To See Or Not To See, That Is The Printing Question.

Printers are an essential part of our everyday lives. Whether we are printing letters at home, whether the kids are printing off their homework, or whether we’re printing off business reports at work, most of us use our printers on a daily basis.

Nobody will argue that printers aren’t an invaluable part of our home and work life. Nor will they argue that the fantastic innovations in printer technology don’t help to make printers ever more useful and more efficient. The one main criticism is that while millions of pounds are spent developing and advancing the technology of printers, no real effort has ever been made to make printers more aesthetically pleasing.

The simple fact is that most printers look very much like, well, any other printer. Regardless of a printer’s functionality, not a great deal separates the appearance of, for example, a basic printer versus a multi functional printer.

Look at a couple of HP printers as an illustration. The HP Deskjet 3000 Inkjet Printer is an exceptional quality standalone printer. Using advanced inkjet technology, it will print all your documents and photographs with crystal clarity.

Let’s compare that printer to the HP Photosmart Plus B210A e-All-in-One WIFI Printer.   Again, it uses the same advanced inkjet technology to print your documents and photographs, but added to this are the ability to act as not just a printer, but also as a scanner and a photocopier.

What separates these two printers are the different specifications and functions. However, look at them closely and not much visually separates them. A lot of people would not know one from the other purely on appearance alone.

Things may be about to change…

However, all that may be about to change. Cnet.com News has recently reported that the Seattle based design firm Artefact want to inspire the printer manufacturer industry. Artefact’s designer, Jonus Buck, has designed a new and revolutionary printer concept. His motivation for this was the fact that while printer companies may well have spent vast fortunes on the technology inside the printer, they amount they appear to have spent on the outside of the printer pales in comparison. Fernd van Engelen, Artefact’s director of design, stated “There are so many companies stuck in this space throwing on more and more features.”

This seemingly lack of financial outlay, and more so the lack of any inclination to invest, on the visual aspects of the printer, encouraged Buck to show companies what printers could look like with the right investment. He said “That’s always a good reason to look at a category and re-imagine what it could be.”

The printer concept designed by Artefact is known as See What You Print (SWYP). The printer itself is a more de rigueur matt black colour and has a state of the art touchscreen control. The printer allows users to easily connect a variety of equipment such as computers, tablets, mobile phones and cameras. Once a device is connected to the printer, the printer displays all the images and documents held on the device from which the user can select the items they want printed.

The image or document the user wishes to print is then selected, and is displayed on the front of the printer in the actual size the print will be. The image or document can then be edited and cropped on the large printer screen by simple fingertip controls, much like an iPhone or a HP Touchpad. Once the person is happy with the way the image looks, all they have to do is swipe the image downwards, and it is printed out.

While the new Artefact design looks like exactly the thing to enliven the printer market, they do not at this stage wish to put the printer concept into production. Their reason for designing this product was not to become a printer manufacturer themselves, but more to invigorate the ideas of design in the legions of existing printer manufacturers. At the moment, all Artefact are looking to do is shake up the printer industry a little, and show them how printers can look so more visually pleasing and more pleasurable to use.

All our customers can be confident that our buying team at CartridgeMonkey always have one eye on future developments so that we can bring you the very latest printer technology as soon as it becomes available. See the latest printers on the market now!

Source: Artifact via Cnet News