Xerox DocuColor 2000 series design guide, Digital, Direct, Segment/application, 1998, 2010

What truly distinguishes digital printing from traditional printing is the ability to print every page differently. This is something that offset presses – including DI presses – can- not do. Offset presses can only print exact replicas of the same sheet, again and again.

The digital colour presses that dominate the market now – and for the foreseeable future – are all toner based. They utilise electrophotography, either with liquid toners (Indigo), or dry toners (IBM, Kodak-Heidelberg, MAN Roland, Xeikon and Xerox).

The market for colour print can be split into segments defined by run length and specific applications. The suitability of different printing technologies to these segments is as follows:

	Digital	Direct	Conventional
	colour	imaging (or DI)	offset
Segment/application	printing	offset presses	printing
One-off and one-at-a-time publications	Yes	No	No
Customised/personalised documents	Yes	No	No
Vert short runs (<500)	Yes	No	No
Short runs (501-2,000)	Yes	Yes	No
Moderate runs (2,001-5,000)	No	Yes	Yes
Long runs (5,001-50,000)	No	No	Yes
Very long runs (50,001+)	No	No	Yes

With the many benefits of digital colour printing (described later in this section), we are seeing a strong swing toward shorter runs. The table below shows that in 1998, 28% of all print volume in the US was short run, but in less than 20 years it is expected to account for almost half of all print volume.

	1998	2000	2010	2020
Ultra Short Run (1)	8%	10%	13%	14%
Very Short Run (2-500)	10%	13%	15%	16%
Short Run (501-2,000)	10%	13%	15%	17%
Moderate Short Run (2,001-5,000)	17%	15%	16%	16%
Moderate Run (5,001-10,000)	14%	13%	11%	11%
Average Run (10,001-50,000)	12%	9%	8%	7%
Moderate Long Run (50,001-250,000)	11%	11%	9%	8%
Long Run (250,001-750,000)	9%	7%	6%	5%
Very Long Run (750,000+)	9%	9%	7%	6%
	100%	100%	100%	100%

Source: Professor Frank Romano, Graphic Media Briefing, 29 March 2001.

DocuColor 2000 series design guide

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