All change?

It’s also heavily used in commercial print for everything from personalised birthday cards to highly targeted direct mail campaigns. But we’ve still not really seen much use of variable data in the wide-format sector despite much talk of its potential.

Funnily enough, many of the vendors interviewed for this piece questioned how much need there is for variable data in the large-format arena outside of retail signage. John Davies, Fujifilm’s business strategy manager says: “It’s one of those areas where people know they want to do it but the actual amount of variable work is still quite small.”

Yet, clearly some large-format bureaux are successfully completing variable data jobs. Paul Adriaensen, marketing manager for Agfa Graphics, says: “We’ve seen applications for billboard or outdoor advertising for changing phone numbers for retail locations, changing addresses or even changing language. It is an effective solution for sign shops, depending on the run size and the level of variability required. Most typical are address changes, contact information changes, language variability, and image changes.”

He says that another interesting example is adding markers, such as a QR Code or a barcode. This could have a variety of uses, such as simply recording where customers saw a campaign that they have responded to. However, Adriaensen also makes the point that variable data is really for the bigger production machines as the smaller machines tend to have much lower job throughput and so there is enough time for the print company to manually make multiple PDFs.

Agfa has a solution called Apogee Vibe, initially developed for its Dotrix inkjet press but Agfa has recently extended this to its M-Press printer. Adriaensen explains: “The presses can accept variable input through Agfa's Vibe software. Whether the requirement is for multi-language, regionalized or event-driven variable run applications, the presses are capable of recording customised images based on variable inputs. Depending on the size of the document, even multiple-up pages can be printed, each with different content, on the same sheet.”

He says that the system simplifies prepress production time by reducing the time taken for both Ripping and printing time, explaining: “In the software, the Apogee Vibe editor is utilised for template creation, to resolve the database, and to introduce step-and-repeat capabilities. The Apogee prepress renders background and variable elements and generates the internal format for printing.”

But whereas Apogee Vibe is really a workflow solution, most other vendors have built their support for variable data directly into the Rip itself. EFI, for example, has a simple form of VDP in its Fiery XF Rip. Roland Campa, product manager for EFI explains: “You import two jobs - one can be a one page and the other a PDF with multiple pages. You use job merge and these two jobs are combined and you will have a design with multiple pages with different text. You can combine anything, images or text.”

He adds: “The Rip can automatically detect key words so if you are waiting for part of a job and it has the same name then they will automatically merge. It’s very easy and you don’t have to have any specialist variable data knowledge. There’s no extra cost - it comes with the Rip.”

EFI has an obvious desire to see greater use of variable data with its large format Vutek machines, as that would play to its other strengths in MIS and workflow. But Campa says that although there is a market for this, it is a limited one. “We see people in print shops combine a banner or poster with different prices or regional information and the content doesn’t change much.”

At this point we need to ask ourselves what we really mean by variable data. Small text changes, such as prices or the address of different stores are only really scratching the surface of true variable data capability.

Web-to-print

Instead, variable data is becoming an integral part of Web-to-print, and as more bureaux turn to online sales so we will see the full value of Web-to-print. Such systems provide a relatively fast and inexpensive way for bureaux to market their services, and for customers to place orders. It’s an extremely effective form of brand management. Bureaux can set up templates and allow customers to add their own data, turning every job into a variable data one.

Fujifilm, for example, recently launched a cloud-based Web-to-print system, known as XMF Print Centre, which has a variable data capability that can also be used for wide-format printing. Davies explains: “We have a way of building up templates. We can start with the PDF and then add variable parts within that. One example was a new store opening so we put in a field where we put the city name and a map where the store is for a bus stop poster. When there is a new store opening the store manager can go to the Web-to-print and use that template.”

Users can make changes to templates to print one-off jobs or can specify a database file to be used for the variable data. Davies adds: “We also do a little bit of preflighting because you might find that some word is too long for the space allocated for it so we will highlight that.”

Optimus has just shown off its new Cloud service, which adds an extra layer of functionality to its Dash MIS. Sales director Steve Richardson explains: “It’s a set of modules that can do a number of things including variable data. We have a very powerful engine based on MX Publisher, which offers fairly smooth integration with Adobe InDesign. Print providers can import and export designs into our module.”

Richardson describes it as the next generation of Web-to-print. Not surprisingly he believes that moving variable data to an MIS brings a lot of value. “The buyer places his order with all his static and variable data and that automatically comes to Dash as a print-ready job with all the stock control and costs so there’s no need to re-key everything.

He says: “People like the flexibility of variable data but     then when it comes to getting jobs in the more flexibility you have the more problems it can cause. So we find that people do want to lock down some areas but still let customers  reorder items.”

Although Optimus demonstrated Cloud at Fespa Digital in February, the system is still in development and won’t be commercially available until this summer. However Richardson says: “We feel this is the right timing. I think there is an expectation of personalisation in all forms of print but it's got to be done in a sensible and organised way.”

HP has considerable experience in variable data, mainly for its commercial print systems. Moshiko Levhar, sales specialist and consultant for HP’s Imaging and Printing Group, says that one use of variable data is for collating the parts of a job so they are printed in the right order. This would allow all the sheets for one store to be printed first, followed by the same job personalised for the next store and so on, and without the need to collate the different sheets for each store afterwards.

HP’s solution is SmartStream Designer, originally designed for the Indigo printers but adapted for use with large-format. Levhar says: “The biggest difference is that the images are normally larger so the data that you need to manage is generally bigger. And then there are some specific differences in the way that we use it such as imposition and ganging jobs up on the page because you may not be using the full page but you may need to impose three images on the bed for different posters.”

He explains: “We have a basic template and elements that are static and you have a database of elements that are changing and the software picks up the changing elements from the database and will create multiple PDF pages.” There’s a new version coming that will use the forthcoming PDF/VT standard.

HP recently bought the German MIS developer Hiflex which has pioneered using the cloud for management services. Hiflex already has a Web-to-print offering that HP will presumably integrate with SmartStream Designer.

For years now people have wondered why variable data is not more widely used. The truth is that many people are using variable data, making relatively minor changes at the Rip stage, without making any fuss about it. But expect to see much greater use of variable data as a major component of Web-to-print. These systems already allow end users to upload their own images and text to fit a given space on a template but the next stage is to see those templates flex to accommodate variable elements of different sizes. This is already happening in commercial print, and as Davies points out, Web-to-print is doing away with the hard divide between wide-format and commercial print because the same online system can handle all formats.

PDF/VT standard

Many of the current variable data solutions rely on adding a CSV database file to a PDF template, which then generates a separate PDF file for each variation. This in turn means that each job must be fully processed through the Rip, leading to a bottleneck in production.

Four years ago Adobe announced a new PDF version specifically for handling variable data jobs, to be known as PDF/VT, where the 'V' stands for variable and the 'T' for transactional. Adobe then opted to develop it as an ISO standard, a sensible move given that the PDF format is itself an ISO standard now, and one which should lead to a robust format.

This work is starting to come to fruition now in the commercial print space so we should soon see wide format Rips that support this format. It is after all already implemented in the latest v2.5 of the Adobe PDF Print Engine, on which many Rips are based.

As with a standard PDF, these files are designed to be a final production format and will render and print normally. Essentially, the VT format uses PDF/X-4 as the starting point and adds in extra elements to reuse repeating objects so that the static design elements only have to be Ripped once with each variation then flying through the Rip.

There are two flavours to these files. PDF/VT-1 is a self-contained file with all the variable content embedded within the file. In contrast, PDF/VT-2 can call up external content, which might be useful if there’s a lot of data that can be better managed in a separate file.