The New Medium of Print

Book excerpt: Print is so familiar that it remains invisible to the average person. Frank Cost, associate dean of the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology and co-director of the RIT Printing Industry Center, has often wished for a small, fun-to-read book to give to people who were thinking about the world of print for the first time. Most of the available introductory books concentrate heavily on the technology, but say little about how people actually use print, let alone why. The New Medium of Print is a new kind of book: it provides an introduction to the underlying systems for the creation and distribution of print, as well as an exploration of its many and varied contemporary uses. This book is the first in the Printing Industry Center Series: a co-publication of RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press and RIT Printing Industry Center.