Print vs Digital: Why Print Will Never Die

"Digital is going to win over print as an attention getter."

For years, you've heard people saying this or things like this. We've all been hearing that the world of print is narrowing and will eventually be taken over by digital communications. Don’t believe it!

Print vs Digital?

We’ve heard the arguments. We know all about the "wasteful, expensive-to-create" theories. They all point to an eventual conversion to digital. But there is an advantage to print vs. digital that our modern electronic age has not foreseen.

The availability of applications that print products support, that we can hold in our hand, read across the room, learn from, that is right there when we have questions, can’t be measured in terms of the limited attention we will grant to the digital onslaught of e-mails, e-books and online advertising, just to mention a few digital products.

Print is Profitable

Print costs will continue to soar, but so will the revenue generated by print shops from producing printed pieces. As fewer print organizations continue to produce products because of the expense, those businesses who can reach efficiency in production costs will prosper.

Print is Portable

Picture yourself at an industry event or trade show, and look around you. There are stacks of printed materials to look over, and they are just there, right at hand engaging your attention, waiting to get their message across.

There are printed signs, promotional displays, and little give-away knick knacks with a promo message on them. What is the most normal thing to do? Pick materials up, look at them, bring the printed pieces back to your office to read over at your leisure.

Print is Tangible & Memorable

So the simple truth is that as expensive as they may be to produce, printed pieces grab our attention just because they exist in our world. They are there, enticing us to pick them up and read them.

So if print died, we would be handed a flash drive or a digital device upon entering an event, and the personal interaction would be gone.

We have all kinds of electronic devices swamped with a deluge of information behind their friendly screens, but we have to hit that “on” button to review a colossal number of choices and select what we will view.