A Greener Mission

When I stepped into the lobby at Greenerprinter last week, the natural lighting and mission style furnishings hinted that this was a different kind of printing plant.  After touring the facility and meeting several team members, I realized that it was the sense of mission that really makes this Berkeley, California printer unique.

Greenerprinter's mission is to demonstrate that a manufacturing business can operate in harmony with the planet while providing a transparent and sustainable environment. The Greenerprinter’s team believes in a triple bottom line: People, planet and profit. Profit is not the motive, but the means to the end. They recognize that they have a responsibility to be a part of the solution to the environmental challenges that we all face.


Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, with its proximity to so many natural wonders, Greenerprinter founder Mario Assadi had always felt a strong connection to nature and the environment. After the birth of his second child he became passionate about making sure the business was as sustainable as it was successful. As he explains, “I felt it my responsibility as a business owner to see that my children could grow up enjoying the natural beauty of the Bay Area that I had come to love.”             

Some of the specific environmental initiates at Greenerprinter include:        

• Offering recycled paper. They stock only papers that contain a high percentage of recycled content. In fact, most are 100% recycled.
• Using soy and vegetable-based inks, low in Volatile Organic Compounds.
• Operating as a carbon-neutral business via carbon offsets of shipping emissions and investments of Renewable Energy Credits to offset emissions from operations.
• Investing in state-of-the art equipment to minimize waste in the printing process.
• Using technology to implement streamlined operations that optimize efficiency.
• Minimizing chemical use in the platemaking and printing processes.
• Doing all of their printing on-site, which enables them to maintain consistency and quality and closely monitor the environmental impact.
• Supporting the green movement as a whole by partnering with organizations that promote the transition to a green economy, such as the Green Festivals, Bioneers, West Coast Green, and the Sustainable Industries Economic Forums.  

       
The event that I attend at Greenerprinter was an open house to announce the introduction of lay-flat photo books and fliers produced with Mohawk Panoramic papers which uses binding technology from my company, Convertible Solutions. The Panoramic Options paper which Greenerprinter has selected is made from 100% recycled material and fits perfectly with their environmental mission.



What is the underlying mission of your organization?  Is is obvious to visitors to your facility or website?

Pinhole Pro is Perfect for the Part-Time Pro Photographer

Part-time professional photographers are transforming the wedding photography market. Each year, more and more budget conscious brides select a photography enthusiast who is a friend or family member to photograph their wedding instead of a full-time professional. The pictures they take are often very good, but after the wedding, the bride is stuck with a DVD full of images and no idea how to transform them into high quality albums and gifts.

The Pinhole Pro service from Pinhole Press provides a creative solution to the bride’s desires while providing a supplementary income source to the photographer. Pinhole Pro allows a photographer to create an account to generate their own unique Pinhole Press web address. This address opens a page on the Pinhole Press store featuring “Beautifully simple photo products” targeted to the new bride. Any photo books or gifts ordered through that page generate a commission for the photographer.

To try it out, I created an account and was assigned the URL: http://www.PinholePress.com/?prc=CREATIVITYPARADOX .  Follow the link and take a look at the Pinhole products.

The Pinhole site is designed to appeal to the young urban female consumer. Each of the photo book and gift templates feature elegant graphic design and are printed on high quality fine art papers from Mohawk Fine Papers. Each product has predetermined photo sizes and placements to make the creation process simple and the final product elegant.

My personal favorites are the Panoramic books which open perfectly flat and allow the images to flow seamlessly across the center of each two page spread. I am slightly biased in this preference because these books are built using the TRU-Flat binding method developed by my company Convertible Solutions.

Pinhole Pro is an example of creativity in designing a new web business model to solve a problem for the final customer while providing a unique incentive to new channel partner.  Are there potential customers for your product with needs that are not currently being met?  How could you reach them?

                                             Example of a Wedding Cover Offered at Pinhole Pro

                        Panoramic books at Pinhole Pro allow the images to flow seamlessly across the center

Trends in Professional Portraits at Imaging USA

This weekend 10,000 professional photographers convened in San Antonio, Texas for the annual Imaging USA conference. Sponsored by the Professional Photographers of America, the event is an opportunity for photographers to learn from each other and meet with the labs that serve them.

Five trends were apparent in the professional competition prints:

1.  Faux Mattes - Why go to the trouble of making a beveled matte to trim out an image if you can build it right into the image itself.  Classic colors like black and white are most common, but the most interesting mattes use colors and textures pulled from the image itself.

2.  Extreme Contrast, Saturation and Sharpening - It seems impossible for a print to be too crisp.  The same image quality that you would expect from an LED HD TV is now popular for photographic printing.

3.  Artistic Filtering - A professional photograph must look like a painting.  Buy the best Photoshop filters you can find and combine them in interesting ways.

4.  Print on Metal - Several years ago, Kodak introduced a metallic photographic paper which looks great with highly saturated images.  Now labs are bypassing the photographic paper and applying the images directly to sheets of aluminum.

5.  Panoramic book pages - The shift from albums on silver halide paper to books printed on digital presses continues to accelerate.  Increasingly, these books are bound in ways that allow them to open flat and present a seamless two page image.

Photographic purists might be disturbed by these trends, but I feel they bring a freshness to professional photography and help differentiate it from advanced consumer photography.