the flaws in the other camp. Stick to one's pre-conceived notion about what print is.

Two, to overcome this dialogue of the deaf; and look at research and expert analysis; to study the methods and theoretical concepts.

The lesson I have learnt from the sixth edition of the PWI Awards is: print is not longer in the hands of a handful of super experts as it once was. Firms like Screen Art Enterprises and Liberty Graphics; as much as PrintExpressions and Lustra Print; and even Studio 6 and Marvel Graphic Studio, provide a unique vantage point. 

And this augurs well for the future of print.