Writing a book like Tom Kelley

I recently met Tom Kelley, the General Manager of the design company IDEO, and he mentioned how he wrote his most recent book 'The ten faces of innovation'. He refers to Tom Peters as his mentor for writing books. He taught him to use blank cards to jot down ideas. Kelley used a notebook system from Levenger (comparable to the Belgian Atoma notebooks). Levenger brings the story about how Kelley creates his book on their website. An interesting read for those who use longhand to write books.

Use less paper - by Xerox

Yesterday Xerox Belgium organised an event titled Paperless Attitude. Almost 400 people representing end users, printers, creative people and service providers attended the session. Xerox presented various ways how their machines can help to manage paper use and paper flows. Pierre Collette, head of communications, told his audience that 80% of all printed documents have a life time of less than 24 hours! Being more conscious about the use of paper should therefore certainly be on everybody's agenda. But a lot more needs to be done to achieve this paperless attitude.

Printing increases involvement in Euro 2008

I've been visiting two major events this month as you can see. Of course the opening match of The Netherlands against Italy was a glorious match. And the city of Bern was orange all over, business men dressed in orange suits, cyclists on orange bikes, young women dressed as orange farm girls and in between Italians. Canon, one of the sponsors of Euro 2008 and also a prominent exhibitor at DRUPA, did research that perfectly bridges Euro 2008 and DRUPA. Canon surveyed 4.500 European football fans to find that printing lists, TV scheduled and tournament statistics helped to follow the tournament closer. Over half (52%) of the supporters spend between 30 minutes and 5 hours searching and printing relevant information.
However nothing will beat the real-life experience as you will agree. Thank you Erik N. and Gianni I.

Wake-up call paper industry

Papyrus organised this week in Brussels an evening program on the future of print. Creative minds, printers and brand owners gathered to listen to presentations from a Hendrik Kaa Andersen (Arjowiggins), Erik Kessels (KesselsKramer), Richard Owers (Pureprint Group), Pierre Bernard (Atelier de Creation Graphique) and Oliver Salge (Greenpeace). The overriding theme of the evening was the growing importance of sustainable business. An increasing number of brand owners include paper specifications for their print work. Printers start to produce in compliance with the ISO 14001 norm. And paper manufacturers produce paper that is FSC and PEFC certified. The need for sustainable forestry was clearly demonstrated by Oliver Salge. Although he prefers of course no use at all of paper. Inviting him to a paper conference was daring, but during the drink after the presentations it became clear that the participants much appreciated his presentation. It remains of course difficult for brand owners and printers to define proper action to limit the carbon footprint. Papyrus made a carbon offset for the paper presented in the handout. But that is no structural solution either.

Agfa introduces "paper" at DRUPA

Today Agfa held its pre-DRUPA press conference. It announced a new high-end wide-format digital printer, Anapurna XLS, besides many other hardware and software introductions. Probably the most surprising news is the announcement of a synthetic paper: Synaps. This is a polyester-based, synthetic paper for use in offset printing presses. It has a superior printability and an exceptionally fast drying time. The hyped book " Cradle to Cradle" (C2C) is also printed on this type of paper. It will be interesting to see whether this development will impact the market. The stock market in the meantime reacted positively to the product news which is good for the troubled company.

Quote 1

"When paper would have been invented yesterday, everybody would have said: great new technology! Unimaginable!"

Olaf Olafsson, author of best selling books and executive VP TimeWarner