While we saw some great developments in 2005 from companies like Philips and Fujitsu around electronic paper or e-paper (see Gizmodo), Pantone is close to releasing a range of electronic ink products. These inks will revolutionise the printing industry, and are likely to lead to a resurgence in print advertising, which has been fighting a losing battle against the online media world.
Pantone, the company that has become the industry standard for colour around the world, has been working for a number of years on methods to embed digital information into printed material. While they are still working on more sophisticated electronic inks, the first generation inks include light-sensitive and interactive versions.
“At a basic level, light-sensitive inks can be used by magazines to reveal additional information and images when the page is opened by the reader. This will ensure that display advertising in magazines will catch the eye and be more effective than traditional print advertising,” said an unnamed source from Pantone.
“We are also working with a number of leading US publishers on a system to measure and report on readers’ interaction with print advertising. One of the main challenges from the online world is that statistics that can be provided for ad “click throughs” and page impressions. Until now, we haven’t been able to do this in the print publishing industry. With light-sensitive inks, we can embed the smarts into the page so that once the ink has been exposed to light for, say, 20 seconds, it triggers a message back to a central server to register it as a page impression. Publishers can also measure the readership levels for editorial in their magazines.”
Interactive inks have also been developed by Pantone. They work in much the same way as light-sensitive inks, but require the reader to use a device, such as a wand, to reveal text and images on the page. Publishers will provide these wands with the magazines when they are purchased. Again, this level of interaction will add to the effectiveness of both editorial and advertising, by engaging the reader to interact with the printed material. As with light-sensitive inks, publishers and advertisers will be able to track reader behaviours in great detail.
”We are also working on integrating these wand devices via USB to PCs and the Internet. The old “click here” to read more on a web page suddenly becomes available to print media through the USB wand. The application of this ink technology are endless in other industries too, such as banking and finance, packaging, manufacturing, retail and travel.”
Future ink developments from Pantone include RFID, audio and video capabilities.
“Once you can interconnect minute digital components in ink, the sky’s the limit,” concluded the Pantone source.
