The first one will be familiar to most of you. Gord Griffiths has worked at the highest levels in this industry, both in Canada and the U.S. He has been president of Quebecor Print Canada, president of St. Joseph Printing and president of Cenveo, stateside. Recently he headed up Grafikom. His new venture is as a partner in a consultancy, BRS Jump, which works with companies before bankers come calling.
 

We’re calling his column Gord Gripes. In characteristic Gord fashion it’ll be a direct, no-punches-pulled commentary on some of the issues and market developments shaping, or re-shaping, this industry. Gord has enjoyed a unique perch at the top of the printing heap and he will share his insights with Graphic Monthly readers.
 

Our second find is Craig Swistun, who in his current incarnation is vice-president of marketing at a financial services company in Toronto. In his previous lives, however, he spent significant amounts of time buying print. His new column, The Print Buyer, will essentially answer that perennially perplexing question, “What do clients want?” Having worked with all kinds of printers for many years, Craig has definite and well-articulated opinions about which approaches work and which fall flat when you’re trying to build that all-important client relationship.
 

Gord and Craig, together with Lorne Patterson, our Print Manager columnist, comment on this industry from three perspectives: operations, print buying, and macro trends. We hope you enjoy them and use their collective wisdom.
 

We also hope you’ll be inspired by some of the other ideas presented in this issue. While it was not initially actively conceived in this way, this issue actually delivers great examples of shops that are moving “printing” forward. Start with our web-to-print feature. Writer Nancy Clark looks at several printers who are leveraging this technology in various ways, each creating new applications for printing. Take a look particularly at how Embassy Digital is working it, and how with a couple of Indigos the shop is delivering some pretty creative projects. Web-to-print doesn’t change or particularly enhance the act of how ink or toner is applied to a substrate, but it does present a new way for managing the business of printing, which can lead to expanding the business of printing.
 

Another strategy that’s gaining ground is a one-stop-shop approach that includes more than one, and usually three, output technologies: offset, toner-based digital, and inkjet. Associate editor Michelle DiPardo talks with printers who have embraced this approach successfully. It’s not without challenges, but again the technology gang-up can be used to capture more work from existing clients, lead to the creation of unthought-of projects, and expand the business of print.
 

What these shops prove is that regardless of a stormy economic climate or other industry stresses, innovation is never out of step.