Webinar: Enabling programmatic print through layout automation

Together with Obility and Impressed, we will be hosting a webinar entitled "LIVE: The technology behind Programmatic Print" on March 12, 2024. The webinar is organized by the Programmatic Print Alliance, where you can also register: www.programmatic-print.org.

What it's about.

While printing machines and printing technologies are subject to constant change, the fundamental way of designing has not changed. Digital printing and digital further processing and finishing have long since offered the possibility of completely different printed products—much more varied, up to products in a first edition.

In his article, Tobias Köngeter talks about his motivation for changing printed products and explains how these can be implemented economically and with relevant information in the spirit of programmatic printing: What options does ManyPrint Solutions offer for the realization of different printed products? Where does the data for the content come from? How does the software know which content arouses interest among the recipients? And how does the data then get to the print shop?

The scenario.

Our example scenario involves a mailing for a fashion house that wants to create individualized cover letters for its customers. Product recommendations are automatically generated, product images are imported from a third party provider, various vouchers are calculated and text variants are created. The mailing was configured in ManyPrint Solutions so that nothing more than uploading an Excel list with the customers' purchases was required.

By connecting Obility, the generated print data can be automatically transferred to a print shop, where it is assigned to an order. Order quantities are then calculated in the background, delivery notes and invoices are generated and the data is forwarded for imposition. For this, Obility addresses an Impressed Workflow Server (IWS).

In our scenario, the importance of networked software becomes clear, with which it is then possible to generate print data within seconds and forward it through the workflow of a print shop to a printing machine.