Late last year I attended the China Print show in Shanghai China

Due to the language barrier, I decided that bit of exploration was a better use of my time. It was interesting to see the differences in booth layout and the floor plan of the event itself. Although it looked like any other show, it had its differences.

One that caught my eye was the amount of booth space devoted to educational concerns.

To be able to stop and see some print history and meet people that train the next generation of print heads seemed a more effective use of my time than doing hand gestures to sell a Nexpress to a Chinese printer.

The Educators had the same footprint as the big manufacturers did. To me this was a refreshing change, I am not sure if they were offered a discount or some financial support to pave the way, but I think it was a great idea. Tradeshows I have been to in other countries seem to put them in a small spot in low traffic areas forcing them to have a stand with a few magazines and two lonely people trying to get people to sign up for a newsletter.

One person, toiling away hour after hour on the stand was this person.

He seemed oblivious to the crowds that were wandering over and stopping to see what he was up to. I grabbed a coffee and sat down beside him and watched how fast he chipped and carved away at his wooden plate. Last time I did platemaking like this, Al Gore was almost finished inventing the internet.

Of course this has to be a hobby now, there is truly no chance he will get a job to continue honing his craft... or is there?

In the business world of today, all we seem to care about is:

Good-Cheap-Fast...pick any two.

If this were for signage or a poster, would it really matter if it took him 4 hours to produce it? I would wage a bet that if you dropped by a local service bureau and asked them to produce 500 copies of this...it probably would take 4 hours right? Maybe overnight? ...depends on how much you want to spend.

So here in Shanghai, he is still a viable alternative to other forms of printing!

Would you sit around and watch the production person produce this same material on a computer...probably not. But you would show up 3 hours later to request a change. But for this guy, you are too late, he would be 75% finished and you have to live with the decision you made 3 hours ago.

It takes him 4 hours to produce an A4 sized piece of text, and you could do it in 20 minutes with your mac.

But...How much time do you spend revising it?

How much time do you spend sending it off to your team asking for input or concensus?

How many revisions do you make?

I guess when you consider everything involved...you are probably typing at the same speed as this guy. 1 word per minute.

Except he is a craftsman and he attracts crowds of people at events to watch.

Imaging if it was your logo he was chipping away at... hire this man, he does 1wpm.

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