digitaldots.info

Digital Dots is an independent graphic arts research group specialising in digital prepress, printing and publishing technologies. The company is a collection of like-minded consultants and professional journalists with decades of experience working in the graphic arts industry. We publish a range of articles and reports and we also manage The Verdigris Project.

Building Margins

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The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner One of the things that standards compliance and process automation helps companies achieve is cost efficiency and improved margins. Too many business owners bleat about the cost of standards compliance or of workflow and process management technologies. The bleaters take what is really a very short term view, … Read more

Green Climate Fund Moving Forward

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The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner Progress is being made to spend the $10 billion that has been committed to the Green Climate Fund (GCF). This fund is an investment fund set up by 194 governments and it’s goal is to provide a global investment vehicle to fund growth that also aids climate change … Read more

Ecolabeling Schemes for Print

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The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner There are numerous ecolabeling schemes around but only a few, such as those in Scandinavia and Hong Kong, are specific to printed matter. Schemes like the European Ecolabel or the German Blue Angel are generic, rather than being specific to print. The benefit of having a dedicated ecolabeling … Read more

Wheels of ISO Grinding Slow

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The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner The work of ISO is often seen as being grindingly slow and not always effective. But that’s the way of consensus building. It takes time and it’s a process that allows documents to mature as they evolve, taking everyone’s input into account and ideally reflecting it in the … Read more

Planning, Doing, Checking and Acting on Sustainability

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The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner When it comes to commitment to the environment and sustainability in the graphic arts, Ricoh is a clear leader having been at it since the 1990s. The company’s belief is that “economic, social, and environmental issues are inseparable” according to its sustainability report for 2014. For a company … Read more

Printing Out the Internet (yes, really)

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The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner It may sound like a joke, but a group of British university students has recently completed a research project using this as a starting point. The University of Leicester students wanted to know how much of the Amazon rainforest it would take to print out the internet. There … Read more

Measuring Our Industry’s CO2 Emissions

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The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner According to the US Energy Information Administration the country’s energy related CO2 emissions are rising. So much for all that green-speak; more a bath than a wash. But it might not be as bad as it seems because increases of 2% to 3% are actually small relative to … Read more

LEDs the Cool Curing Alternative

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The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner There’s been much attention of late on the use of mercury arc lamps for curing applications in the printing industry. This technology is widely used however it has some serious drawbacks, not least the fact that it uses an awful lot of energy even when not actually curing … Read more

What’s the Point of Earth Day?

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The weekly Verdigris blog by Laurel Brunner To many people the 45th anniversary of Earth Day on the 22nd April was just another Wednesday. But the particular Wednesday was rather more momentous than your average day. In honour of the occasion, some one billion people around the world have been getting involved in raising awareness … Read more