There is huge diversity in the range of media for sign and display work, in line with the huge diversity of work this sector produces. The dynamism reflects the energy and imagination of the market, which will always want to be unrestrained in its media options. There will always be new applications that demand new media of different weights, textures and opacities, but how a sign- and display-maker ensures profitability in such an environment isn't clear.

The problem isn't that we need to be able to print on materials of different weights, but that the market wants to be able to. Whether it asks for flexible polypropylenes 15 to 50 microns thick, fabrics or vehicle wrap vinyl, sign and display producers have to be able to respond to customers. When they say they want something thicker or thinner than the proffered option, the temptation is to say yes or at least offer them some alternative that is a less exotic version of what they think they want. This approach would generally be a preferable solution because for every new substrate that reaches the market, new quality management processes and colour management profiles, plus the associated testing, are needed. This can be expensive for one-off jobs.

The substrate diversity problem is not unique to wide-format graphics work, of course. All print sectors seem to be struggling to work with different substrate types developed in response to market needs, for instance new textiles for exhibition graphics, or ultrathin papers. Establishing the optimum printing conditions for new materials can be extremely difficult, which is perhaps an argument against adding more materials to the list of output options, whether they are thicker, thinner or otherwise. At the moment there is no fully established means of predicting how print will appear on a given substrate based on the colorimetric values for the unprinted print substrate. This seems to suggest that for one-off jobs many sign and display companies would find the cost of set-up to be too much trouble. Far easier to offer the customer an alternative for which the printing behaviour is already known. So, yes, we will always want more, but we should be careful what we wish for.