Q Have you seen any large shifts over the past decade in the way businesses use graphics in their trade show exhibits?

G.O.: "It's a very exciting time in our industry as the digital printing process evolves. In the past, graphics were typeset, silk-screened, and a lot of vinyl copy was used. Then, colorful copy panels could sometimes cost more than the booth itself, depending on the complexity of color choices and use of photography. Wide digital was launched and tons of color could be added to a copy panel, costing no more than a two-color panel because graphic creation is now produced via computer and output to a printer similar to a desktop printer. These printers are much larger and much better quality and use the same principles as desktop printers.

In terms of life span of technology, we're in the middle of the digital revolution. We were one of the first companies to experiment with digital when it was first introduced and the strides that have been made have been fantastic. Digital photomurals can now be compared favorably to photographs."

Q What are the inherent qualities and benefits of digital printing over photography?

G.O.: "A photograph is printed in what's called continuous tone. You take a negative, put it in front of photographic paper, shine a light on it and the image is captured on the photographic paper. The paper goes through chemicals that develop the picture, which then appears in continuous tone on the paper.

Digital prints are made up of thousands of little dots, not continuous tone --- a red dot next to a white dot next to another red dot --- so from a distance, it looks pink. Nowadays, the quality of digital is so good that appearance is close to continuous tone, which means the dots are virtually indistinguishable. At half the cost of photographic process, the digital process brings incredible artistic flexibility to even the most modest displays."

Q What significant investment has ExhibitCraft made into digital production?

G.O.: "Our fully equipped design studio houses workstations that operate industry standard design software. Our importing and scanning software capabilities allow us to work with many different formats including Macintosh and PC.

We have one of the largest and fastest digital printers offered in the marketplace today. We invested in Rip technology (interpolation hardware,) and software that enables the computer to send digital information to the printer. Rip is what determines the quality of final output.

We invested in laminators and use only Lexan because it's lightweight and durable. With the proper care, a Lexan piece will last for at least five years it is the best and toughest material for finishing exhibit graphics."

Q What critical factors need consideration when printing exhibit graphics?

G.O.: "Through years and years of experience in this business, we know that paper has a memory. We don't print on paper. If you roll up paper and put that in a tube for shipping, when you unroll it you'll see it still has that memory. The papers we use now aren't even paper, they're plastic. We print on special polyester that doesn't have a memory... you can roll then unroll graphics, without worrying it will roll back on itself."

Q What new technologies do you look forward to implementing in future projects?

G.O.: "We're doing a lot in 3D programs, which take graphics to The Next Dimension. We're utilizing 3D technology in a couple different ways. If you walk tradeshows and look at ExhibitCraft booths you'll see distinctive 3-dimensional graphics. If you look at our renderings of booth designs or any of our templates, they're produced in true 3D. Digital output allows that."

"We can produce a "virtual 3D fly-thru" of our booth designs, so our clients are not limited to one view of their booth. In a "fly-thru" clients experience many perspectives: a birds-eye view, swoop down into the booth, fly around, see the back, see the inside of the conference room, fly out, analyze it from many different angles. Traffic flow can be studied without building expensive models. We put these fly-thru versions on CDs that clients pop into their computers. Clients can stop the CD in the middle and contemplate what works for them, traffic flow, product-positioning. Clients say Wow, this is really cool. This works.' This is exciting technology."