News & trends

<p>Cooley Group helps install the first 100-percent solar- powered billboard in Times Square.</p>

Cooley Group helps install the first 100-percent solar- powered billboard in Times Square.

  • Trends

  • City signage makes an impact

    September 1, 2010

    Impact your city—and your company’s bottom line—with artistic digital graphics applications.

  • Green printing

    September 1, 2010

    Usually, I write about new and cool uses of digitally printed fabrics. This is about something much more mainstream: banners.

  • Printing electronic circuitry

    September 1, 2010

    The definition of printing on fabric appears to be expanding.

  • Sustainability

  • Avoid the greenwashing cycle

    September 1, 2010

    What environmental certification really means to your business and your customers.

  • Opportunities abound for printed fabric bags

    January 1, 2010

    Paper and plastic bags have their environmental issues, so it’s somewhat obvious which bag solution is likely to win in the end. Fabric is it.

  • Defining sustainable inks

    November 1, 2009

    In order to keep up with today’s demand for sustainable processes and products, manufacturers of digital printing inks are creating products that have labels attached to them like “safe,” “green” and “eco-friendly.”

  • Growth potential in fabric graphics market

    Sponsored by IFAI Market Research

    Digital technology is the fastest growing method of printing textiles. In 2007, digital printing accounted for less than one percent of the global market for printed textiles. Its share is likely to grow to as much as 10 percent in three to five years. Digital textile printing applications in the United States, especially wide format, continue to grow at about 10 percent per year. The sustainability movement in the United States is a key issue driving growth in the soft signage market.

    More direct to fabric printers are entering the digital textile printing market with new technology and productivity enhancements, including new large format capability, increased printer resolution and output speed, new inkjet printing technologies, improved textile coating technologies, and decreased equipment costs.

    A Digital Textile Survey shows digital direct-to-fabric manufacturing process as the second most used manufacturing process (25.7 percent) for imaging finished textiles. Applications driving growth in digital direct-to-fabric imaging: Soft signage, short runs for events, fabric samples, and custom fabrics for commercial interior design.

    Continued product enhancements should enable a strong future for digital textile printing, although the current economic climate will likely slow the growth seen in 2007 and the first half of 2008. Outlook is strongest at the low end of the market.