Do YOU love print?

In my LinkedIn email feed today was a tiny little head­ing that read, ​“Why do YOU love print?” If you are like me, you get a ton of emails and every once in a while a head­ing captures your inter­est. The arti­cle was writ­ten by Renee O’Donnell and placed in the group I belong to called Print Production Professionals.    

In the arti­cle she discusses her passion for print, her love of paper, fonts and how they are tangi­ble. At the point that I read the arti­cle, there were a hand­ful of comments about how others agree and some even gave their reason for loving print.

After read­ing the arti­cle, I deter­mined that I do love print. Not only for the obvi­ous reason, that I work in the indus­try, but so many other reasons. The indus­try has found ways to capture almost all your senses. Being able to bring dazzlingly color in combi­na­tion with a tactile element of feel­ing texture in the pages, high­light sight and touch. Did you know that paper can even be infused with scents so you can actu­ally smell the forest in a forestry adver­tise­ment?   

Using digi­tal enhance­ments along with an app allows you to share video, so a message can be seen and heard in a whole differ­ent context. I guess you could taste it if you want, not really some­thing I’d advise, but I have seen people cook things in newsprint.

My colleagues and I were talk­ing yester­day about how the digi­tal age and millen­ni­als (boy, they get blamed for every­thing!) have affected print, yet it still holds such a strong power. Some aspects of print just can’t seem to be replaced by digi­tal. Studies show phys­i­cal print carries a higher level of trust. Being able to hold a printed piece and read it when you have time is high on my reasons to love print.   

So I will throw the ques­tion out to you….  Do YOU love print?