Landa Articles

Let’s take a high-speed trip through the history of printing, say, in 50 words. Ready?

The Humble Origins of Digital Printing Technology: When he introduced Landa Nanographic Printing^® technology at drupa 2012, Benny Landa unveiled several “firsts” to the print industry.

Every now and then we have to stand back for a moment, acknowledge the astonishing transformation in the print industry, and gasp.

Imagine yourself in China. You’re witnessing the birth of woodblock printing – an amazing solution for printing on textiles and on paper. You’re so excited by the technology that you sign on as an early adopter – and we do mean “early.” It’s the year 220 AD.

Did you know that the history of digital printing technology was written in small part by Graham Nash, he of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young fame? To be fair, neither did I. An avid photographer, Nash had begun playing with digital photography on his Macintosh computer in the 1980s.

Digital web printing has been hailed, justifiably, as an ideal fit for book publishing, packaging, labels and other applications. Lithographic web presses, long dismissed for their waste, inefficiency and low quality printing, are making a comeback in the applications they once dominated.

Back in the day – roughly 25 years ago – offset sheetfed printing was the “go-to” choice for producing short-run books, business cards, letterhead, fliers, and pamphlets. Sheetfed offset devices needed a bit less make-ready than webfed presses, produced less waste, and reached top speeds in a minute or so.

Variable data printing, or VDP, has been widely accepted as a game-changing, industry-disrupting application enabled by digital printing. Drawing information and files stored in a database, VDP uses the varying assets – text, images, or graphics – that can be printed differently from page to page.