The End of PRINT at McCormick Place

In October, 2019, the trade show called PRINT 19 took place in Chicago. It was sad for me, because this event had been a part of my life in the printing industry for 51 years. I was there at PRINT in 1968 when it all began and I was there in 2019 when it

November 11, 2019
AP Tech PRINT Logo

In October, 2019, the trade show called PRINT 19 took place in Chicago. It was sad for me, because this event had been a part of my life in the printing industry for 51 years. I was there at PRINT in 1968 when it all began and I was there in 2019 when it ended its run at McCormick Place.

PRINT 68 was the first printing trade show of the modern era. McCormick Place had burned down several months before the show, and they had moved the event to the Amphitheater, also known as the Cow Palace. 

There were multiple printing trade shows in the 1970s. There were a few nationals and about 10 regionals. PRINT became an every four- to five-year event and GRAPH EXPO ran in the intervening years. They tried moving the show to other cities, but it always came back to Chicago, where it stayed. 

Chicago was perfect. A good portion of the printing industry could drive to it. By the 1990s, the show occupied most of the expanded McCormick Place.

At PRINT 68, I was 27 years old and I saw the magnitude of the printing industry. Goss had a web press running. Phototypesetting machines abounded. In other years, I would see automation and computer-to-plate and digital printing. I fell in love with an industry.

They started doing seminars at the shows in the early 1980s and I would present sessions, eventually running the seminar program for 20 years. I have spoken at almost every Chicago show.

There were many trade shows for the printing industry. The Gutenberg Festival was a California event. Graphics of the Americas ran in Miami Beach and attracted a large Latin America audience. There were regional shows in New England and Texas. There was the PICA show in North Carolina. There was Dick Vinocur’s conference and exhibit. There was even my show, Type-X, which focused on typesetting.

We had converting shows and label shows and screen printing events. The gravure association had a large following. 

The biggest exhibitors were the offset press suppliers. Heidelberg, MAN-Roland, KBA and others took up acres of space and had their giant machines running.

There were also all the newspaper shows. The ANPA was annual and gigantic. For many years, it ran in Atlantic City. There were several regional newspaper shows. America East in Pennsylvania was among the largest. 

Then you had conferences that had exhibits. XPLOR was also gigantic and, after a while, so was the Seybold Conference, both east and west versions. In 2000, I was the keynote at XPLOR in Dallas. There were 4,000 people in the audience.

Offset printing helped to grow the industry, as it was so much easier than letterpress, and we saw the growth of every level of the industry. The quick printer was born because of it. The middle market gravitated to 4-up and 8-up sheetfed presses. The giant printers were web-oriented. There was always something new to see and consider.

It all changed after 2001. We were trapped in Chicago because of 9/11. I was booked on the train to California for Seybold and probably the only person who had planned to be on that train. Seybold was like a ghost town. All shows lost attendance after that, but PRINT prevailed because so many people could drive to it.

The screen printing event morphed into inkjet. SGIA became the go-to event for new digital technology. (I have been an SGIA member for more than 20 years.) As inkjet printing machines got larger, so did the SGIA show. I remember going to a user group meeting at one show where they talked about flatbed inkjet. I realized that this was the future of the printing industry.

Now SGIA has morphed into the biggest printing show. It is called PRINTING United and we will trek to Dallas, or Atlanta, or Orlando or wherever. Giant shows do not always remain giant shows. Markets change and the way suppliers market changes.

I tell students that everything I teach them will be obsolete by the time of their first child. As you can see, it happens to shows as well. They come and go.

Remember, PRINT was big once.