19 January 2023

The Turning Point in the Endless Loop

The Society for the German Language chose "Zeitenwende" ("turn of an era") as its word of the year in 2022. If you're in the print and media industry, you tend to get the feeling that the turn of the times was heralded at the latest with the spread of the Internet in the mid-1990s and has never stopped. Over the past three decades, virtually no stone has been left unturned, but this has the advantage that we as an industry have learned to deal with this constant pressure to change. In the current confusing situation, however, the ability to plan has been lost even further, which does not exactly make it any easier to assess what the future holds for the print and media industry in 2023 and beyond. Nevertheless, we dare to take a look ahead.

What kind of year was it - 2022? It was still dominated by a pandemic, with the often-mentioned side effects - such as disrupted supply chains and supply bottlenecks, which caused the global economy to shake. While restrictions were eased worldwide in the second half of the year, China stuck to its zero-covid strategy until the beginning of December, which did not really help to ease the situation. On the contrary, raw material and logistics costs went even further through the roof, and the word security of supply largely lost its meaning.

Read the full article by Knud Wassermann (Editor -in-Chief at Graphische Revue) on the Muller Martini website here.