Screen Printing - December 2017/January 2018 - 4

EDITORIAL INSIGHTS

LIGHTING THE WAY

www.screenweb.com

How one innovation has shaped the path of many others.

n 1913, a photograph was taken at a San Francisco company that showed advertising
posters being printed through stencils on silk mesh that had been stretched across a
wooden frame. We know that process as screen printing, and the photo (taken at
the Velvetone Poster Company) is the first recorded evidence of its use. It was an
innovation, one that would spread around the world by the early 1930s.
Screen Printing traditionally concludes each year with a special edition, and for
this installment, we're focusing on innovation. It seemed a highly appropriate theme
for a process that has played a role in so many other developments. You can make a
case that over the past century, screen printing has factored into most of the seismic
technological and lifestyle shifts that have taken place.
Yet, those true, transformative breakthroughs - things like printed circuits, solar cells,
and smartphones - are quite rare. Most of us strive to "innovate or die" (borrowing the
title of Jack Matson's 1981 book), but in reality, we spend much more of our professional
lives trying to sort out what to do about things that have been invented by others. Mark
Coudray leads off our special section on page 13 by explaining how the process of innovation works, and what it means for business owners as they wrestle with whether they
should adopt a new technology, and if so, when. It's a must-read at a time when the stakes
of our technology decisions have perhaps never been higher.
Next, we look at how three innovations that are highly relevant in specialty printing
today came to be. These unlikely ideas - one from an artist who was a newcomer to the
industry, the others from vendors who were venturing outside their usual fields - underscore other realities about innovation. It's unexpected. It's messy. It demands quixotic
fidelity to a vision others can't comprehend, often for decades. And no matter how
transformative the idea, it almost always builds upon progress that was made before.
Certainly, that's true of screen printing. Though they were unquestionably pioneers
in commercializing the process, Velvetone almost certainly wasn't the first to use it,
as Guido Lengwiler chronicled in his excellent book, "A History of Screen Printing."
Earlier felt pennants show signs of having been screen printed. Mimeographs and other
stencil replicators from the 19th century were clearly inspirations, as were Japanese
stencil prints that went back much further. A 1902 French patent even anticipated a sixstation rotary textile press, complete with an open station for loading
and unloading.
That's specialty printing, in a nutshell: Borne of invention, with
each new innovation illuminating the pathway to the next, and
the process repeating indefinitely. It's a history we're proud to
have shared.

EDITORIAL
Steve Duccilli
Senior Vice President of Content
steve.duccilli@stmediagroup.com
Kiersten Feuchter
Associate Editor
kiersten.feuchter@stmediagroup.com
Kelsey Johnson
Assistant Editor
kelsey.johnson@stmediagroup.com
Adrienne Palmer
Contributing Editor
adrienne.palmer@stmediagroup.com
Kelly Farrar
Art Director
kelly.farrar@stmediagroup.com
Barbara Montgomery
Contributing Writer
Linda Volz
Production Coordinator
linda.volz@stmediagroup.com
SALES
Senior Vice President/Group Publisher
Murray Kasmenn
murray.kasmenn@stmediagroup.com
770-578-2577
Business Development Managers
Lou Arneberg - East and Midwest US,
Eastern Canada
lou.arneberg@stmediagroup.com
800-654-5169

Jim Karwowski - West and South US,
Western Canada, Europe, Asia
jim.karwowski@stmediagroup.com
630-474-4038
Karen Jones - NC, SC, GA, Classifieds
karen.jones@stmediagroup.com
843-697-3802
Tedd Swormstedt
President
Christine Baloga
Audience Development Manager

STEVE DUCCILLI, ASDPT

P.S. As we prepared this issue, I reached out to my colleagues in
the Academy of Screen and Digital Printing Technologies for
their suggestions. Underscoring how much innovation
this industry can celebrate, they offered more
ideas that we could squeeze into the issue. One in
particular, an essay from Mike Ruff on prepress
innovation, deserves your attention. Be sure to
read it at screenweb.com/innovation-prepress.
4

SCREENPRINTING

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Screen Printing - December 2017/January 2018