During the last decade, the printing industry has been changing rapidly. Every year, each manufacturer creates and recreates their equipment making them even more responsive to the demands of an increasingly digitized world. Digital printing allows for high quality products, personalized printing, and enhanced finishing options that are cost-effective with a fast turnaround. The digital printing industry today is so agile that it can accommodate everything people need to promote their businesses or special events.

As a digital printing operator, your need will be more and more to become a key player in the scale of service providers since you?ll be placing yourself between the manufacturers and the clients. 

Join a Trade School

The cheapest, fastest, and most efficient ? and honestly, least painful ? way to acquire printing knowledge, skills, and experience is to join a printing training program at a trade school. These programs provide you with a wide range of basic knowledge that?ll help you navigate your first jobs, and will help you cope with the demands of an ever changing landscape. 

Embrace Apprenticeship (It?s not out of fashion) 

Apprenticeship has been with us ever since we invented professional craftsmanship. Carpenters do it, painters, and even more ?mental? trades like lawyers still work under the vision of the apprenticeship. Apprenticeship can easily be executed along with a trade school program. Of course, I doubt experienced operators are going to set you into an apprenticeship when you?re beyond teenage years and already working for yourself.

Even when leaning by you is a big temptation in the industry, don?t fall for it. There are so many variables involved in the digital printing business as an operator that in the long run, if you just learned things by yourself, you?ll realize that it wasn?t an economically wise decision, and the process was not efficient enough. 

A lot of information will not be found in the official books of manufacturers or trade schools. Standard printed study materials can?t be updated fast enough, but there are alternatives to keep in touch with what?s going on in the industry. YouTube channels such as this one can help you. The Printer Head is more than willing to transmit his knowledge and experience to newcomers like you. 

 

Bring your skills to the next level now

Taking your study and work to the level of a professional takes time, dedication, and organization. Going to a school, say physically attending it or taking online lessons is always a part-time investment that pays off in the long run. Nobody will ever say that it wasn?t money well spent. Connecting with people personally in the trade brings a lot of information and skills. You can do it in the form of an apprenticeship. Reading a manual and watching a video is useful, and updated quickly, but experienced guidance on the ground is going to make a huge difference in your development as a professional digital printing operator because reading up about a manual trade skill tends to miss things.